The painting was housed in the building of the Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico; it was subsequently moved to the galleries of the former Academy of San Carlos and later transferred to the San Diego viceregal painting gallery. It entered the MUNAL collection in the year 2000.
With works ranging from tiny copper paintings to enormous canvases, Miguel Cabrera is a multifaceted painter of 18th century colonial Mexico. Throughout his career Cabrera explored a wide variety of subjects stretching from secular and religious images dedicated to ecclesiastical institutions to portraiture and genre painting traditions such as casta and costumbrismo. Large sections of the scholarly community regards Cabrera as the greatest artist of the late baroque period in Mexico. Cabrera was born in 1695 CE in Antequera (present day Oaxaca), he later moved to Mexico City where he successfully established one of the largest artistic workshops in the viceroyalty. Along with being a celebrated painter, Cabrera was also an influential intellectual figure. In 1756 he wrote Maravilla Americana ("American Marvel"); a treatise supporting the pictography of the Virgin of Guadalupe as a miraculous image possessing immense artistic perfection. Cabrera produced "The Virgin of the Apocalypse" during the zenith of his career. It is an illustration of the 12th chapter from the Book of Revelation, where Saint John describes the "Woman clothed with the sun" who battles the dragon. Contemporary Mexican theologians and scholars interpreted this apocalyptic woman as the Virgin Mary and closely associated her with the Virgin of Guadalupe, whose cult had become a defining symbol of New Spanish identity during the 18th century. The painting is a fine blend of the Baroque and Rococo elements. Cabrera though maintaining the grandeur and theatricality, creates an extremely balanced and harmonious composition. He employs brilliant whites, luminous blues and glowing gold to distinguish the Virgin from the darker hues of the dragon and the dragon. His delicate handling of the drapery, soft transitions of light and refined modelling of the facial features demonstrate extraordinary technical skill. The Virgin of the Apocalypse is considered one of Miguel Cabrera's greatest masterpieces and one of the finest examples of 18th century Mexican secular painting.
At its most direct level, Miguel Cabrera's 'The Virgin of the Apocalypse' illustrates the 12th chapter from the Book of Revelation. The Virgin represents "the woman clothed with the sun", which is seen as a figure embodying goodness and divine purity, and God's ultimate victory over evil, represented by the dragon. This is further reinforced with the dramatic contrast between the radiant Virgin and the shadowed dragon.
However, for an eighteenth-century audience in New Spain (colonial Mexico), this painting carried a much deeper meaning. The Virgin was not merely Mary. She was strongly identified with the Virgin of Guadalupe, who had become a powerful symbol of Mexican identity. In this sense, the dragon can also be read symbolically, not only as Satan but as any force threatening the religious and social order of colonial Mexico.
