Page 2 - Guadalupe of Mexico in Spain

The exhibition

Image and Apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe
José Juárez (1617-1661)

Oil on canvas
1656
Ágreda (Soria), monasterio de Sor María de Jesús de Ágreda
How close to and how far from Spain was the Virgin of Guadalupe of Mexico between the mid-17th and
late 18th centuries? This exhibition shows the wide circulation of a sacred image that also propagated
through Italy, Portugal, the viceroyalties of South America, the Caribbean and Asia.

Guadalupe of Mexico was the first globalised Marian image. The dispatch of her “true likenesses” from
New Spain to the metropolis bears witness to the intense relations between families and personalities on
both sides of the Atlantic who shared desires, aspirations and sentiments. Through them, dense

interpersonal, cultural, political, social and economic webs were woven that have now been lost, and
which this exhibition seeks to restore.

The Virgin of Guadalupe had a devotional legend, but it was above all a revealed icon whose imprint
made by roses on the unprecedented support of a cape of coarse cloth led theologians to compare the
phenomenon with the Eucharist itself. For copies of the Holy Original to partake of its miraculous nature,
they had to be extremely exact, obliging artists to apply all their skill.

The exhibition, mostly made up of works from the Spanish heritage, examines the aim and function of the
Guadalupan images, which are highly diverse despite their reiteration of a single prototype, and points
out their similarities and contrasts with other European cults or with devotions served by Spanish

painting.

Guadalupan cartography in Spain (1654-1821-2025) - Room C

Since the arrival on these shores of the first Guadalupan images in 1654, nearly a thousand copies
originating in Mexico have been counted in Spain. Most of them were sent before 1821, the year of