Melchor Perez de Holguin
Melchor Pérez Holguín (possibly Cochabamba, Real Audiencia de Charcas, 1665-Potosí, 1735), considered one of the best artists in the history of Bolivia and Latin American Baroque painting.
Biography
The son of Diego Pérez Holguín and Esperanza Flores, Melchor Pérez Holguín was possibly born in the city of Cochabamba around 1655, although he spent most of his life in Villa Imperial de Potosí (Charcas, present-day Bolivia), where he developed his art and he married on March 25, 1695 with the local Micaela del Castillo.
It is unknown who his master may have been. His main production focused on the commissions made for Catholic religious orders, such as the Franciscan and the Dominican. He died around 1735.
His works
Among his paintings, the following stand out: The Last Judgment (1706), Triumph of the Church (1708, parish of San Lorenzo, Potosí), Entrance of the Viceroy Black pudding in Potosí (1716) San Mateo (1724), belonging to the series of evangelists of the Bolivian Mint; Virgin of Mercy, The Pilgrim Woman, Saint Francis of Assisi (1693, Mint Museum, Potosí) and Saint Pedro de Alcántara in ecstasy (1701, National Museum of Art).
His work is inscribed in a gullible and miraculous Potosí, where baroque art merged with the Spanish religious character.
Although all of Pérez Holguín's work was done in the Villa Imperial and in Chuquisaca, he was greatly influenced by Flemish engravings and by Zurbarán. In any case, his works were later taken from Potosí and Chuquisaca to other cities Bolivia, and also abroad.
The main repository of works by Pérez Holguín is currently the Casa Nacional de Moneda in Potosí, among which stand out the busts of Matthew the Evangelist and Saint Peter of Alcántara, the portraits of Saints Bernardo de Claraval, Juan de Dios and Luis Gonzaga, a Pentecost, the excellent Holy Family with Saint Louis (Louis IX of France) and the Nativity (dated 1701), a Saint Francis of Assisi (signed in 1694, which pairs with another Pedro de Alcántara), and the series of the four full-length evangelists, signed in 1724.
Many other works of his can be found in churches and museums in Potosí and Sucre, as well as in the Museo Nacional de Arte located in La Paz.
It is difficult to calculate the number of paintings by Pérez Holguín that left Bolivia, since they were exported clandestinely. Only what is exhibited in public museums is known, for example, a San Francisco de Paula in the Isaac Fernández Blanco Hispano-American Art Museum in Buenos Aires, a Flight to Egypt, identified by Cecilio Guzmán de Rojas in the National Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago de Chile; This institution also has another San Francisco de Paula (oil on canvas, 84x63cm); the O'Higginiano y de Bellas Artes de Talca (Chile) has a Saint Geronimo; and in the Museum of America in Madrid, the one mentioned in Entrada del virrey Morcillo.
Holguín died around 1735. Although it is not known how much Pérez Holguín produced, the large number of cadres existing in Bolivia after the secular looting suffered by Potosí and Sucre, gives us the pattern and allows us to conclude that he was quite prolific. He gained fame from the viceregal era, as evidenced by the fact that his name is the only one that appears in the inventory of the Jesuit art gallery of Potosí, built in 1769; that other documents from that time that tell us about his works are preserved until the present and that, finally, an informant from the end of the viceroyalty says that he was an "eminent painter", who was called Broch of Gold. The main work devoted to his life and his work was published by José de Mesa and Teresa Gisbert in 1977.
Gallery
Angel (National Museum of Art (Bolivia))
Detail of the Entry of the Virrey arzobispo Morcillo in Potosí (1718).
San Pedro de Alcántara. National Coin House, Potosi.
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