Maravilla americana (Mexico, 1756): painters called as expert witnesses
On 30 April 1751 the collegiate chapter of the Guadalupe sanctuary outside Mexico City assembled the most credited painters of the city, took the glass off an image, and asked them to judge by the rules of their art whether it could be human work. Miguel Cabrera printed his report in 1756 with the signed statements of three of the men who were there. The same pages that record the examination record who convened it and what they wanted from it.
Why this wins its question: Cabrera's 1756 book is normally reached for its conclusion and then either quoted as proof or dismissed as apologetics, which leaves the interesting thing about it unreported: it is a record of working painters convened to examine an object and reasoning about it in the categories of their trade — ground, support, four named manners of laying colour — with the viewing conditions, the dates, the durations and the signatures printed. This object quotes those pages, and it quotes, from the same volume, the paragraph in which the author states that the inspection was one of the diligencias got up to win a cause at Rome. Both halves come from the sheets, so neither can be produced without the other, and the reader is left able to weigh the examination instead of taking or refusing its verdict.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The title page reads "MARAVILLA AMERICANA, Y CONJUNTO DE RARAS MARAVILLAS, OBSERVADAS Con la direccion de las Reglas de el Arte de la Pintura EN LA PRODIGIOSA IMAGEN DE NUESTRA Sra. DE GUADALUPE DE MEXICO POR DON MIGUEL CABRERA, PINTOR", dedicated to the archbishop of Mexico "D. D. MANUEL JOSEPH RUBIO, Y SALINAS", and it was printed "CON LICENCIA: En Mexico en la Imprenta del Real, y mas Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso. Año de 1756." The author signs himself by his trade and by nothing else.
The section headed "MOTIVO DE ESTA INSCRIPCION" states who convened the examination and for what end, in the author's own words and before any finding is offered. After the collegiate chapter took possession of the sanctuary on 22 October 1750 its members worked "no solo de engrandecer el Templo con las magnificas Obras, que oy vemos; sino tambien de alcanzar de la Sta. Sede los mayores cultos de la Sra.", and, not content with the instruments drawn up for that purpose in 1666, "procuraron otros de nuevo, è hizieron nuevas diligencias". One of those diligencias was the inspection: the examination was a step in a canonical campaign, and the book says so on its own first page of text.
The same page gives the date, the company and the viewing conditions. One of the new diligencias "fuè juntar en el Santuario el dia 30. de Abril del año de 1751. los Pintores de mas credito, que hay oy en Mexico", Cabrera among them; "A hora proporcionada nos hizieron observar muy despacio, sin los embarazos de el Christal, la Sagrada Imagen", so that, informed of what was to be seen, "juzgassemos, segun las reglas de nuestro Arte, si podian ser obra de la industria humana semejantes maravillas". Each man wrote his opinion at the time: "Expressè entonces mi dictamen por escrito, y lo reservè."
Cabrera reasons in the categories of a working studio, beginning with the preparation of the support. Paragraph III is headed "DE LA FALTA DE APAREJO EN esta Pintura", and opens by stating the ordinary sequence of the trade before applying it: having described the material of the cloth, "se seguia dar noticia del Aparejo, ò disposicion, que antecede siempre à toda Pintura", and he holds that this one lacks it, "como consta de la declaracion, que los Pintores hizieron examinandola" front and back.
On the question a modern examiner would settle first, the fibre of the cloth, he declines to decide. "Me parece ocioso averiguar, si la materia, en que està, es de Palma, ò Maguey", he writes, because either would be the most ill-suited a human maker could choose. What he does offer in its place is his own sense of touch — the ayate feels "muy semejante à la de la fina seda, como lo he experimentado las repetidas vezes, que he tenido la dicha de tocarlo" — which is testimony about a sensation, not a determination of a material.
The technical core of the book is a four-way classification of ways of painting, each defined by its materials and handling: "el Oleo, se executa en virtud de azeytes desecantes... para lo que ha de anteceder el Aparejo"; "al Temple, usa de colores de todas especies con goma, cola, ò cosas semejantes"; "de Aguazo, se executa sobre Lienzo blanco, y delgado, y su disposicion es humedecer el Lienzo por el reverso, sirviendo para los claros"; and painting "labrada al Temple", which works by "empactando, y cubriendo" and requires a firm support "como tabla, pared &c.", the colours being too stiff for the brush and laid with "unas paletillas". Cabrera holds all four to be present in the one cloth, and states the inference he draws in the first person: "para mi es este un argumento, que tan eficaz me persuado á que es sobrenatural esta prodigiosa Pintura."
He also records that he had himself been wrong before, and names the technique that misled him: of the fourth manner, painting labrada al temple, he writes that from it "nació aquel equivoco, que tambien yo padecì". The concession is the closest thing in the book to a control on its own method.
Three of the men who were present signed statements printed at the back, and they are witness depositions rather than compliments. Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz writes as an eyewitness called by the abbot of the sanctuary with the chapter present, "para dicha inspeccion en consorcio de los Señores aprobantes, que por entonces fuimos el dia 30. de Abril del año de 1751", and describes Cabrera's text as setting out his opinion "en ocho Paragraphos"; his statement is dated at Mexico, 18 September 1756. Francisco Antonio Vallejo attests that on two occasions in Cabrera's company he had "visto, y tocado aquella felicissima capa", each time for more than an hour.
Joseph de Alzibar dates his own inspection to 15 April 1752, when Cabrera took him along to help copy the image, and records what the copying was for: three copies were made, "la una que llevaron à nuestro Santissimo Padre el Señor Benedicto XIV", another for the archbishop Rubio y Salinas, and the third kept by Cabrera as a model for the many he was asked for. He closes by offering to swear to what he has said, being "prompto à assegurarlo con la severidad del juramento".
What the file cannot be is independent, and the reason is on the printed pages rather than in any later criticism. The men who examined the image were convened by the body that wanted a particular answer for a cause at Rome; the signatories at the back are painters of the same city, one of whom had been Cabrera's assistant in copying the very object under examination, and one of whom describes the copies as sent to the pope and the archbishop. Nothing in the volume is measured, sampled or removed: the evidence throughout is trained looking and touching, reported by interested parties. This assessment is the reading of the pages listed in the source note, not a claim taken from a modern examination, none of which is cited here.
That Cabrera was a painter of extraordinary output rather than a controversialist who painted is visible in the record of one commission. Couto reports reading on the canvases themselves that the thirty-two large oils of the life of San Ignacio painted for the lower corridors of the Jesuit casa profesa were begun on 7 June 1756 and finished on 27 July 1757 — under fourteen months — and sets that against Vicente Carducho's celebrated contract of 1626 with the prior of El Paular for fifty-five pictures in four years.
The counterpoint on his standing as a painter comes from the same nineteenth-century dialogue and is not flattering throughout. Its speaker Clavé grants that his drawing, "aunque no puede decirse totalmente correcto, sin embargo, saca ventaja al de los más de los pintores mexicanos", and that he composes with skill; but he faults the recourse to allegory and to "el mezquino medio de los letreros que salen de las bocas de los personajes", and holds that Cabrera lacked the schooling and the refined taste of Baltasar de Echave the elder. A judgement made a century after the fact by a partisan of a later academy is opinion, not evidence, and is carried here as such.