Coloniart Gallery, Collection of Felipe Siegel, Anna and Andres Siegel, Mexico City.
Location History:
At present, only one painting is securely attributed to Santiago Cristobal de Sandoval in publicly accessible scholarly databases. If additional works are identified through archival research or conservation studies, they have not yet been widely published.
Santiago Cristobal de Sandoval was a Baroque painter of colonial Mexico (New Spain), who produced artworks based on Christian iconography. There are no extant records or archival material that provide any information about his date and place of birth, early life, artistic training or date of death. According to art historians and scholars he was active in the mid 18th century and a few artworks have been found signed by him from 1760 to 1775 CE. Sandoval has not been a subject of research among critics and scholars unlike other contemporary baroque painters. He dedicated his work to cathedrals and other religious buildings along with private collections. "Our Lady of Guadalupe Upheld by Saint Michael in Glory" is one of his surviving artwork, that has been documented and attributed to him by PESSCA; an archival database of artworks produced during the Spanish colonial period. It was launched in the year 2005 at the University Of California by Almerindo Ojeda. Sandoval's practice exhibits typical Baroque aesthetics; luminous backgrounds, bright contrasting colours, slightly restrained yet dramatic figures due to their devotional identity and expressive gestures. In the above painting, this colonial Baroque visual language is displayed in its full grandeur. The image shows the virgin of Guadalupe enthroned in heaven while being held by Michael; the archangel, indicating her divine protection over Mexico. Certain manneristic tendencies are also detectable through the rendering of the hands, fingers and the faces of the subjects. Sandoval's artworks showcase major aspects of colonial painting such as the integration of Marian imagery, particularly the virgin of Guadalupe with the European Baroque aesthetics and the flourishment of religious imagery intended for devotional practices in Mexico.
This specific compositional arrangement builds upon the original 1531 miraculous apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe to Saint Juan Diego on Tepeyac Hill. While the original image on the tilma (cloak) features a small, generic seraph holding up the base of the crescent moon, 18th-century Baroque painters frequently substituted or elevated this figure to Saint Michael the Archangel to underscore themes of divine triumph, national protection, and celestial glory.
