Witnessing Ingenuity: Lacquerware from Michoacán for the Vicereine of New Spain

Abstract

In an oftencited travel diary entry, the Capuchin alms collector Francisco de Ajofrín recorded the name of a celebrated lacquer painter, José Manuel de la Cerda, and identified the vicereine of New Spain as his patroness. The artist, who worked in the city of Pátzcuaro in westcentral Mexico, has been connected with a handful of surviving works, three of which bear his signature. One of them is a newly discovered tray (batea), now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fig. 1), while another in Witnessing Ingenuity: Lacquerware from Michoacán for the Vicereine of New Spain