Pietà (Piedad)

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LACMA Acquires a Major Work by the Bolivian Painter Melchor Pérez Holguín

December 10, 2019

Forming our collection of Spanish colonial art has been one of my greatest passions and privileges. When I arrived at LACMA in 2000, there was no collection of viceregal art, save for a handful of textiles and a 16th-century Mexican chalice gifted to LACMA by William Randolph Hearst (who purchased it thinking that it was Spanish!). Over the last 15 years, we have acquired works from a range of regions and media…

Pietà (Piedad)

Melchor Pérez Holguín (Bolivia, circa 1660-circa 1732)

Bolivia, circa 1720

Paintings

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 60 1/4 × 48 7/8 in. (153 × 123 cm); framed: 70 5/8 × 58 1/4 × 3 7/8 in. (179.39 × 147.96 × 9.84 cm)

Purchased with funds provided by the Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Art Deaccession Fund (M.2019.15)

Latin American Art

Not currently on public view

Curator Notes

Provenance

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Private collection, Buenos Aires, early 20th century; Juan Carlos Colombano (1930–2015), for his private museum Chavín de Huántar, Buenos Aires, 1965; by inheritance to his son Alejandro Colombano, Buenos Aires, 2015; Cristian Seeber, Buenos Aires, 2016; Jaime Eguiguren Art & Antiques, Buenos Aires, 2016; LACMA, 2019.

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Label

Melchor Pérez Holguín was regarded as one of the most important painters in Potosí, Bolivia (part of the viceroyalty of Peru).

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Melchor Pérez Holguín was regarded as one of the most important painters in Potosí, Bolivia (part of the viceroyalty of Peru). In this deeply moving Pietà, Christ lies gently on the Virgin’s lap, surrounded by angelic figures lamenting his gruesome fate. Through the strategic use of complementary colors (green and red) and the profusion of gold applications (a technique known as brocateado that was fashionable in Cuzco painting), Holguín achieved a powerful devotional image designed to invoke piety and arouse the senses, all while appealing to local forms of taste and religiosity.

From exhibition Archive of the World, 2022 (for more information see the catalogue entry by Ilona Katzew in the accompanying publication, cat. no. 11, pp. 70–74)

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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.

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.
"Pathos in Potosí: Ilona Katzew on conserving a Bolivian masterpiece at LACMA" Apollo (March 2020): 87–88.
Ilona Katzew, “LACMA Acquires a Major Work by the Bolivian Painter Melchor Pérez Holguín,” Unframed, December 10, 2019, https://unframed.lacma.org/2019/12/10/lacma-acquires-major-work-bolivian-painter-mélchor-pérez-holguín.
Ilona Katzew, “Melchor Pérez Holguín’s Pietà: A Restoration in Context,” June 8, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htnR6yTLmwM.

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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