The Fame and Fortune of Gregorio Vásquez de Arce y Ceballos, Painter of Santafé, New Granada

Abstract

Abstract The article addresses related issues surrounding the artistic biography and production of Gregorio Vásquez, the most important painter of colonial Colombia, active in the latter part of the seventeenth and the first decade of the eighteenth century. Vásquez is a unique figure in Latin American art historiography because local historians researched and wrote about his life and works since at least the nineteenth century. His vast catalogue consists of almost five hundred paintings and includes a unique corpus of over a hundred drawings. Based on published and unpublished primary sources and chronicles, and the analysis of his painterly style and drawing techniques, it is argued that the painter’s abundant production and fame were both the means and result of artistic strategies devised by Vásquez and his followers throughout the eighteenth century in order to capitalize on the painter’s regional success.