Viceroyalty school, last quarter of the XVIII century.

Viceregal school, last quarter of the eighteenth century.
"Portrait of a clergyman".
Oil on panel.
In good state of preservation.
Measurements: 53 x 40 cm, 63 x 52 cm (frame).

The work is inscribed within the scope of the American viceregal portrait of the XVIII century, in which European models spread through prints and paintings are combined with a more direct execution and a local sensibility. This type of portrait, intended for convent, institutional or domestic settings, fulfilled a representative and memorial function, affirming the status and authority of the sitter within New World society.

Due to its iconographic, formal and technical characteristics, the painting can be coherently ascribed to the viceregal school of the last quarter of the 18th century, possibly executed by an anonymous painter from New Spain (present-day Mexico), Puerto Rico or Cuba.

The present work represents an ecclesiastic portrayed half-length, arranged in an interior carefully constructed by means of symbolic and scenographic elements that reinforce his moral and intellectual condition. The personage appears dressed in dark clerical clothing, seated next to a table covered with green cloth, on which rests a handwritten document that he holds in his left hand, while in his right hand he carries a handkerchief, a common gesture in colonial portraiture of the period.

The composition is articulated by means of a dark curtain that frames the figure and gives depth to the scene, as well as by the inclusion of a window in the background that reveals an institutional or convent architecture, a frequent resource in Spanish-American portraiture to place the model in a specific social and professional context. To the left is a clock, an element with a strong symbolic charge, alluding to the passing of time, reflection and the fleetingness of life, very present in the moralizing iconography of the 18th century.

From the formal point of view, the portrait is characterized by a sober and contained language, with a precise drawing and a treatment of the face of marked descriptive character, oriented to physiognomic fidelity rather than idealization. The chromatic palette is reduced, dominated by dark and earthy tones, enlivened by the accents of the drapery and the table cloth, following compositional schemes inherited from the peninsular baroque tradition, adapted to the context of American society.