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Diego de la (1586) Puente Sold at Auction Prices

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Apr. 10, 2025
ATTRIBUTED TO DIEGO DE LA PUENTE (MECHELEN, BELGIUM, 1586 - LIMA, PERU, 1663)
Est: €8,000 - €15,000
Attributed to Diego de la Puente (Mechelen, Belgium, 1586 - Lima, Peru, 1663) ‘Infant Jesus of Passion’ Oil on canvas. 41,5 x 32,5 cm. Diego de la Puente, born in Mechelen (Belgium) in 1586, is a European painter who developed his career in the Viceroyalty of Peru from 1620, after training in the workshop of Flemish masters in Europe, such as Joos van Cleve and Gossart. His arrival in Peru coincided with the expansion of European artistic influence in South America, where the Jesuits and other religious orders were looking for artists to decorate their churches and missions. The artist is a sublime example of the use of great mastery of Flemish art to introduce the evangelizing message to the Andean world. Diego de la Puente worked intensely for the Society of Jesus, producing a series of religious artworks that were distributed throughout various regions of the viceroyalty, including Lima, La Paz and Santiago de Chile. Likewise, explains historian and curator Teresa Villegas de Aneiva, he was “one of the key figures in the training of the local schools in Trujillo, Lima. Ayacucho, Cuzco, La Paz, Potosí and Chuquisaca, cities to which he was assigned by his superiors of the Jesuit Order during the period 1620-1662, the year he died in Lima.” This painting has stylistic and technical characteristics that we find in signed and documented works by Diego de la Puente. The most evident is the treatment of the faces. The Child is depicted with a delicate and serene face, with an elongated and soft structure, typical of the Flemish style that De la Puente brought to Latin America. It is similar to the face of the “Archangel St. Michael”, currently in the National Museum of Art of Bolivia. These paintings, in fact, share “a very personal style, characterized by a rapid brushstroke, rich palette and a choice of shades ranging from cold green to warm brown”, this is how Villegas de Aneiva describes the Archangel and we would use the same words to describe this Child. De la Puente uses light to highlight the central figure of the composition, creating a contrast with the darker background, which emphasizes the spiritual aspect of the scene. This technique is common in the Baroque, and De la Puente handles it with skill, adapting it to Christian iconography in the Peruvian context. As far as iconography is concerned, in this canvas we see the Christ Child carrying the instruments of the Passion, based on an engraving by the Flemish artist Hyeronimus Wierix (1563 - pre 1619). The Christ Child travels along a path full of thorns, holding the Cross and carrying a small basket with the instruments of the Passion. These engravings or prints became famous and possibly one of them fell into the artist's hands, inspiring this small devotional painting. It reflects an apocryphal, unreal and timeless situation of the iconography of the Passion Child, immersed in the crude and terrible reality of a joyless childhood, but theologically founded according to Thomas Aquinas, “the first thought be for the Cross”: a “Pensative Child” whose dream is the Cross. That Child becomes tangibly humanized “descending and walking” at our side, he offers himself to the viewer carrying his inexorable and distant end, he offers himself to a society that, since the Middle Ages and the Baroque, lived preparing for death. The art of that time engendered an attraction for the macabre and morbid that resulted in small and genuine artistic creations, like this one, the image of the Child, presenting his fatal destiny, and that is a fair comparison with the feeling of impotence and frustration of the baroque people before the uncertainty of every day. A small painting that devoutly encloses the thought of the 17th and 18th centuries of anguish, disillusionment, fear and the need for hope that flooded the mood and consciousness of a society with a fetishistic religiosity close to magic. The cross he carries on his right shoulder reads in Latin and gold: “OPUS EIVS, CORĀ ILLO” (“His work, it is / resides in that heart”). Reference bibliography: - Gisbert, Teresa. (1980). “Iconografía y mitos indígenas en el arte”. Editorial Gisbert y Cía. - Mesa, José de y Gisbert, Teresa. (1982). “Historia de la Pintura Cuzqueña”. Fundación Augusto N. Wiese. - Schmidt, Klaus. “Pintura Colonial en Bolivia”. (1978). Editorial Amigos del Libro. - Tauro del Pino, Alberto. (2001). “Enciclopedia Ilustrada del Perú”. PEISA. - Villegas de Aneiva, Teresa. (s.f.). “El retorno de los ángeles”. https://www.bolivian.com/angeles/asmiguel.html. Colonial painting. Latin american art.
La Suite Subastas
Nov. 25, 2021
ATTRIBUTED TO DIEGO DE LA PUENTE (MECHELEN, BELGIUM, 1586 - LIMA, PERU, 1663)
Est: €8,000 - €9,000
Attributed to Diego de la Puente (Mechelen, Belgium, 1586 - Lima, Peru, 1663) "Martyrdom of Saint Raymond Nonnatus" Oil on canvas. Relined. 166,5 x 115,5 cm.
La Suite Subastas

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