Piece of the month October 2011
PORTRAIT OF A NUN BY ANTONIO GONZÁLEZ RUIZ OF THE MUSEUM OF NAVARRA
Mercedes Jover Hernando
Chair de Patrimonio y Arte Navarro
At conference room 3.4 of the Museum of Navarre, dedicated to Baroque painting, hangs a beautiful portrait of a nun, signed fecit Antonius Gonzalez Ruiz anno 1750. With this Latin phrase we know the author of the canvas, the prestigious Navarrese painter Antonio González Ruiz (Corella, 1711-Madrid, 1788), a disciple of the Frenchman Michel-Ange Houasse, who on his return from his travels to Paris, Rome and Naples, joined the Madrid workshop of the court portraitist Louis-Michel Van Loo. His mastery of the brush and his good standing in Madrid's artistic circles meant that for almost thirty years, until his death, he headed the painting section of the San Fernando Academy, of which he became president after the death of Ventura Rodríguez. From 1756 he was also chamber painter to King Ferdinand VI.
The Museum of Navarre acquired this portrait in 1994 on the Madrid market, knowing that it had been part of the Collection of the Duke of Valencia. The painting was included in the Inventario General de Bienes Muebles del Patrimonio Histórico Español (General Inventory of Movable Property of Spanish Historical Heritage) and became a BIC in 2005, as it belonged to the collection of the Museum of Navarre. Everything about this work is B: its quality, its provenance, its good state of conservation. Its importance has meant that it has been requested at loan to form part of several temporary exhibitions, which have taken it to the United States (exhibition La pintura de la época de la Ilustración. Goya and his contemporaries, which was shown in Indianapolis and New York, 1996-1997), Argentina(Kingdom of Navarre. Tesoros artísticos del siglo X al XVIII, Buenos Aires, 2000) and Madrid (exhibition Campomanes y su tiempo, 2003).
This oil on canvas (82 x 69.5 cm) is a beautiful portrait of a nun, painted from life, which shows sample a young woman dressed in the habit of the Dominican order: white habit and headdress and black veil. Her youth is attested to by the smoothness of her face, with rounded features and a gaze full of deep melancholy.
Portrait of a nun by Antonio González Ruiz from the Museum of Navarre. 1750
This superb portrait, austere and direct, is executed with a firm, impastoed brushstroke. It is magnificent in the whites, which are highlighted by the touches of carmine on the lips and the edges of the fine pages and the gilding of the clasps of the prayer book that the nun holds but does not pay attention to, as her gaze is directed towards the person looking at her. The half-length figure is of excellent corporeality and great compositional balance, with an austerity and a play of contrasting light that takes us back to the greats of Hispanic Baroque painting. It is worth highlighting the excellent rendering of the qualities, whether the flesh tones - note the refined elegance of the hands - or the thick cloth of the habit, the book or the long rosary - a jewel of glass beads. All this speaks not only of a great painter, but also of a noble lady.
But who is this woman? We are intrigued by the identity of this nun whose gaze is questioning us; what is her name, her origin, her age... The visit of an expert has enabled us to answer these questions, providing us with substantial information. It so happens that this iconographic rarity, the portrait of a young nun, topic rare in 18th-century Spanish and European painting, is not the only portrait of our character, and it is thanks to this that we know that it is of Dª Teresa Antonia Álvarez de Abreu y Bertodano.
The Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, exhibits Guillermo O. Jenkins' collection of paintings, which includes a large format painting portraying a nun full-length (oil on canvas, 207 x 144 cm). The nun holds a paper in her left hand which reads "To the V. Sr. D. Domingo Pantaleón Alvarez de Abreu, Insigne y Docto En gracia de Dios, Miembro del committee de su Majestad, Arzobispo y Obispo de la Puebla" (To the V. Mr. Domingo Pantaleón Alvarez de Abreu, Insigne y Docto En gracia de Dios, Member of his Majesty's , Archbishop and Bishop of Puebla). The person portrayed, according to the notice written on the back of the canvas is "Mi Sa. Theresa Antonia Álvarez de Abreu y Bertodano. Religious and Professed in the Convent of Santo Domingo el Rl. De esta Corte de Madrid", the information being expanded with "Etatis sue 19" written at the bottom of the obverse, which leads us to suppose that the lady entered or professed in the convent at that age.
Portrait of a nun standing (Web)
The image obtained on the Internet, although it is of leave resolution, allows us to identify our protagonist as the niece of this illustrious prelate of New Spain (who occupied the same see between 1743-1763 as the Navarrese Don Juan de Palafox between 1640-1653) and to recognise in her one of the daughters of the first Marquis de la Regalia, Don Antonio José Álvarez de Abreu, a prominent figure at the court of Philip V, brother of the bishop of Puebla de los Ángeles, and his wife Doña Teresa Cecilia de Bertodano Knepper. Our Teresa Antonia Álvarez de Abreu y Bertodano would have entered the Dominican convent in Madrid at the age of 19 (according to the information in the Mexican portrait) and was portrayed by Antonio González Ruiz in the canvas exhibited in the Museum of Navarre in 1750. This work was probably intended for her parents and would have remained in Madrid until it was acquired by the Museum of Navarre in 1994.
As for the other portrait in Mexico, painted for his uncle Domingo Pantaleón Álvarez de Abreu, its authorship is attributed to the Mexican painter from Chiautempan (Tlaxcala), Francisco Antonio González. It is to this portrait that we owe the answer to our curiosity and it has allowed us to put a name and surname to our beloved Portrait of a Nun by Antonio González Ruiz. But, as often happens, once an answer has been found, many other questions arise...
bibliography
- guide del Museo de Navarra, Pamplona, Government of Navarre, 199-, p. The painting was published by Arrese, J. L., Antonio González Ruiz, Madrid, 1973, p. 189, plate 20. Studied by Paredes Giraldo, C., Caylus. De la Edad average al Romanticismo (1993-1994), Madrid, 1994, pp. 156-159.
- Kingdom of Navarre. Tesoros Artísticos del siglo X al XVIII, Pamplona, Government of Navarre, 2000, p. 151.
- Mena, M., Catálogo de la exhibition Campomanes y su tiempo, Madrid, Fundación Santander-Central Hispano, 2003, pp.276-277.
- La pinacoteca Guillermo O. Jenkins, con acervo pictórico universitario", Tiempo Universitario. Gaceta Histórica de la BUAP, Year 3, no. 13, Puebla de Zaragoza, 31 August 2000. It also has a portrait of Bishop Domingo Pantaleón Álvarez de Abreu himself.
- Salazar, J. P., "Domingo Pantaleón Álvarez de Abreu 1743-1663", pp. 253-278.
- Melgar Jiménez, J., Historia de una ilustre familia. Los Álvarez de Abreu Marqueses de la Regalía. Isla de La Palma (1688)-Ávila (2007), Madrid, Cercedilla publishing house, 2007.