Matheo Pisarro: Dissimilar Iconographies for Effective Devotion

Abstract

Since the discovery of Matheo Pisarro’s signature, a painter active in the highlands of Jujuy at the end of the 17th century, former investigations have contributed to establish his instruction and the formal and material characteristics of his work. As the iconographic choices of Pisarro have not yet been analyzed, this article addresses the cases in which the same subject has been treated in different ways, such as in three paintings of Coronation of the Virgin by the Holy Trinity. After carrying out a survey of European prints and colonial paintings and an iconographic and comparative study that highlighted the links between the images, we were able to distinguish two typologies that differ in the way in which the Holy Trinity is represented and in the formal resolution of the Virgin’s cloak. It has been found that each one constitutes an iconographic variation effective at the time: one of the models is associated with a print made by Karel Von Mallery which represents a classical Trinity -as stipulated in the handbooks-, while the other is related to a group of Cuzco paintings that presents a sui generis iconography of an anthropomorphic Trinity and a triangular cloak of the Virgin.