Jose de Paez (1720 - c 1790)

Born in Mexico City to Baltazar de Paez, a school teacher by profession. In 1753 Jose de Paez lived in the street Pila Seca, was married to Rosalia Caballero and had four children. Nicolas Enriquez, another great painter of Colonial Mexico is cited as a witness at his wedding for which it is supposed that the two had a social relationship. Today, de Paez is regarded as one of the best of the late baroque artists in Mexico. His oeuvre included religious paintings dense with symbolism and figures, as well as portraits of important ecclesiastical personages, noblemen and castas. A prolific painter his standards remained high and his works were in great demand. His paintings were taken to many of the Vice-Royalties outside Mexico and also to Spain; for example he was commissioned to paint a series of portraits of the prefect- generals of the order of Bethlemites in Cajamarca in Peru.
Lesser painters were unable to produce multiple compositions of the Virgin and various saints without losing a sense of freshness in each canvas. Whether working on canvas or copper, his palette is marked by intense, rich jewel colors. Páez's iconography is a combination of several aspects of Marian Devotion. This emblematic form of painting reached its height in Mexico during the eighteenth century.