Juan Gerson Explained

Juan Gerson (active c. 1562) was a high status indigenous Nahua painter, named after the French theologian Jean Gerson, working in Tecamachalco, Puebla.  Not until 1962 when a group of Mexican scholars found documentation to his high status indigenous heritage was Gerson identity revealed.  It was previously thought he was Flemish, trained in Italy,[1] working from entirely within the European tradition before coming to colonial Mexico.[2] [3] [4] [5]  Art historians Carolyn Dean and Dana Leibsohn consider Gerson's case of misrecognition as "reveal[ing] once again our refusal to recognize the indigene unless his or her work is visibly pre-Hispanic. Further, the revisions of scholarship that follow the discovery of these artists' genetic make-up involve a literal re-seeing of their work."[6] Mexican art historian Francisco Pérez Salazar considers his work "mediocre and defective."[7]

His paintings decorated chapels in sixteenth-century central Mexico. He is known to have painted the church of St Francisco de Tecamachalco. Manuel Toussaint attributes murals to him in Epazoyucan, based on style.[8] He painted scenes of the Old Testament and the Apocalypse in bright colors on amate paper, then applied to the walls, rather than painted on them directly.  Likely he used European printed woodcuts available in New Spain by this time as models.[9]  The 28 scenes in Tecamachaldo start with Cain and Abel, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, Abraham's sacrifice of his son Isaac, the Dream of Jacob, and Ezekiel's “visions of the Heavenly Jerusalem and the Altar of the Holocaust.”[10]  "Some scholars believe that he chose the Apocalypse as a subject because it resonated with pre-Hispanic traditions."[11]   It is speculated that Gerson was the illustrator for the Voynich Codex.[12]

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Further reading

Notes and References

  1. Toussaint, Manuel. Colonial Art in Mexico. Translated by Elizabeth Wilder Weisman. Austin: University of Texas Press 1967, p. 92. The editor corrected the assertion in a footnote with a citation.
  2. Dean, Carolyn and Dana Leibsohn. "Hybridity and Its Discontents: Considering Visual Culture in Colonial Spanish America." Colonial Latin American Review vol. 12, No. 1, 2003, pp. 22, 32.
  3. Carmelo Arredondo, Rosa et al. Juan Gerson: Tlacuilo de Tecamachalco. Mexico City: INAH 1964.
  4. Gruzinski, Serge. L’Aigle et la Sibylle: Fresques indiennes du Mexique. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale 1994.
  5. Reyes Valerio, Constantino. ‘”Las pinturas de Juan Gerson en Tecamachalco.” Boletín INAH. (Mexico City) 12 (June) 1963.
  6. Dean and Leibsohn, "Hybidity and its Discontents", pp. 22-23.
  7. Pérez Salazar, Francisco. Historia de la Pintura en Puebla. Mexico City: Imprenta Universitaria 1963, p. 50.
  8. Toussaint, Colonial Art in Mexico, p. 129.
  9. Donahue-Wallace, Kelly. Art and Architecture of Viceregal Latin America, 1521-1821. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press 2008, p. 40.
  10. Donahue-Wallace, Art and Architecture of Viceregal Latin America, p. 40.
  11. Bailey, Gauvin Alexander. Art of Colonial Latin America. London: Phaidon 2005, 45
  12. Janick, Jules. "The Author/Artist of the Voynich Codex." Unraveling the Voynich Codex. Springer, Cham, 2018. 307-316.

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