Miguel Cabrera (painter)

For other people named Miguel Cabrera, see Miguel Cabrera (disambiguation).

In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Maldonado and the second or maternal family name is Cabrera.

Miguel Mateo Maldonado y Cabrera (Oaxaca de Juárez 1695 – Mexico City 1768) was a Mexican painter of the late Baroque in New Spain.^[1] During his lifetime, he was recognized as the greatest painter in the viceroyalty. He created religious and secular art for the Catholic Church and wealthy patrons. His casta paintings, depicting interracial marriage among Amerindians, Spaniards and Africans, are considered among the genre's finest.^[2] Cabrera's paintings range from tiny works on copper to enormous canvases and wall paintings. He also designed altarpieces and funerary monuments.^[3]

Miguel Cabrera
Born	Miguel Mateo Maldonado y Cabrera 1710 Nueva Antequera (now Oaxaca)
Died	May 16 1768 Mexico City
Nationality	New Spanish, Mexican
Movement	Baroque

Biography

Miguel Cabrera, El arcángel san Rafael (c. 1745-1768), the lobby of the House Museum Guillermo Tovar de Teresa at the Museo Soumaya

Portrait of Cabrera's patron, Archbishop Manuel José Rubio y Salinas, 1751. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Altarpiece of the Virgin of Guadalupe with St. John the Baptist, Fray Juan de Zumárraga and Juan Diego

Cabrera was born in Antequera, today's Oaxaca, Oaxaca, and moved to Mexico City in 1719. He may have studied under the Rodríguez Juárez brothers or José de Ibarra. Cabrera was a favorite painter of Archbishop Manuel José Rubio y Salinas, whose portrait he twice painted, and of the Jesuits, which earned him many commissions.

In 1756 he created an important analytical study of the icon of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Maravilla americana y conjunto de raras maravillas observadas con la dirección de las reglas del arte de la pintura ("American marvel and ensemble of rare wonders observed with the direction of the rules of the art of painting", often referred to in English simply as American Marvel).^[4]

In 1753, he founded the second Academy of Painting in Mexico City and served as its director.^[5]

Most of the rest of his works are also religious in nature; as the official painter of the Archbishop of Mexico, Cabrera painted his and other portraits. In 1760, Cabrera created The Virgin of the Apocalypse, which describes the chapter 12 of the Book of Revelation.^[6] He is also known for his posthumous portrait of the seventeenth-century poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.

Cabrera is currently most famous for his casta paintings. One of the sixteen in the set that was missing for many years was purchased by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2015.^[2] The museum received information that the last of the sixteen, thought lost, may be in Los Angeles, California.^[7]

His remains are located at the Church of Santa Inés in Mexico City.

Gallery

• 
  A casta painting, here he shows a Español (Spanish) father, Mestiza (mixed Native American-Spanish) mother, and their Castiza daughter
• 
  Pintura de Castas, "From Spaniard and Mulatta, Morisca", oil on canvas, Private collection
• 
  A casta painting, De Mestizo y d'India; Coyote, 1763, oil on canvas, Waldo-Dentzel Art Center
• 
  Allegory of the Virgin Patroness of the Dominicans
• 
  Juan Diego
• 
  Virgin of the Apocalypse
• 
  The Visitation
• 
  The Divine Shepherdess, around 1760
• 
  The Adoration of the Kings
• 
  Don Juan Xavier Joachín Gutiérrez Altamirano Velasco, Count of Santiago de Calimaya, ca. 1752. Oil on canvas Brooklyn Museum
• 
  Doña María de la Luz Padilla y Gómez de Cervantes, ca. 1760. Oil on canvas. Brooklyn Museum
• 
  Manuel José Rubio y Salinas, Chapter house - Cathedral of Mexico, oil on canvas, 1758
• 
  The Flight into Egypt
• 
  Santa Gertrudis, 1763, Dallas Museum of Art
• 
  St. Francis Xavier
• 
  Miguel Cabrera. St. Ignatius of Loyola
• 
  Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Mexican nun and savante, posthumous portrait, oil on canvas, 1750
• 
  The Annunciation
• 
  The Marriage of the Virgin
• 
  Our Lady of Sorrows
• 
  Virgen de Guadalupe

See also

• Casta painting
• Mexican art