Mexico, Church in San Miguel Allende

 

Max Pollak

  1886 - 1970 (biography)

c. 1946  

color etching & aquatint 

13 1/4 x 10 1/8" platemark 

pencil, lower right 

1 of 100  

titled in pencil, lower left; titled "Mexico, Cathedral San Miquel Allende" along lower left sheet edge; red Friedl Pollak Collection stamp in lower left sheet corner 

 

soft, cream laid 

published 

artist 

22663 

SOLD

San Miguel de Allende is considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world. In this etching, Pollak presented Las Monjas Church, The Convent of the Immaculate Conception. The church was the vision of María Josefa Linda de la Canal who, orphaned and wealthy, expressed her desire at the age of fifteen years old to be a religious woman. Work began on the church in 1755 with the dome added in 1891. The original architect, Francisco Martinez Gudiño, was supposedly wildly flamboyant in his interior decoration but many of his highlights were pilfered during the revolutions in Mexico. The convent once had extensive land but over the years the Mexican government usurped most religious property except for the church interiors.