Retratos: Lively and Grandly Colorful

Latin America used to refer only to the former French and Portuguese colonies and the French and Spanish speaking populace of the Caribbean. Today, it is even greater in scope and includes Mexico, Central America, South America and the Caribbean and the entire range of cultures therein. Central to those are the Incan, Mayan, Aztec and other indigenous societies over which the Fifteenth Century Spanish and Portuguese conquerors exerted their considerable influence, but not complete domination.

Although the images were drawn from an array of influences, exuberance prevails. In the hands of Latin artists, the portraiture acquires that extra fillip and heightened detail that renders them eminently readable. Even the darker pictures overflow with vitality. Most are filled with exceptional detail and strong color. The show is lush.

Room after room of extravagantly gowned ladies and nuns look out with hauteur. Dashing gentlemen are drawn with the accoutrements of their power and position.

The earliest pieces on view are pre-Columbian. A selection of Moche painted ceramic vessels is characterized by highly detailed and individually expressive facial images that manage to convey the personality of the subject. Not that each is vastly different, however; such images of powerful personages were usually reproduced on a number of pots. Those vessels were meant to be used in daily life, and the ones that survived suffered some wear and tear, but their artistic and technological quality is remarkable.

A major portion of the show is given over to paintings of the viceregal period, the time after the European conquests between 1492 and 1820 when the Spanish crown was represented by viceroys. Portraiture of the period was dominated by narrative painting in which the messages of Christianity, particularly Catholicism, were loud and clear. The subjects were figures of power endowed with the virtues worthy of aspiration by any viewer. Since beauty was akin to goodness, artists rendered their subjects with exceptional beauty.

Subjects of paintings in the viceregal period included the ruling elite, noble natives, criollos, crowned nuns, matrimonial hopefuls, mestizos and the dead. Examples of each are on view.

Viceroys were the embodiment of the king in the new world; they and other prominent personages were frequently depicted as supporting figures in sacred scenes. They were painted adorned with various emblems of their office and position; many of the pictures of the period resembled European paintings of monarchs.

Piety, power and beauty were the hallmarks of donor paintings that illustrated the Christlike qualities attributed to benefactors of the Catholic church in the New World. The donor's face was often substituted for that of a saint in such pictures. The none-too-subtle message about the exemplary lives of men who supported the church was meant to encourage others to follow suit and assure their position and beneficence, to say nothing of an exalted place in the next world.

Matrimonial portraits in the viceregal period were frequently the only image a prospective bride or groom had of his or her intended before the actual event, a custom that must have effected a lot of surprise endings. One matrimonial portrait on view, "The Hernandezes Honoring their Devotion to the Archangel Saint Michael," shows a recently married couple kneeling flanking the image of Saint Michael supported by a team of angels subduing dragons.

A spectacular selection of nun's portraits is on view. Except for nuns, women were meant to be invisible in viceregal Latin America. Women who chose the monastic life had dedication and purity worth celebrating. Life-size crowned nun portraits appeared first in Mexico to commemorate a young woman's profession of religious vows. Such portraits showed young women dressed elaborately, wearing baroque crowns interwoven with flowers and adorned with sacred and symbolic objects of their new lives. In some cases a band of text, called a leyenda, at the bottom or side of the picture provided information about the woman and her family's position.

Nuns were frequently pictured wearing escudos de monjas (nun's shields), large badges painted with a scene of an event in the life of the Virgin Mary of particular interest to the wearer. Mexican artist Andres de Islas' portrait of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Hieronymite nun and famous Mexican poet, shows her with an escudo de monja so large as to impede her ability to turn her head.

Portraits of deceased children also appeared first in Mexico. Artists would paint the child's face and impose it on a body from the artists stock of bodies. Most bore leyendas providing biographical information about the child. Girls were dressed as the Virgin Mary and boys as St Joseph, as they were thought to be headed to paradise. Important political and social figures were also captured in death paintings. A particularly poignant portrait of a deceased child is that of "El Nino Jose Manuel de Cervantes y Velasco" by an unidentified artist. It shows a lavishly dressed child with jewels and palm fronds.

