Novo-Hispanic school; XVIII century.

Novo-Hispanic school; XVIII century.
"St. Michael the Archangel.
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Presents restorations.
It has a period frame.
Measurements: 54,5 x 40 cm; 51,5 x 42 cm (frame).
In this painting of fully baroque language imposes the majestic figure of the archangel San Miguel, deploying wide wings that emphasize its celestial nature. The composition accentuates his double condition of angelic prince and divine warrior: his firm bearing, his concentrated gesture.
In the celestial hierarchy, the archangels occupy the highest rank of the third angelic order and are the only angels with their own name. In the West, the Lateran Council of 746 officially restricted the cult to three archangels: Michael, Gabriel and Raphael. However, the discovery in 1516 of a fresco in the church of St. Angel of the Carmelites in Palermo, where the Trinity appeared accompanied by seven archangels, transformed this limitation. The image, widely disseminated through engravings that replicated it with variations, contributed decisively to the expansion of iconography and devotion to the seven heavenly princes.
The work should be placed in the context of Spanish-American colonial painting, where an essentially religious art was predominant, aimed at the evangelization of the indigenous peoples. The local workshops adopted Spanish compositions as models, faithfully replicating types, gestures and iconographies. Among the most widespread motifs were the harquebusier angels, a singular synthesis between the military and the celestial, and the virgins of triangular composition, with a strong symbolic charge. However, in the first decades of the 19th century, in parallel to the processes of independence and political opening, some artists began to distance themselves from the strict peninsular dependence and to formulate a pictorial language with its own characteristics, in which the inherited tradition dialogued with new sensibilities and emerging identities.