José de Páez (Mexico City, 1727 - circa 1790) 'Parable of the Prodigal Son' Pair of oils on copper. Both signed 'Jph. de Paez fecit en Mexico' 41 x 55 cm each.   José de Páez was a painter who was active mainly between 1750 and 1780. According to Madrid's Museum of the Americas, 'he created models of great sweetness, idealised beauty, oval faces, [and] was an excellent portraitist.' He developed mainly religious themes with an interest in caste painting as well. He was the preferred painter of religious orders such as the Franciscans, the Bethlehemites, and the Oratorians and carried out numerous commissions for them. Given his very extensive production of universal themes, it is understood that he developed some lines of his work without commissions but in the knowledge that he had a solid market of buyers of his artworks. Amongst his preserved works, we highlight the paintings on copper 'Divina Pastora' and 'Virgen de Loreto' from the Museum of the Americas; the 'Medallion of a friar with the Nativity' and 'San Juan de Nepomuceno' from LACMA; the 'Virgen de la Merced' from the Blaisten Museum; and the ten paintings from the 'Cycle of the Life of the Virgin' from 1772 that were restored between 2015 and 2016 and are located in the sanctuary of Guadalupe in Chihuahua, Mexico. As a result of this restoration project, a very interesting analysis of José de Páez's technical procedure was carried out. According to Yana Arantxa Ramírez's detailed report, the painter enjoyed great success in his lifetime, which was later diminished by widespread disdain for 18th-century painting. Now, 'in recent decades there has been an effort to vindicate 18th-century painting.'  Thus, Magdalena Castañeda, who was in charge of the restoration of Páez's works, proposed a new approach to his artistic personality in her Master's thesis and concluded that the Mexican was 'a restless artist, with a discursive effectiveness that allowed him to sell paintings inside and even outside of New Spain.'   Bibliographic reference: -Ramírez, Yana Arantxa. (2021). El proceso pictórico de José de Páez: Ciclo de la vida de la Virgen, santuario de Guadalupe, San Felipe, Chihuahua, México. “Intervención”, 2(24), 250–276. https://doi.org/10.30763/intervencion.256.v2n24.35.2021