Mystic Dinner (Doña Guiomar of Ulloa, Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint Peter of Alcantara, Christ)
- Gaspar Muñoz de Salazar, Mexican
- Active Years: circa 1700-1750
Gaspar Muñoz de Salazar, Mystic Dinner (Doña Guiomar of Ulloa, Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint Peter of Alcantara, Christ), about 1730. Oil paint on canvas; 28¾ × 39⅜ in. Gift of the Collection of Frederick and Jan Mayer, 2015.542.
Gaspar Muñoz de Salazar was active in the first half of the 1700s in Puebla, Mexico. The painting is of a domestic scene that includes pets, a subject that is uncommon in Mexican colonial art. Four figures sit in 18th-century green covered chairs around a table. A silver saltcellar sits in the center of the table with food and silverware strewn about. The fruits on the table appear to represent a mixture of those introduced to the Americas from Europe (grapes, pear, pomegranate) and ones native to the Americas (chirimoya, guanabana, chilis).
Doña Guiomar (far left), a wealthy widow living in Ávila, Spain during the 16th century, welcomed into her house leading religious figures of the time. She was a patron of the Discalced Franciscans, with whom St. Peter of Alcántara (second from right) was affiliated, and of the Reformed Carmelite Order founded by St. Teresa of Ávila (second from left). According to legend Doña Guiomar introduced Peter and Teresa in 1558. Followers of both Peter and Teresa wrote of occasions in which they witnessed Peter being given food and drink by Christ (far right). Peter, as an act of religious devotion, practiced extreme self-deprivation and poverty.
Perhaps this painting is from a series depicting the life of St. Teresa of Ávila or St. Peter of Alcántara and was created for a convent or monastery in Puebla.
--Julie Wilson Frick, 2015
- Exhibited 1999 "Pintura y Vida Cotidiana en Mexico 1650-1950," Fomento Cultural Banamex, Mexico City, Mexico.
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