Notes on Father Nathanael's
Our Lady of Guadalupe Painting

The abbot's commission was given last summer and had two elements: to have a trapezoid canvas that relates to the church architecture, and to use the image of our Lady of Guadalupe as the starting point of the painting.

The miraculous image is from 1531 and, the more I studied it, the more it became apparent that our Lady chose to depict herself in the pictorial style of the age. That makes sense: this was the way people expected to see a portrait, just as we expect to see a photograph. This was the style of the Italian Renaissance--Mary's face reminds me of some of Botticelli's paintings in particular. However, being an iconographer by training, my painting turned out to be more like an icon than a Botticelli!

During the persecutions of the 1920's-30's in Mexico, the image was hidden for 5 years to protect it from destruction. Unfortunately, during this time somebody decided to "touch up" the face and painted over it! That paint is already starting to fall off, while the original image remains untouched beneath it. This overpainting makes Mary appear older and disfigures her hair, which appears like a flat black shape. Happily, there are some good painted copies and two good photographs from before the re-painting. I used the 1923 black and white photo as my main reference. In that photo she is clearly a beautiful young woman and her hair is lustrous. But since we are used to seeing the touched-up image, I also kept parts of that in painting her face…For the pose of Jesus, I began with the pose of the icon of our Lady of the Sign in which Christ is shown half-length within a mandorla, and has both hands stretched out in blessing…I liked the idea that the Child Christ is alluding to the Resurrection with his outstretched arms and frontal pose.

The frontal pose is also important from a Mesoamerican viewpoint. In the Guadalupe image, Mary's head is bowed and in three-quarter view. This is interpreted from a Mesoamerican perspective to mean that she is indicating that she is not divine. (It has always seemed to me that she is also bowing. This is the only way I can account for the shape of her shoulders.) In that culture, a divine being would be shown full face and standing straight. So, Jesus' frontal pose would indicate his divinity to the indigenous culture.

The Color of the Robes: In European culture, royal colors are usually combinations of red and blue. The Red comes porphyry, a stone used in Byzantium to indicate royalty and the blue from the ultramarine blue pigment, which was more expensive than gold. So, they are the two most precious colors. In the Mesoamerican culture, the precious colors were jade and turquoise. The jade stone was associated with both royalty and divinity. Central American jade comes in various colors, but green and turquoise colors are the most precious.

One of the authors I read says that it is impossible to take an accurate color photo of the original image because the color of her robe is iridescent--the colors shift between blues and greens depending on the angle of view, much like a peacock's feather. This is yet another indication of the miraculous nature of the image since that effect cannot be copied in paint. So, I decided to go with turquoise for both figures adding more of the blue to Mary's cloak and more of the green to Jesus's robe.

Mary is quite richly dressed in the original image: she wears a royal cloak with golden stars, an inner dress that can be seen at her wrists with golden lace at the cuffs, and over that a rich dress with fur at the collar and cuffs and golden embroidery. It has always been noticed, however, that this embroidery does not follow the folds of the dress. One interpretation of this is that she is actually wearing a gauze overdress that is embroidered with the golden decorations. The gauze itself would be invisible and the gold work would make it quite stiff and appear to be floating over the dress. I mention this because I decided to use the gold decoration to emphasize the Christological aspect of the image. In Aztec culture a divine symbol is a cross shaped flower within a square (sort of like a four-leaf clover). On the original image, there is only one of these on the golden embroidery. It is located just at Mary's womb, indicating her pregnancy with the Divine Son. I have adapted that by surrounding the Child with these flowers and putting it on the medallion he wears on his collar. Mary's medallion is on the original image and has the Cross on it. Christ's medallion has this Divine symbol. Since there are no halos, I placed three large Cross-flowers around Christ's head where the cross would be on an icon, and then surrounded his body with smaller ones. I thought of it as a blossoming garden of Divine Flowers! (They are hard to see so this is somewhat an "insider's baseball" detail, but it was fun to do!)

In the original, the figure is surrounded by a nimbus of clouds and sky, so the border is sky blue as a sort of abstraction of the clouds. The golden rays are those of the sun, alluding to the Aztec sun god, which she eclipses, but also to the Woman of the Apocalypse.

The Side Panels

The calligraphy in the side trapezoid sections of the ensemble is in the Nahuatel language and is from the account of the appearance of our Lady to Juan Diego. In this section she speaks of her relationship to him in his native language. The first line is famous in Mexico. The bottom circle of each panel has the Cross-in-a-Square that represents God. I thought it might lead one to think of the quotation as coming both from our Lady and from her Son

I only used parts for the Spanish/English calligraphy because of space limitations. It simply looked too overcrowded when I tried to use it all. And I wanted something large enough to be easily legible from the nave. For me the phrase "The Source of Your Joy" stood out, and seems appropriate for Christmas, so I decided to use that as the focal point of the calligraphy. The texts are the same in English and Spanish.

Nahuatel language actually spoken by Our Lady

¿Cuix amo nican nica Nimonatzin?
¿Cuiz amo nocehualltotitlan, necauhyotitlan in tica
¿Cuix amo nehuatl in nimopaccayeliz?
¿Cuiz amo nocuixanco, nomamalhuazco in tica?
¿Cuix oc itla in motech monequi?

English translation

Am I not here, who am your mother?
Are you not under my shadow and protection?
Am I not the source of your joy?
Are you not in hollow of my mantle, the crossing of my arms?
Do you need something more?

Spanish Translation

¿No estoy aquí, que soy tu madre?
¿No estás bajo mi sombra y resguardo?
¿No soy, yo la fuente de tu alegría?
¿No estás en el hueco de mi manto, en el cruce de mis brazos?
¿Tienes necesidad de alguna otra cosa?

or, in a more elegant, nuanced, Spanish translation:

¿Acaso no estoy yo aquí, yo que tengo el honor de ser tu madre?
¿Acaso no estás bajo mi sombra, bajo mi amparo
¿Acaso no soy yo la fuente de tu alegría?
¿Qué no estás en mi regazo, en el cruce de mis brazos
¿Por ventura aun tienes necesidad de cosa otra alguna?”

Dec, 2020