Our Lady of Perfection
Pedro Fresquis
PEDRO FRESQUIS, c.1815. WATER BASED PAINT ON WOOD PANEL.
In Hispanic New Mexico in the early 1800s, works for personal worship offered protection against the ills and ailments of the day. Small paintings such as this, done of wood and metal panels, adorned family homes as religion became increasingly individualised and the santeros who created them drew from diverse sources of inspiration, incorporating contemporary styles alongside Byzantine, Greek, Roman and Renaissance compositions. Neither folk art in the modern sense, for these artists were established in their unique fields, yet totally removed from the ornate, detailed, and realistic contemporary artistic visions, the interpretation of biblical stories through the multifaceted lens created an unintentional but distinctly modern feeling to the works. There is brevity to the brush strokes and a natural ease to the depiction, Mary’s features drawn from a single, calligraphic line, that flew in the face of academic aesthetic thought. Fresquis’ work seems almost eternal, outside of time or geography and only placeable in its reverence to divinity.