Bernardo Rodríguez (active in Quito, Ecuador, circa 1770) "Marriage of Mary and Joseph". Oil on canvas. Relined. 99 x 120 cm. Beautiful and delicate canvas by the Ecuadorian painter and muralist Bernardo Rodríguez, a prominent figure amongst those who depicted religious motifs in colonial Quito. In this painting, he illustrates the real and mystical union of God and humans, of Mary and Him, as divine flesh, and the whole of humanity, symbolised by the putative father, Joseph. The Child holds a shackle with His mother and it seems that, symbolically, He is going to place it on her (pinching her wrist): "what God has joined together...", thus uniting the Divine (Mary and God) with the human (Joseph). The entire scene takes place under the protection of the Holy Trinity, the celestial witness, blessing the moment with a choir of angels who "grace the wedding" with songs, violins, drums, flutes, trumpets, triangle, and tambourine, all joyful, as befits the occasion. Watching the moment with devotion and humility are the maternal grandparents, Saint Joachim and Saint Anne, and Saint Elizabeth and Zechariah, Mary's cousins and the parents of Saint John the Baptist, Jesus' cousin, who is also present. Thus, we see tenderness and delicacy very well reflected by this painter, who enjoyed unparalleled ecclesiastical support, with many privileges such as creating canvases for the Cathedral of Quito or those in the Museum of Colonial Art, as well as those we can currently admire in the Casa de Cultura Ecuatoriana. Rodríguez is, in fact, along with Manuel de Samaniego y Jaramillo, the most important painter of the late colonial period in Quito. Regardless of his continued and esteemed interest in the Virgin Mary as a subject-a theme that earned him great reputation for the quality of his achievements-Rodríguez's work is related to the technique and stylistic treatment common in artists like Manuel Samaniego. The commissions he received from various religious institutions constitute the majority of his production, characterised by an interesting use of chiaroscuro. As we read in the fascinating article by Juan Pablo Cruz Medina (2014) "The Painting of the Holy Family: A Manual of Family Relations in the World of 17th Century Santafé", the family, configured as the nucleus of the social body within the structure devised by Spain for the New World, early on became a concern for both the Church and the bureaucracy established in Latin America. From this, the Church developed a series of discursive structures aimed at establishing models of family life that would serve as examples of ideal behaviour throughout the 17th century. This ensured not only the maintenance of an "ecclesial" order in society but also the submission of society to the civil power established by the Spanish monarch in the new lands. Medina highlights the artistic production developed by the Church in relation to the family: "One of the most significant pictorial sets within the visual corpus of the 17th century is that of the Holy Family," which would continue to be represented ceaselessly thereafter. This ecclesiastical need also responds to the "emergence of the nuclear family model in Europe, which changed the conception of the extended family typical of the Middle Ages," while in colonial Latin America it was of interest to "establish examples that would help shape a society governed by religious norms." As we continue reading in Cruz Medina's article, "the idea of the Church was, then, to create nuclear families based on the models of the Holy Family contained in the images, which would serve as the cells forming society. The image thus became an instrument of social and individual configuration. The discourse of the Holy Family, like that of other iconographic representations of the colonial period, then implied 'a new arrangement of individual and social bodies', directed under a pattern of submission of subjects." Reference bibliography: - Cruz Medina, Juan Pablo. "La pintura de la Sagrada Familia. Un manual de relaciones familiares en el mundo de la Santafé del siglo XVII". Memoria y sociedad 18, n.° 36 (2014): 100-117. http://dx.doi.org/10.11144/Javeriana.MYS18-36.psfm. http://dx.doi.org/10.11144/Javeriana.MYS18-36.psfm