Exploring Colonial Mexico©
Exploring Colonial Mexico©
Among its many treasures, the Cathedral of San Cristóbal de Las Casas is the possessor of several fine colonial altarpieces. In addition to the elegant Churrigueresque main altarpiece, two especially beautiful gilded retablos stand beside it facing the two side aisles.
Believed to have been originally crafted in the early 1700s by a team of Guatemalan artists and artisans for the former Jesuit church, now the church of St. Augustine, in San Cristobal, the retablos were probably moved to the cathedral following the expulsion of the Jesuits after 1767. A third retablo is to be found in the church of San Sebastian in Teopisca.
The retablo facing the south aisle is the finer of the two, designed in the highly ornate Solomonic style, partitioned by spiral Corinthian columns, wreathed with gilded vines, and thin, projecting cornices hung with spindles. The paintings and sculpture niches are densely ornamented with gilded strapwork and scrolled arabesques in the classic Guatemalan manner, representing one of the most beautiful examples of the genre extant.
Statues of saints, notably the crowned figure of St. Joseph in the lower niche, crafted in the Guatemalan style and enfolded in an exquisite estofado robe, are surrounded by paintings portraying richly costumed saints and bishops.
The Royal Portraits
But our main interest here is the two smaller portraits of saints at the base of the retablo. These show respectively, King Wenceslas of Bohemia on the right, and on the left Edward the Confessor, the 11th century English king *
Together with two other inscribed companion portraits, similiar in size and style, of the more commonly portrayed royal saints Ferdinand lll of Castile and Louis lX of France, which are now mounted in the base of the adjacent main retablo, the four paintings appear to be by the same hand, and predate either retablo.
While none are signed or dated, because of their style and details of the period dress there is reason to believe that they were painted before the mid-1600s. In fact, one or, more likely, all of the portraits may have been commissioned by the English Dominican Thomas Gage, who is known to have visited San Cristobal in 1626 and sojourned in other parts of Chiapas and Guatemala during his controversial career as a priest in central America. Although their original provenance is unknown, they may have hung in the Dominic monastery of Santo Domingo here in San Cristóbal.
King Edward
* It should be pointed out that the portrait in question is actually a conflation, or better said, confusion of two kings, by the artist.
St. Edward the Confessor is labeled as Edward lll, the Plantagenet king, hero of Crecy and father of the Black Prince. It was this Edward (1327-1377) who won fame as a warrior, not as a saint, and instituted the Order of the Garter, which is shown in the portrait on the right, with St. George slaying the dragon.
However, another attribute depicted, the Host with Crucifixion on the left, clearly refers to the Miracle of the Mass, which is associated with St. Edward, who was known as King Edward lll under the Saxons - the renumeration of English kings after the Norman conquest may have led to the confusion. Yet another anomaly is the depiction of the lion and unicorn flanking the Garter (not too clear in the picture) - insignia that only appear together (the lion of England and the unicorn of Scotland) after the United Kingdom of Great Britain was established in 1607 !
As the English Mayanist Eric Thompson* has pointed out in his commentary, Edward the Confessor, the patron saint of persecuted English Catholics in exile and thus dear to Thomas Gage, would have been virtually unknown in the Americas at that time, and certainly one of the least likely royal saints to be portrayed. While Wenceslas is rarely shown in Mexico or Guatemala, this colonial portrait of an English King is, to our knowledge, unique in the Americas.
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Text ©2006 by Richard D. Perry. Color pictures ©2006 by Robert Guess. All rights reserved. Many thanks to Bob and Ginny Guess for their painstaking work and persistance in obtaining the color images on this page. *Thompson, J. Eric S., ed. and introduction. Thomas Gage's Travels in the New World. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958. Appendix 2. pp. 363-5. An update on the Cathedral of San Cristobal For more on the colonial churches of Chiapas, their arts and legends, consult our illustrated guide, More Maya Missions See our other pages on Chiapas
