Return Journey: Art of the Americas in Spain
A lot of attention has been given over the past 100 years to the works of art from the Low Countries and Italy which arrived in Spain in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Return Journey. Art of the Americas in Spain is a long overdue exhibition about the thousands objects which arrived in Spain around the same time from the “New World” which had been conquered at the beginning of the period. Many of these objects were created by indigenous or mestizo artists, often making use of materials, such as shells, corn stalks and feathers, as well as techniques and subjects unknown in Spain. Although they came to be viewed as as desirable at the time - some of them displayed in the royal palaces alongside paintings by Rubens and Velàzquez - they got tucked away as oddities in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is only with the recent moves towards de-centring art history that we can once again appreciate them as works produced by highly skilled individuals which deserve to be viewed as art.
The exhibition features more than 100 works and is divided into four sections: ‘Geography, Conquest, and Society’, ‘Images and Cults, Away and Back’, ‘Art Crossings’, and ‘Legacy of the New World’. The challenges posed by the new geography are vividly encapsulated by a taxidermied alligator. The theme of conquest is grimly evoked by the series of 24 enconchados of the conquest of mexico by Hernán Cortés featuring scenes of battle and torture. The enconchado technique - which originated in the Far East and was transmitted to the New World through objects shipped from the Philippines - consists of inserting pieces of iridescent shell (concha) and mother-of-pearl into the wood support, creating highlights where European oil-painting technique would use dabs of lead white.
Juan González and Miguel González, Conquest of Mexico by Hernán Cortés, 1698, enconchado, oil in canvas laid on board, Museo del Prado, Madrid.
Other notable works are the Portrait of Moctezuma (late 17th century,Mexican school), the Aztec emperor who was killed by Cortés’s troops during the capture of Tenochtitlan; and The Three Mulattos of Esmeraldas (Andrés Sánchez Gallque, 1599) , representing three caciques from the Esmeraldas region of the Audiencia of Quito (modern-day Ecuador) where the indigenous inhabitants, who had mixed with Africans fleeing slavery, submitted to the authority of the Spanish crown.
Andrés Sánchez Gallque, The three Mulattoes from Esmeraldas, 1599, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.
Amongst the religious works are a painting of the iconic Virgin of Guadalupe by the Mexican Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz (famous for his Casta paintings of hierarchically arranged, mixed-race groupings); an elaborate silver monstrance studded with rhinestones produced in Quito in the early 18th century; and several paintings of archangels who were readily adopted by indigenous converts as intermediaries between God and mankind. Some of the works popular with the so-called Indianos, Spanish emigrants who returned rich from the New World, include the magnificent late 17th century biombo or screen featuring an image of the conquest of Tenochtitlan on one side and a view of Mexico City on the other.
Workshop of the Correas, Biombo (Story of the Conquest of Tenochtitlan y view of the City of Mexico), ca. 1692-96, gold and gold leaf on canvas, mounted on wood structure, Private Collection.
Archangels and a Virgin of the Immaculate Conception in “Return Journey: Art of the Americas in Spain”. Photo © Museo Nacional del Prado