Noble Woman with Her Black Slave (Señora principal con su negra esclava)

Spanish Colonial Art
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LACMA's New Vicente Albán Paintings from Ecuador

January 28, 2015

Back in 1996, when I organized my first exhibition of Spanish colonial art in New York City, I included a group of fascinating works portraying racial types from Ecuador. The paintings were part of a set of six canvases, four of which had just been acquired by a private collector. The whereabouts of the two missing canvases was at the time unknown. Inscribed with the numeral 1 in the lower center, it was clear that this set was the first of two...

Restoring LACMA’s New Vicente Albán Paintings from Ecuador

February 4, 2015

In May 2014 LACMA acquired two important paintings by Vicente Albán, an 18th-century master from Ecuador. Over the past few months the museum’s painting conservators and scientists have carefully examined the works, using various tools such as high magnification, X-radiography, and infrared reflectography...

Noble Woman with Her Black Slave (Señora principal con su negra esclava)

Ecuador, circa 1783
Paintings
Oil on canvas; from a set of 6
Unframed: 32 × 41 3/4 in. (81.3 × 106 cm); framed: 36 1/4 × 47 × 1 3/4 in. (92.08 × 119.38 × 4.45 cm)
Purchased with funds provided by the Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Art Deaccession Fund (M.2014.89.1)
Latin American Art
Not currently on public view

Provenance

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Addison Mizner, Palm Beach, Florida, c. 1920; William Gray Warden (Warden House), West Palm Beach, Florida, 1922; Benjamin and Gertrude Shapiro, Palm Beach, Florida, 1945; by inheritance to their granddaughter Sheryl Greenberg, 1969–70; Sotheby’s, New York, May 28–29, 2014, lot 60; LACMA, 2014.
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Label

This painting and its companion (see M.2014.89.2) present richly dressed figures next to giant tropical fruits to symbolize the abundance o

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This painting and its companion (see M.2014.89.2) present richly dressed figures next to giant tropical fruits to symbolize the abundance of the land. Such images participated in a long tradition in Europe of representing non-Western peoples, and the precise botanical renditions responded to taxonomic impulses fostered by the Enlightenment.

Here, the Spanish figure wears a luxurious regional ensemble, including a petticoat (pollera) decorated with gold and silver (now tarnished), pearls (associated with New World riches), and a crucifix and oval reliquary (to signal that she is Catholic and hence “civilized”). Her enslaved companion is more modestly bedecked and portrayed barefoot to emphasize their different social status.


From exhibition Archive of the World, 2022 (for more information see the catalogue entry by Ilona Katzew in the accompanying publication, cat. no. 44, pp. 205–10)
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Bibliography

  • 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.
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Exhibition history

  • Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800 Los Angeles, CA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, June 12, 2022 - October 30, 2022
  • Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800 Nashville, TN, Frist Art Museum, October 20, 2023 - January 28, 2024