Fray Miguel de la Herrera

FRAY MIGUEL DE LA HERRERA (La Laguna, Tenerife, 1696 - Mexico, doc. 1765).
"San Agustín".
Oil on canvas.
Signed.
Measurements: 41.5 x 29 cm; 51.5 x 39 cm (frame).

In this canvas Fray Miguel de la Herrera gives us the true image of St. Augustine of Hippo (Tagaste, 254, Hippo Reggius, 430), doctor of the Catholic Church known, among other facts, for his writings and for a legend: it is said that the saint was walking along the seashore, thinking about the Trinity; he met a beautiful child, playing. When the saint asks the little boy, he answers that he was taking the water out of the sea to put it into the hole, something to which Augustine replies that it is impossible. The Child answers that it is more difficult for him to understand the Mystery of the Holy Trinity, revealing himself with this phrase as Jesus.

A painter born in Tenerife in 1696, Fray Miguel de Herrera developed most of his career in Mexico. He took the Augustinian habit in 1712 in the Monastery of the Holy Spirit of Tenerife, and it was probably there where he developed his artistic formation, in the company of other artists of the monastery like Fray Miguel Lorenzo. Nevertheless, he will be an eminently viceregal painter in his artistic language. In 1719 he arrived in New Spain, where he became a member of the Province of the Most Holy Name of Jesus, of the Order of St. Augustine. In his works, some of which were signed and dated, he made it clear that he was an Augustinian friar. Herrera spent the rest of his life in Mexico, although he may have maintained contact with the Canary Islands through his order and his family. Herrera belonged to the Academy of Painting of Mexico since 1753, the year of the founding of that institution. His activity is documented until 1765, and his production is mainly composed of religious works, although we can also find portraits such as the one of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Works by his hand are currently preserved in the Hermitage of San Amaro in Puerto de la Cruz, the church of La Concepción in Santa Cruz de Tenerife and at the headquarters of the Consejo Consultivo de Canarias and, outside the islands, in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Colonial Art in Morelia (Mexico), the Figge in Chicago, the collections of the National Bank of Mexico and Andrés Blastein, the Soumaya Museum in Mexico City and in various Mexican religious centers, among them the church of Santa Catarina, in the State of Mexico, for which Herrera made a main altarpiece composed of six paintings.