On the Colonial Formation of Comparison: The Virgin of Chiquinquirá, The Virgin of Guadalupe and Cloth

Resumen

The studies of the history of Latin American art have used the comparative method while focusing on the period of evangelization and considering the European parameters of art as the models used by the first American artists. Cummins takes distance from this method which places the American artists at considerable disadvantage. Cummins studies the Colombian devotion of the Virgin of Chiquinquirá, one of the most studied and documented events in Hispanic America. He compares it to the creation and development of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico. By studying the Mexican descriptions of the apparitions and the forging of the image, he discovers that it directly influenced the consolidation of the Colombian devotion. According to Cummins, the parallelisms between the Mexican and the Colombian myths reveal, among other issues, that both represent a national religious movement opposed to the Peninsular Spaniards and with an impact beyond the Creoles that embraced and adopted the image.