View of "Gilded, Carved, and Embossed: Latin American Art 1500–1800." At center is an 18th-century Brazilian Saint Benedict of Palermo. Pomona College Collection, Walter and Elise Mosher Memorial Fund
Last year LACMA did a large show of its growing Spanish colonial collection. You might assume that the Benton Museum of Art's more modest exhibition—"Gilded, Carved, and Embossed: Latin American Art 1500–1800"—would have little to add. Actually, the Benton's two-room, 25-object show is packed with rarities and is well worth a trip. It's a reminder of how little U.S. audiences know about this art, and of what discoveries may still await.
Our Lady of the Miracles of Cuzco. Cuzco, Pero, 18th century, Collection of Carl and Marilynn Thoma
Most of the objects are sourced from the quirky, Chicago/Dallas/Santa Fe-based collection of Carl & Marilynn Thoma, who also collect post-war abstraction, Japanese bamboo works, and digital art. Thoma loans include inventive paintings of the Cuzco (Peru) School. Our Lady of the Miracles of Cuzco is oil and gold on copper, with a no less exquisite carved and painted frame. It echoes a painting in Cuzco's Franciscan monastery that was believed to have been miraculously restored after an earthquake. The cryptic symbols on each side of the Virgin refer to the Immaculate Conception.
The Christ Child in Three Guises with Indigenous Donors. Cuzco, Peru, 1835. Collection of Carl and Marilynn Thoma
Also from Cuzco is a tiny painting of baby Jesus in cosplay as solider, priest, and missionary. The artist is so far unknown, but the inscription identifies the donors as Alejandro and Manuela Espinosa, an indigenous couple whose affluence is marked by Alejandro's hat and umbrella. The three-fold depiction of the Christ child continues to the present near Ururbamba, Peru, where doll-like sculptures are brought into town for a festival.
Our Lady of Loreto. Peru, 17th-18th century. Collection of Carl and Marilynn Thoma
Another, much larger Peruvian painting shows the Black Madonna of Loreto. The Catholic Church deployed its few dark-skinned depictions of Mary, Jesus, and saints to build its Latin American brand. The Thoma painting is ultimately based on a wood statue in Loreto, Italy.
Compare Saint Benedict of Palermo, a Brazilian painted sculpture recently acquired by the Benton (top of post). Benedict was a Sicilian Moorish saint.
Saint Joseph and the Christ Child. Guatemala, 18th century. Collection of Carl and Marilynn Thoma
U.S. scholars and aficionados have only lately recognized the brilliance of the Guatemalan school of polychrome sculpture. The Benton show has a superb Saint Joseph and the Christ Child. The youthful, virile Joseph draws on the revisionist hagiography of the 16th-century Saint Teresa of Ávila.
Genealogical Tree of the Mercedarian Order. Potosi, Bolivia, mid 18th century. Collection of Carl and Marilynn Thoma
Europe's monastic orders competed for New World hegemony as much as its colonizing monarchs did. A Bolivian Genealogical Tree of the Mercedarian Order adopts the "tree of Jesse" schema to an all-male lineage of holy friars.
"Gilded, Carved, and Embossed: Latin American Art 1500–1800" runs through July 23, 2023. Pomona College's Victoria Sancho Lobis curated, with contributions by Pomona students and Claire Nettleton.