Arcadópolis
The Confraternity Brother of Saint Michael
Saturnino Herrán, 1917
What you see
A man with a dark beard and a cloth cap looks straight out, hands folded at the bottom of the picture. On his chest hangs an embossed plaque with red edges and a radiating motif at its center. On the left, almost touching him, is a Christ on the cross with long hair and an embroidered skirt; his arm stretches across the top of the canvas.
Browns and dark greens dominate, while the plaque glints with touches of gold and silver. The paint is dense, laid in short strokes that give texture to the beard and the fabric. Compare the two tilted heads, the man's and Christ's, and look for the signature at lower left.
About Saturnino Herrán
Saturnino Herrán was born in Aguascalientes in 1887 and trained at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City, studying drawing with the Catalan painter Antonio Fabrés and colour with Germán Gedovius. He turned scenes of everyday Mexican life into symbolic images of identity, and his painting “The Offering” (1913) is a classic example of Mexican modernism. He died in 1918, aged only 31, while working on “Our Gods”, a triptych commissioned for the Palace of Fine Arts, and his work became a model for the muralists of the following decades.
More by Saturnino Herrán
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