Antonio de Torres
Sacred Conversation with the Immaculate Conception and the Divine Shepherd (Sacra Conversación con la Inmaculada Concepción y el Divino Pastor)1719

On view:

Geffen Galleries

Oil painting with four haloed religious figures: a woman floating on a lily, a bearded shepherd on a stone bridge with sheep, and two white-robed figures in a landscape, signed and dated 1719

Oil painting of a standing female figure in white robes and flowing blue mantle, hands clasped in prayer, encircled by a golden halo and ring of eight stars, standing atop a white lily bloom above a landscape with a rising sun and river.

Oil painting of a full-length standing male figure in brown robes and a blue mantle, barefoot, holding a tall staff in one hand and a rosary in the other, with a radiant halo and a landscape background.

Oil painting of two figures in white religious habits against a landscape with trees and cloudy sky. A haloed male figure at right holds a red heart and a cross; a female figure at left wears a medallion at her chest, with a small white lamb at her feet.

Detail of an oil painting showing four white sheep near a stream, one rearing upward and three drinking or grazing at the water's edge, with a staff and robed figure partially visible above; Latin script signature and date 1719 in lower right.

Artist or Maker: Antonio de Torres
Mexico, 1667-1731
Title: Sacred Conversation with the Immaculate Conception and the Divine Shepherd (Sacra Conversación con la Inmaculada Concepción y el Divino Pastor)
Date Made: 1719
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: Unframed: 22 13/16 × 33 1/16 in. (57.9 × 84 cm); framed: 27 7/16 × 37 3/8 × 1 in. (69.69 × 94.93 × 2.54 cm)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by the Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Art Deaccession Fund
Accession Number: M.2020.7
Classification: Paintings
Collecting Area: Latin American Art
Curatorial Notes: This imaginative painting depicts a Conceptionist nun’s rapturous vision. Wearing a prominent badge on her chest, she belongs to an order that believed Mary, the mother of Jesus, was conceived without sin (the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception). At the right, she engages in a sacred conversation with Saint John of the Cross, a sixteenth-century Spanish mystic, as she hands him her kindled heart. To the left, a female figure representing the Immaculate Conception emerges from a giant lily (signifying purity). Christ is portrayed as the Good Shepherd in the center. The bridge symbolizes the mystical passage, implying that the nun’s ecstasy and communion with the saint were aided by Mary and her son.

Antonio de Torres seems to have been a favored painter to translate the visions of the cloistered nuns. The relatively small scale of this canvas suggests that the nuns commissioned it as a reminder of their divine journey and of the saints they admired—not unlike some of the painted nuns’ badges that highlighted saints with particular significance for their wearers (see M.2018.177.1). Given the elevated cost of wood frames, Torres took the extra step of painting a faux gilded one (described in probate inventories as a moldura fingida or marco de oro fingido), for which he used gold leaf—a material index that provides evidence of the great value that artists and their patrons assigned to frames.

Ilona Katzew

2024
Provenance: Possibly the Pazo A Freiría, Puebla de Trives, Galicia, Spain; family of José Antonio Quiroga y Piñeyro (1931–2020), Galicia, by the 19th century; antiquarian David Sanesteban Maceira, La Coruña, Spain, 2019; Palau Antiguitats (Albert Martí Palau), Barcelona, 2019; Caylus Anticuario SA, Madrid, 2019; LACMA, 2020.
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.
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. October 20, 2023 - January 28, 2024
Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800. June 22, 2024 - September 08, 2024

Related Exhibitions

Antonio de Torres
Sacred Conversation with the Immaculate Conception and the Divine Shepherd (Sacra Conversación con la Inmaculada Concepción y el Divino Pastor)1719

On view:

Geffen Galleries

Artist or Maker: Antonio de Torres
Mexico, 1667-1731
Title: Sacred Conversation with the Immaculate Conception and the Divine Shepherd (Sacra Conversación con la Inmaculada Concepción y el Divino Pastor)
Date Made: 1719
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: Unframed: 22 13/16 × 33 1/16 in. (57.9 × 84 cm); framed: 27 7/16 × 37 3/8 × 1 in. (69.69 × 94.93 × 2.54 cm)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by the Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Art Deaccession Fund
Accession Number: M.2020.7
Classification: Paintings
Collecting Area: Latin American Art
Curatorial Notes: This imaginative painting depicts a Conceptionist nun’s rapturous vision. Wearing a prominent badge on her chest, she belongs to an order that believed Mary, the mother of Jesus, was conceived without sin (the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception). At the right, she engages in a sacred conversation with Saint John of the Cross, a sixteenth-century Spanish mystic, as she hands him her kindled heart. To the left, a female figure representing the Immaculate Conception emerges from a giant lily (signifying purity). Christ is portrayed as the Good Shepherd in the center. The bridge symbolizes the mystical passage, implying that the nun’s ecstasy and communion with the saint were aided by Mary and her son.

Antonio de Torres seems to have been a favored painter to translate the visions of the cloistered nuns. The relatively small scale of this canvas suggests that the nuns commissioned it as a reminder of their divine journey and of the saints they admired—not unlike some of the painted nuns’ badges that highlighted saints with particular significance for their wearers (see M.2018.177.1). Given the elevated cost of wood frames, Torres took the extra step of painting a faux gilded one (described in probate inventories as a moldura fingida or marco de oro fingido), for which he used gold leaf—a material index that provides evidence of the great value that artists and their patrons assigned to frames.

Ilona Katzew

2024
Provenance: Possibly the Pazo A Freiría, Puebla de Trives, Galicia, Spain; family of José Antonio Quiroga y Piñeyro (1931–2020), Galicia, by the 19th century; antiquarian David Sanesteban Maceira, La Coruña, Spain, 2019; Palau Antiguitats (Albert Martí Palau), Barcelona, 2019; Caylus Anticuario SA, Madrid, 2019; LACMA, 2020.
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.
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. October 20, 2023 - January 28, 2024
Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800. June 22, 2024 - September 08, 2024