The 1599 painting "The Mulattoes of Esmeraldas" by Andres Sanchez Galque is thought to be the oldest signed painting made in South America. Certainly one of the most impressive on view, the picture attests to the position of mestizos in society. The subject is Don Francisco de Arobe and two companions, descendents of African slaves shipwrecked on the Esmeraldas coast who married natives, resulting in a cross-cultural ruling elite. The three men are exotically gowned and boldly jeweled, a fine blend of Spanish finery and spears.

When the French marched into Portugal in 1808, the royal family fled to Rio de Janeiro and established that city as the capital of Portugal. Under King Joao, the city became as European as any; an artistic mission was installed under French artists who were charged with teaching the very highest standard of art. Brazil became independent in 1822, but the French influence endured.

The Spanish countries had an even more difficult chapter. Juntas of nobles assumed power in Caracas, Santa Fe de Bogotá, Santiago de Chile and Buenos Aires. Bloody and terror-filled struggles for control ricocheted between monarchists and rebels for about a decade. Throughout the former Spanish empire in Latin America the centers of power shifted and new heroes emerged and they were honored (and improved) in portraiture. Classical academic traditions began to blend with the colonial and a noticeable decline in the presence of the ecclesiastical in portraits occurred. The power of the church had subsided and the new heroes were political. Portraits that would once have been dominated by Christian allusions now relegated religious images to the background, if they were included at all.

As the Latin American colonies broke from Spain and Portugal, grand political portraiture helped in the formation of new national identities. The new leaders were popular subjects. At the same time, provincial portraiture, similar to work of New England limners, appeared.

Simon Bolivar was called "El Liberator" for his victories over Spain and the liberation of Bolivia, Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela. His was a popular and revered image. Peruvian artist Jose Gil de Castro y Morales's rendering of Bolivar was painted after his death and shows him as an eternal hero. Castro, who made a number of paintings of Bolivar, was prominent among a group of important mostly mulatto Latin American artists of the Nineteenth Century. His confreres included Puerto Rican Jose Campeche, Cubans Nicolas de la Escalera and Vicente Escobar, Argentinean Fermin Gayoso and Venezuelan Juan Lovera.

Twentieth Century Latin American artists worked under an array of influences. Most prominent was an effort to reclaim their national heritage at the same time that Cubism, futurism and German Expressionism held sway. Yet Latin Artists were not merely influenced by the avant-garde, they were the leading edge. Contemporary Latin American portraits address contemporary issues. In Armando Reveron's "White Face," a visage is barely visible in his mostly white palette. When Rockwell Kent visited Brazil in 1937 to inspect the status of prisoners under the Vargas regime, he met Candido Portinari, whose compelling portrait of him is on view. Another striking portrait is "Mis Sobrinas (My Nieces)" by Mexican artist Maria Izquierdo, who was declared a national treasure in 2002, the 100th anniversary of her birth. Flat forms, bright color and interesting detail draw the eye again and again.

In "Carter, Anna, y Darryl (de El Jardin de las Delicias)," Hugh Manglano-Ovalle continues the Retratos tradition using C-prints of DNA analyses to document the genetic similarities and differences among family members.

The objects on view in "Retratos: 2,000 Years of Latin American Portraits" are drawn from 74 museums and private collections in Latin America, the United States and Europe, many of which have never been exhibited in the United States until now. It will travel to the San Diego Museum of Art, the Bass Museum of Art in Miami, the National Portrait Gallery and the San Antonio Museum of Art.

The El Museo del Barrio in New York was established in 1969 in the former Heckscher Foundation for Children, a landmark building erected in 1921 as an orphanage. The East Harlem building, which is home to some 8,000 objects, looks across Fifth Avenue to Central Park and is well worth a visit. Charming Arts and Crafts tiles decorate the foyer, and the Heckscher theater, built for entertainments for the children, is decorated with spectacular murals painted by Willy Pogany.

El Museo del Barrio is at 1230 Fifth Avenue. For information, 212-831-7272 or www.elmuseo.org.