Page 9 - Guadalupe of Mexico in Spain

Section 07. The Peninsular model

Portrait of Saint Mary the Virgin of Guadalupe
Juan Bernabé Palomino (1692-1777)
Etching and burin
1740
Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España

The first two Guadalupan copies displayed for worship in Madrid were brought to the city in 1654 on the
initiative of Pedro de Gálvez, inspector general of New Spain, who placed them respectively in the
Convent of the Augustinian Recollects and the College of Doña María de Aragón, which belonged to the
Calced Augustinians. The print by Pedro de Villafranca depicts one of these pictures, now lost, which
served as a model for the work of Senén Vila.

It was also in Madrid, in 1740, that the city’s most reputed engraver, Juan Bernabé Palomino, made an

allegorical print that became enormously popular on both sides of the ocean, since it celebrated the
patronage of La Guadalupana over Mexico City, proclaimed in 1737. The engraving was promoted by the
colonists who had returned from the Indies and were now grouped in the Royal Congregation of
Guadalupe in Madrid, whose Brother Superior was later to be King Ferdinand VI.