Page 4 - Guadalupe of Mexico in Spain

By the mid-17th century, a model of representation had been established that brought together the four

encounters between the Virgin of Guadalupe and an indigenous peasant named Juan Diego in the hills of
Tepeyac, outside Mexico City. The first took place amidst birdsong in the early hours of 9 December 1531.
Juan Diego acted as a visionary and intermediary in the miracle of the imprint of the image, not only by
collecting the roses that appeared at Mary’s bidding but also by giving up his cape so that the portrait of
the Virgin could be imprinted on it. The cloak was presented to Bishop Juan de Zumárraga as proof of the
apparition.

Two painters from New Spain, José Juárez and Juan Correa, and an engraver from Seville, Matías de
Arteaga, executed the first series of the four apparitions and established an iconographic canon that held

sway for three centuries and was transferred to many other supports, including sculpture, architecture
and a long list of decorative arts.

Section 02. Lineage and typology of the sacred

image

The image of Our Lady of Guadalupe belongs to a family of late Gothic Madonnas (though already more
Renaissance in their proportions) of Northern European origin that show her in a state of pregnancy, her
hands joined in prayer, surrounded by a radial solar mandorla and positioned over the waning moon and
an angelic plinth or footstool. This is how she is seen in the work by the Sevillian artist Pedro Villegas

Marmolejo or in the altarpiece of Medina del Campo. The iconography also shares the signs of identity of
the most popular Marian advocations of the first half of the 16th century, the Tota Pulchra and the
Apocalyptic woman adorned with the sun, and it finally merged into the representations of the mystery of
the Immaculate Conception.