Mission San Juan Capistrano - Dating the Artifacts #3

 


Note: I've been working on a number of projects that will be coming out in the coming months. I'll be posting on this blog more frequently with updates.


Mission San Juan Capistrano - Dating the Artifacts #3

Jennifer Ring, the archivist at Mission San Juan Capistrano, contacted me about whether or not I could find any information relating to a painting in the mission’s collection. The painting's subject is Our Lady of Sorrows and Jennifer reported that it “measures 25 inches high and just a hair passed 16.5 inches wide.” The painting is currently being restored and will hopefully be displayed in the not-too-distant future.

It’s truly special that the mission has an archivist looking after the mission’s precious artifacts. I’ve heard many stories about mission valuables that were thrown away, or given away, stolen, or simply disappeared (examples include Mission San Diego’s stolen bells and Mission San Luis Rey’s missing baptismal, marital, and burial registers). It is a huge credit to the mission’s executive director, Mechelle Lawrence Adams, Jennifer, and the mission’s wonderful staff for ensuring that one of the most important historical monuments in California and its collection are preserved for future generations.

 I did some research on the painting and was able to write the short report shown below. While it can’t be proven, it’s possible that this is one of the earliest paintings to arrive to California and the second oldest at the mission (you can read about the oldest on this blog - Mission San Juan Capistrano - Dating the Artifacts #1).


Report of Mission San Juan Capistrano’s Painting of Our Lady of Sorrows

1. The subject is Our Lady of Sorrows, in this case focusing particularly on the sorrow of Jesus' crucifixion. Many examples of this subject show seven swords or daggers piercing Mary’s heart, corresponding with the seven sorrows Mary experienced during Jesus’ life and death. This particular example shows just one of these sorrows experienced by Mary at the foot of the cross during Jesus’ crucifixion. The missionaries may have considered an example like this to be particularly helpful as a catechetical device when teaching the tenets of Catholic theology to the Indigenous peoples of the Spanish frontier. This image may have hung in the mission’s church and gazed upon by thousands of Acjachemen people living at the mission.


2. The bottom left refers to "Santiago, Cholula," which may refer to a specific church in Cholula, Puebla, Mexico, where the image may have been created. The bottom right is in Latin and translates to "oil and fabric and I was made on February [8?], 176[1 or 9?].


3. There is one example of Our Lady of Sorrows in the account books provided to me by Dr. Marie Duggan (click here for more information on the account books), dating to 1777:



The above translates to "3 canvases of 2 vs(?) in size of Our Padre San Francisco, Our Lady of Sorrows, and St. Anthony of Padua, all of half a caña [about 25-33 inches in height], each 13 pesos."

Here's the exciting thing - A caña in the 1770s was six square codos and one codo is half a vara (1 vara ≈ 33 in.). I assume the height for such paintings would be longer than their widths, perhaps suggesting a ratio of three codos in height compared to two codos in width for a total area of six codos square. Given this assumption, half of a caña suggests a height of 1.5 codos (≈25 inches) and a width of one codo (≈16.5 inches). These are the EXACT measurements of this painting!


Conclusion: The painting corresponds with one of the same subject and size that arrived at the mission in 1778. It is dated to the 1760s, prior to the date a painting of the same subject was sent to Mission San Juan Capistrano. The dimensional correspondence is, in my opinion, unlikely to be a coincidence. If this painting is one and the same as the one that arrived in 1778, it has an incredible history at the mission!!


It might be the second oldest painting on record to have arrived at the mission and among the oldest to have arrived in California! There are very few known paintings from the mission era with this level of historical provenance.


I know I need to be cautious about these kinds of attributions, but this one seems to be especially plausible given the subject, date, and dimensional correspondence to the account book.



The back of the painting shows a simple wooden frame that may be original to the painting. It's amazing to consider that this very painting may have arrived to the mission in the late 1770s. Its journey from Mexico over land and sea to the quaint hills of San Juan Canyon and its mission are apparent in its rugged appearance.


Please see the following links for more on the San Juan Capistrano Visitor Series:

Part 5: The Otter Trade and the First U.S. Citizens in Orange County
Part 6: The Great Stone Church (A future post)
Part 9: Secularization and End of the Mission Era in Capistrano (A future post)
Part 10: Richard Henry Dana at Dana Point

Please see the following links for Mission San Juan Capistrano - Dating the Artifacts Series: