This work visually paraphrases the famous portrait of the Spanish Trinitarian and mystic poet, Fray Hortensio Félix de Paravicino, finished in 1610 by his friend El Greco, now displayed in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
The Trinitarians are a religious order whose origins are tied to the Crusades, they formed with a special mission, to gather alms from Europeans to ransom Christians held as hostages or slaves in Muslim countries. The most famous hostage ransomed by the Trinitarians was Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote.
Paravicino was the royal chaplain, a reknowned orator, and humanist. He was a close friend of the greatest poet of the Spanish Golden Age, Luis de Góngora, and emulated his erudite and rich literary style, known as "gongorism."
In previous versions of this website, I've included (W)holy man on the page of self-portraits. At the time I made it, I was the same age as Fray Hortensio when his portrait was painted, and I looked very much like him.
Now though, it makes better sense to place this work on the saints page. To form the image, I used pictures of various saints, the holy men.
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| (W)holy man, detail from a photograph taken in 1993 |
These photographs show the effect of years of relentless ultraviolet light on this work. I warn all of my clients that they should never hang the works I make or any other work of art or photograph in rooms intensely lit by sunlight. In this particular case, the work was hung on a south facing wall in a room with a dozen uncurtained windows, half of which were high level clerestories.
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| (W)holy man, detail showing UV fading, photograph taken in 1998 |
One of the oldest woven color plate pieces I've made, Mary Birds in 1991, is sort of my canary in the coal mine, and I won't ever sell it. I've always hung Mary Birds away from windows, and kept it out of brightly sunlit rooms. It hasn't suffered any visible UV damage, and the colors look as rich as they did when I made it.
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