Along with Cristóbal de Villalpando (c. 1649–1714), Juan Correa is considered the leading painter of the late seventeenth century in Mexico. The son of a famous Spanish surgeon and a freed black woman, Correa was one of the few mixed race painters who achieved fame in his own day. (The art of painting was generally considered the purview of white or Spanish masters.) His two mural-sized canvases for the sacristy of the cathedral of Mexico City (1691–98), for example, are regarded as masterpieces of the Mexican baroque.

This painting depicts an angel standing in a golden cloud and carrying a cypress, a symbol associated with the purity of the Virgin Mary; it probably formed part of a lost altarpiece devoted to the Immaculate Conception. Stylistically, the picture is characteristic of Correa’s work from the period between 1670 and 1690 in terms of its vibrant palette, elegant composition and overall emphasis on decorative details (e.g., the diaphanous veils and cabochons of the angel’s attire). The figures’ proportions, with prominent muscular white arms, are also typical of Correa’s works of this period, as are the finely detailed hands, with elongated fingers. Another element that is characteristic of Correa’s style is the impressionistic detailing of the cypress’s foliage, painted by pressing the tip of the brush against the canvas and then quickly dragging it down. Correa was a master at creating subtle color gradations and providing a sense of iridescence, contributing to the overall mystical effect of the composition, seen here in the wings and the fabric of the angel’s boots.

Ilona Katzew, 2013

Juan Correa was a leading painter in late seventeenth-century Mexico. The son of a Spanish surgeon and a freed Black woman, he was also one of the few mixed-race artists who self-described as a mulatto (a colonial caste designation) and attained fame in his own day.

This painting depicts an angel in a golden cloud carrying a cypress, a symbol associated with the purity of the Virgin. (It probably formed part of an altarpiece devoted to the Immaculate Conception.) The emphasis on mutable materials—the celestial light and the angels’ shot-fabric garment, opalescent boots, and iridescent wings—calls attention to the unreliability of sight to apprehend deeper spiritual realities.

From exhibition Archive of the World, 2022 (for more information see the catalogue entry by Ilona Katzew in the accompanying publication, cat. no. 4, pp. 42–44)

• Katzew, Ilona, ed. Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800: Highlights from LACMA’s Collection. Exh. Cat. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; New York: DelMonico Books/D.A.P., 2022.

• Ilona Katzew, “Now on View: A New Work by the Great Juan Correa,” Unframed, November 5, 2013, https://unframed.lacma.org/2013/11/05/now-on-view-a-new-work-by-the-great-juan-correa.