"From the Local Jewel of the Renaissance to the National Jewel of Painting". With this headline, in 2021, a local newspaper headed the article to announce the journey of two paintings by the Novo-Hispanic artist, Cristóbal de Villalpando, from the Jaen´s Cathedral to the Prado Museum, for its exhibition in Return Journey. Art of the Americas in Spain. The works were: The Virgin's Betrothal and Saint Leocadia. This trip marked a new stage in the biography of both objects, but it was undoubtedly more important for Saint Leocadia, whose presence was not usually required in previous exhibitions where her companion was present.
The description of some physical characteristics of the painting in an inventory of the Cathedral of Jaen, such as its "landscape" format and the split stringers of its carved wooden frame, may indicate its presence there, at least since 1914. In fact, one of the greatest material transformations carried out for its exhibition in the Prado Museum was the recovery of the right side of the canvas, which was folded and hidden, as well as the replacement of the central area of the frame's crossbars, to return it to its original width and reading, which had to be cut to adjust its display in a given space.
The same inventory gives little information about the image: "(...) it represents a religious historical fact". The main theme is the miracle of the apparition of Saint Leocadia to Saint Ildefonso and Recesvinto. The painter constructed the scene, dated in the 5th century, as an updated apparition to a display of Jesuits clergymen and seculars, dressed according to the 16th century fashion, the time when the relics of the martyr were transferred from Flanders to her native city, by mandate of Philip II and commission of the Jesuit Miguel Hernandez, in the context of the Protestant advance.
The arrival of the relics to Toledo, in 1587, was an exaltation of the power of the Hispanic Monarchy and its defense of Catholicism, since it celebrated the return of one of the first Spanish saints that, since the time of the Muslim advance in the Peninsula, had been protected to avoid the profanation of her materia: first to Oviedo, then to Flanders and back to Toledo.
More than a century later, at the end of the 17th century, in another part of the same monarchy, as Mexico City was then, that allegation was rescued by one of its most renowned painters; as well as by a commissioner who could have been the same one who decided that the saint from Toledo should travel, in the company of the Betrothal, to Spain, in order to transmit once again a message about the relationship between travel, presence, agency and power in the Hispanic world. In this paper we propose to explore this relationship from the construction of the cultural biography of Saint Leocadia, in a story that starts from the present to also affect its critical fortune and its condition as an artistic object.
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DaCosta Kaufmann, Thomas, Dossin Catherine y Joyeaux-Prunel, Béatrice. (2015). Circulations in the Global History of Art. Burlington: Ashgate.
Hernández, Miguel. (1591). Vida, martirio y translación de la gloriosa virgen y mártir santa Leocadia. Toledo: Imprenta de Pedro Rodríguez.
Salazar de Mendoza, Pedro. (1618). Vida del glorioso doctor san Ildefonso, arzobispo de Toledo, primado de las Españas, Toledo: Imprenta de Diego Rodríguez.
Serrano, F. and Estebaranz, A. (2022) “Aunque tan distante, muy cerca en su afecto”: El legado del indiano Pedro Pablo Sánchez López de los Arcos al antiguo Reino de Jaén, in TIEMPOS MODERNOS, n.4, june.
VV.AA. (2021). Tornaviaje. Arte iberoamericano en España. Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado.
Elizabeth Vite Hernández is PhD candidate and researcher in training at the Art History Department in the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She holds a BA in History (2016) and a Master's degree in Art History, in the field of Studies of Techniques and Materials in Art (2019) from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. She is currently developing her doctoral thesis on Mexican painting from the late seventeenth to the early eighteenth centuries under the direction of Rocío Bruquetas, Luisa Elena Alcalá, and Benito Navarrete. She has specialized in the study of techniques and materials in art, an approach from which she has guided her research on Novo-Hispanic painting. Is a contributor to the book Historias de Pincel. Pintura y retablos del siglo XVI en la Nueva España, coordinated by Elisa Vargaslugo, Elsa Arroyo and Pedro Ángeles (Mexico: IIE/UNAM, 2020).
She was a research assistant at the Artwork Diagnostic Laboratory in the Institute for Aesthetic Research at UNAM (Mexico), collaborating in technical studies of several works between 2012 and 2017. She has been an adjunct professor at the College of History of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at UNAM (2013-2016), and has participated in seminars and competitive research projects at UNAM and INAH (Mexico). She currently hold a full doctoral fellowship from the Spanish government, associated with the project "Circulation of the Image in the Artistic Geography of the Hispanic World in the Modern Age”. As well, participate in the project "Agents: Jesuit Procurators and Alternative Channels for Artistic Circulation in the Hispanic World”, also financed by Spanish government.
This paper explores the construction of the cultural biography of the painting Saint Leocadia by the Novo-Hispanic artist, Cristóbal de Villalpando, in a story that starts from the present: its journey from the Jaen´s Cathedral to the Prado Museum, for its exhibition in Return Journey. Art of the Americas in Spain. I will discus its critical fortune and its condition as an artistic object in relation to travel, presence, agency and power in the Hispanic world.