Andrés de Islas
Portrait of Don Francisco Leandro de Viana, Count of Tepa (Retrato de don Francisco Leandro de Viana, conde de Tepa)circa 1775-1780

On view:

Geffen Galleries, Transatlantic Exchange and Its Legacies

Oil painting portrait, man from the hips up in an ornate orange and brown brocade coat with lace cuffs, powdered gray wig, holding a sword and paper, with a coat of arms and Spanish inscription

Artist or Maker: Andrés de Islas
Mexico, circa 1735-circa 1783
Title: Portrait of Don Francisco Leandro de Viana, Count of Tepa (Retrato de don Francisco Leandro de Viana, conde de Tepa)
Date Made: circa 1775-1780
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: Unframed: 41 1/8 × 33 in. (104.5 × 83.8 cm); framed: 45 3/4 × 37 3/4 × 2 in. (116.21 × 95.89 × 5.08 cm)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by the Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Art Deaccession Fund
Accession Number: M.2018.186
Classification: Paintings
Collecting Area: Latin American Art
Curatorial Notes: Francisco Leandro de Viana, a Spanish royal bureaucrat, arrived in Mexico in 1758 as judge of the high court. Profoundly invested in projecting an image of social respectability, he commissioned this portrait to commemorate his new title as Count of Tepa (1775), later altering the inscription to record his appointment to the Council of the Indies (1776) and his membership to the Order of Charles III (1780).

A striking element is the attention lavished on the figure’s outfit: a fashionable French-style suit made of polychrome ciselé silk velvet with gold metallic threads (similar to this one: https://collections.lacma.org/node/214656 " >M.2007.211.947a-c). This luxury fabric demonstrated the sitter’s ascending status.

From exhibition Archive of the World, 2022 (for more information see the catalogue entry by Ilona Katzew in the accompanying publication, cat. no. 43, pp. 201–04)
Provenance: Francisco Leandro de Viana, first Count of Tepa (1730–1804), 1775, Mexico and Madrid; by descent to multiple family members, Madrid, 18th–20th centuries; private collection, Dax, France, 1968; Carteia Fine Arts, Madrid, 2018; LACMA, 2018.
Selected 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. “Trastoques y elipsis en un retrato de tornaviaje: La ductilidad de los mensajes.” In Tornaviaje: Tránsito artístico entre los virreinatos americanos y la metrópolis, edited by Fernando Quiles, Fernando, Pablo F. Amador Marrero, and Martha Fernández. Seville: Universo Barroco Iberoamericano, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, 2020, pp. 13–32.
Ilona Katzew, “Objects Talk: A Portrait of a Count with Lofty Ambitions,” Unframed, September 22, 2022, https://unframed.lacma.org/2022/09/22/objects-talk-portrait-count-lofty-ambitions.
Selected Exhibition History: Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800. June 12, 2022 - October 30, 2022
Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800. June 12, 2022 - October 30, 2022
Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800. October 20, 2023 - January 28, 2024
Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800. October 20, 2023 - January 28, 2024
Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800. June 22, 2024 - September 08, 2024
Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800. June 22, 2024 - September 08, 2024

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