Antonio José Landaeta, Immaculate Conception, about 1795. Oil paint on canvas; 29¾ × 18¾ in. Denver Art Museum: Gift of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, 2019.71.

This depiction of the Immaculate Conception is one of only a few surviving paintings from 1700s Venezuela to bear an artist’s signature. That this work should be signed reflects not only the painter’s reputation among his contemporaries but also the enhanced economic and social status of artists in late colonial Caracas. As was the case throughout Spanish America, artists in Caracas were considered craftsmen, and usually belonged to the lower classes of society. Their activities were regulated by guilds, and their trade was often a family affair, passed down through training from one generation to the next. By the late 1700s, several families controlled much of the production of works of art in the city and enjoyed a considerable degree of economic success. As artists and skilled laborers accrued prestige and prosperity, pressures mounted for greater access to social and political privileges reserved for the elites—a circumstance that would play a determinant role in the dynamics that led to the independence movements.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, more than twenty families in the city shared the surname Landaeta—many of them artisans and related to each other. Along with his brother Juan José, Antonio José Landaeta is one of the better-known members of this extended family network of mixed-race artists, which included not just painters but also gilders, silversmiths, and musicians. The composition of this painting is based on the model developed by Mateo Cerezo (1637–1666), whose popular paintings of this Marian theme were copied widely copied across the Spanish empire. As in Cerezo’s paintings, Landaeta represents the Virgin with hands crossed over her bosom, standing on a celestial globe and adored by a multitude of cherubs. Two of the cherubs grasp the Virgin’s tunic and mantle and hold several attributes—a palm branch, a lily, a bunch of roses, and a mirror—that allude to her pure conception, untainted by Original Sin, represented at the bottom of the composition by the apple bearing serpent coiled around the sphere. The generous use of pink tones in this painting is considered a trademark of the so-called School of the Landaeta, as is the Virgin’s aureole of translucent, concentric circles with twelve stars.

— Jorge Rivas Pérez, Frederick and Jan Mayer Curator of Latin American Art, 2019