Miguel Cabrera

Miguel Mateo Maldonado y Cabrera (1695 - 1768) was a painter from the Viceroyalty of New Spain, in today's Mexico. During his lifetime, he was recognized as the greatest painter in all of New Spain. He created religious and secular art for the Catholic Church and wealthy patrons. His casta paintings, depicting interracial marriage among Indians, Spaniards and Africans, are considered the genre's finest.

Cabrera was born in Antequera, today's Oaxaca, Oaxaca, and moved to Mexico City in 1719. He may have studied under the Rodríguez Juárez brothers or José de Ibarra.

Cabrera was a favorite painter of the city's Archbishop and of the Jesuit order, which earned him many commissions. His work was influenced by Bartolomé Estéban Murillo and the French painting of his time.

Miguel is most famous for his casta paintings and his portrait of the poet Sor Juana. He also executed one of the first portraits of St. Juan Diego. In 1752 he was permitted access to the icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe to make three copies: one for Archbishop José Manuel Rubio y Salinas, one for the Pope, and a third to use as a model for further copies.

In 1756 he created an important early study of the icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Maravilla americana y conjunto de raras maravillas observadas con la dirección de las reglas del arte de la pintura ("American marvel and ensemble of rare wonders observed with the direction of the rules of the art of painting", often referred to in English simply as American Marvel).

The essential purpose of Maravilla Americana was to affirm the 1666 opinions of the witnesses who swore that the image of the Virgin was of a miraculous nature. However, he also elaborated a novel opinion: the image was crafted with a unique variety of techniques. He contended that the Virgin's face and hands were painted in oil paint, while her tunic, mandorla, and the cherub at her feet were all painted in egg tempera. Finally, her mantle was executed in gouache. He observed that the golden rays emanating from the Virgin seemed to be of dust that was woven into the very fabric of the canvas, which he asserted was of "a coarse weave of certain threads which we vulgarly call pita," a cloth woven from palm fibers.

In 1753, he founded the second Academy of Painting in Mexico City and served as its director.

Most of the rest of his works are also religious in nature, although as the official painter of the Archbishop of Mexico, Cabrera painted his and other portraits.

In the 19th century, the writer José Bernardo Couto (es) called him "the personification of the great artist and of the painter par excellence; and a century after his death the supremacy which he knew how to merit remains intact." His remains are interred at the Church of Santa Inés in Mexico City.

Miguel Cabrera was born in Antequera de Oaxaca in the year 1695 of unknown parents and godson of a mulatto couple. He began his artistic activity until the year 1740.

The Marian theme, and more specifically the Virgin of Guadalupe, occupies much of his work; On this matter wrote American Wonder and set of rare wonders observed with the direction of the rules of the art of painting (1756). One detail, made paintings for the chapels of the Cathedral of Mexico City, among them, the sacristy, which houses, on one of its walls The Woman of the Apocalypse.

He was chamber painter of the archbishop Manuel Jose Rubio and Salinas and founder in 1753 of the first academy of painting of Mexico.

Works:
He is also the author of a multitude of images of saints spread over numerous museums, convents and churches. Of his vast production stand out:

The Portrait of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1751).
The Via Crucis of the Cathedral of Puebla.
The four oval canvases of the cruise of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Mexico City.
Virgin of the Apocalypse of the Pinacoteca Virreinal.
Santa Gertrudis, part of the Dallas Museum collection.
The Martyrdom of St. Shepheast, for the Temple of St. Prisca of Taxco, including paintings of the sacristy of that temple.
San Ignacio de Loyola.
Prayer in the Garden
The conversion of St. Francis of Borja
The pontifical proclamation of the patronage of the Virgin of Guadalupe on the kingdom of New Spain
Some of the places where you can appreciate the works of Miguel Cabrera are:

Museum of the Virreinato, Tepotzotlán.
Museum of the Carmen, San Ángel (Distrito Federal).
National Museum of Interventions, Coyoacán.
Pinacoteca Virreinal, Mexico, D. F ..
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas.
Museum of America, Madrid.
Museum of Santa Monica, Puebla.
Arocena Museum, Torreón, Coahuila.
Museo del Obispado, Monterrey, Nuevo León.
Museum of Sacred Art, Guadalajara, Jalisco.
Pinacoteca of the Profesa in the historical center of the City of Mexico.
Regional Museum of the state of Durango (Durango).

His art is splendid in works of small and medium format, especially in paintings that have copper plates as a support. In them they emphasize their warm and alive colors, unparalleled in the Escuela Nuevahispana of century XVIII, as well as its firm drawing and the poetic expressions of the faces of its Virgins, Saints and even portraits of personages of its time. Nowadays: Miguel Cabrera is present in numerous public and private Spanish collections such as the splendid series of castes of the Museum of America in Madrid, perhaps one of his masterpieces. In December 2008, this museum enriched its heritage with the acquisition of three other works by the painter. The appreciation and quotation in the art market for the works of Miguel Cabrera has grown vertiginously during the last quarter of the twentieth century. In 2004, in Madrid, was paid in public auction 150,000 euros for a work of his. However, lately, prices have been markedly higher by some paintings painted on copper.
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