Novohispanic School. Mexico. 18th Century.

Novohispanic School. Mexico. 18th Century.

“Under your protection we take refuge”.

Pair of oil paintings on canvas mounted in the same frame. This double version was possibly made as a sample for a Patronage painting.

106 x 79 cm.


Unusual montage of two canvases in the same frame as if they were a single painting.  There is clear parallelism in both paintings, with parts copied and repeated in both, but each one is dedicated to a different patron - one being a patronage painting of Saint Augustine and the other of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. They could have been prepared as two possible samples for a future painting presented to a client so that they could make a choice.
We could call it “almost bifrontal”, because these two paintings do not have a three-dimensional character. One is not the back of the other, as the two parallel pictures are bifrontal.
For further explanation, if we take an authentic bifrontal painting as an example, such as an Ecce Homo, on one side the face, chest and arms of Christ's body were depicted and, on the other, his painful, scourged and wounded back. In this way, it was intended that viewers would experience the painting as a three-dimensional object by viewing the back and the front, and thus considerably increase its impact and intensify religious fervor.

However, in the second canvas of the two presented on this single stretcher, we do not get to see its reverse, but another version of the theme presented or depicted. This is the painter's manifesto of his artistic capabilities, showing the different possible versions he can paint with different sacred images presented, to appeal to the taste of the person who will pay for the commission of such work. And the one who pays for the artwork, will be -in the end- the one who chooses. 

The artist, then, presents two versions of one of the most popular scenes in Novo-Hispanic art of the late 17th and the whole 18th century: the "Patronage" paintings show St. Augustine in one and the Virgin of Mount Carmel in the other, protecting and symbolically delivering the divine attributes and their protection and strength to the saints and/or faithful who approach them: The book of their rules (“by them you will be governed”) and a chastity belt, embodying one of the vows of the religious orders and main virtue of the saints (“with it you will gird your waist and give all your will and love to heaven and its works”). Heaven (“above”) with that saint and/or the Virgin Mary protect the religious orders (“below”), corporations and authorities, (Church and State symbolized in the King), the new Moorish Christians who have surrendered to Christianity, everyone without exception. All become faithful recipients and principals of heavenly benefits. 
 
In both canvases, the scene is divided into two perfectly differentiated worlds:
In the first painting, the Patronage is exercised by St. Augustine of Hippo, a seated bishop, as father of the Church. Just as he received the rules from heaven (“Tolle et Lege”, take and read - “vive”- live), he, as representative of ecclesial theology, tells St. Dominic of Guzman the same thing, and gives him the rules, the truth (at his feet we see the little dog that brought him the burning ember to overcome temptation and the orb); At his side is the Augustinian St. Nicholas of Tolentine, with a basket of bread rolls, and St. Peter Nolasco, at the end, founder of the Mercedarians.  
With the other hand, the holy Father of the Church gives the cincture or belt of virginity, purity and chastity to St. Catherine of Siena, Dominican and foundress, to an Augustinian, perhaps St. Clare of Montefalco, and to St. Mary of Cervellon, foundress of the Mercedarian female branch.
On the earthly level we see everyone, almost without exception, prostrate on the ground: the State symbolized by the king, who receives the power of God and heaven; St. Ferdinand III the Saint; the Church with one of its bishops and religious orders, who surrender to heaven on both knees, an external gesture that expresses the greatest sign of submission and humility. Few remain standing, on the right and left, like two lighted candles, the saints of the Order of Malta with the eight-pointed cross of St. John of Jerusalem on their habits, Saints Hugo and Nicasius. 
Also prostrate are the recently converted, the Mudejars or Moors and Ottomans or Turks who have become new converts.
 
In the second painting, Our Lady of Mount Carmel as Queen of Heaven with her Son, also crowned, gives her cincture or belt to St. Augustine, now on his knees, who constantly pleaded in his Confessions: “give me chastity”. The saint is next to St. Anthony of Padua, who receives the lily of purity; and the nuns of heaven, Augustinian nuns, who also receive the strength of their virginity and purity from the Mother of God, so that they may be “carmel”: fertile soil. Let us not forget that the so-called cincture of the Theotokos is one of the great relics of the Catholic Church, which the Mother of God herself gave, according to the Armenian and Orthodox tradition, to the apostles at the moment of their departure, and it is still venerated today in the monastery of Vatopedi on Mount Athos, Greece.
The two planes, in this second version, are united by two angels who fly, “distribute and deliver” that belt to their faithful followers: first to Saint Ferdinand, expressly, known as a Saint already in his life, for being “a king and an austere, mortified, penitent and chaste man”, and another belt is received by Saint Hugo, of the Order of Malta, on the left, with the same repetition and parallelism as the first painting, with the same characters in the scene, the same symbolic royalty and church members, and the same religious orders. 

In the first painting, chastity and the rules remain in heaven and are contemplated from below, while in the second the angels, as messengers, deliver chastity or virginity to the earthly plane, as the main sign of the perfection of a holy person (especially of a woman), to the whole medieval church.  The church, at that time, was a little lax and, sometimes, heretical, and did very little evangelizing with its example.  

Note how the saints do not wear the haloes of sanctity, either because the canvases are primitive, or because they aim to highlight the “glory of God” within the two attributes or benefits being given: rules and a chastity belt.

In short, they are two canvases with two well differentiated cosmic planes, heaven and earth, very typical of the Novo-Hispanic art of the time. Above dwell the saints who demonstrated the virtues, sacrifices and examples to follow, day by day, through their lives; and below, are those who aspire to ascend and live with the virtues of those in heaven. And, always according to Christian doctrine, constantly crossing the borders of heaven and earth, are angels, who come down to help and protect the humans who aspire to live “Duc in altum” and in one flesh with that heaven.