Bishop’s Feather-Work Miter
The infulae are not here represented. The work of art was included in the exhibition Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Nov., 2011 - Jan., 2012. The exhibition traveled to the Museo Nacional de Historia in Mexico City, July - Oct., 2012. The accompanying label text in Los Angeles follows:
"This magnificent miter represents the Crucifixion with the Virgin Mary and Saint John under the cross. Additional scenes include the Mass of Saint Gregory, Christ in Glory, and the Four Evangelists. The infulae (the two pieces that hang from the miter’s back), feather Christ in Majesty and the Flight into Egypt. Feather works were among the first objects from the New World commissioned and valued by the Spaniards as symbolic of Catholic triumphalism: a similar miter was gifted to Pope Paul IV (1559-66)."
The practice of the gifting feather-works, rare as they are, from Spanish Mexico to the Papacy began with the 1539 feather mosaic on wood depicting The Mass of St. Gregory, also included un Contested Visions as well as previously in the exhibition Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (Oct., 1990 - Jan., 1991, illustrated in the catalog, p. 258). That work is considered the first documented Spanish Colonial artwork to have been executed and was gifted from fray Pedro de Gante's art school at San José de los Naturales to Pope Paul III in recognition of the pontiff's 1537 bull Sublimis Deus.
"This magnificent miter represents the Crucifixion with the Virgin Mary and Saint John under the cross. Additional scenes include the Mass of Saint Gregory, Christ in Glory, and the Four Evangelists. The infulae (the two pieces that hang from the miter’s back), feather Christ in Majesty and the Flight into Egypt. Feather works were among the first objects from the New World commissioned and valued by the Spaniards as symbolic of Catholic triumphalism: a similar miter was gifted to Pope Paul IV (1559-66)."
The practice of the gifting feather-works, rare as they are, from Spanish Mexico to the Papacy began with the 1539 feather mosaic on wood depicting The Mass of St. Gregory, also included un Contested Visions as well as previously in the exhibition Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (Oct., 1990 - Jan., 1991, illustrated in the catalog, p. 258). That work is considered the first documented Spanish Colonial artwork to have been executed and was gifted from fray Pedro de Gante's art school at San José de los Naturales to Pope Paul III in recognition of the pontiff's 1537 bull Sublimis Deus.
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