Viceregal school; New Granada Peru, 18th century."Saint Michael the Archangel.Oil on canvas.It

Viceregal school; New Granada Peru, 18th century.
"Saint Michael the Archangel.
Oil on canvas.
It presents repainting and holes in the canvas.
Measurements: 161 x 105 cm.
With a completely elongated canon, the figure of San Miguel Arcángel, is arranged on the totality of the pictorial surface. His distortion of the bodily proportions, added to the synthetic features of various details, such as the sword or the face, which is composed of lines tending towards geometrisation, are characteristics which make the spectator rethink the role of the Archangel Michael, distanced in this case from the drama of the battle. He seems to simply show his attributes to the viewer, holding his sword aloft and holding his bow with the legend "Who as God". The Archangels are the highest level of the Third Order in the angelic hierarchies, and are the only ones among them who possess names. In the West, the Lateran Council (746) limited the number of archangels to three (Michael, Gabriel and Raphael), a circumstance that changed after the discovery in 1516 of a fresco in the church of San Angelo of the Carmelite order in Palermo in which the Trinity appeared with the seven archangels, which was reproduced (sometimes with variations) in numerous engravings, thus extending the iconography. Thus, from this time onwards, the Catholic Church included this number among those to be worshipped, and representations of them multiplied, whether in a single painting or in cycles with each of them in a single work, until some of them were later removed. According to tradition, Saint Michael is the head of the heavenly militia and defender of the Church. Precisely for this reason he fights against the rebellious angels and the dragon of the Apocalypse. He is also a psychopomp, i.e. he leads the dead and weighs the souls on Judgement Day. Scholars have linked his cult to that of several ancient gods: Anubis in Egyptian mythology, Hermes and Mercury in classical mythology, and Wotan in Norse mythology. In the West, the cult of St Michael began to develop from the 5th and 6th centuries onwards, first in Italy and France, then spreading to Germany and the rest of Christendom. The churches and chapels dedicated to him are innumerable around the year 1000, in connection with the belief that the Apocalypse would arrive on that date. His temples are often located on high places, as he is a celestial saint. He was particularly venerated by the kings of France from the 14th century onwards, and the Counter-Reformation made him the head of the church against Protestant heresy, giving a new impetus to his cult. Saint Michael the Archangel is a military saint, and therefore patron saint of knights and of all trades related to arms, as well as to the scales, due to his role as apocalyptic judge. His iconography is of considerable richness, but relatively stable. As a rule, he appears in the attire of a soldier or knight, holding a spear or sword and a shield decorated with a cross. When he fights the dragon, he fights on foot or in the air, which distinguishes him from Saint George, who is almost always on horseback. However, the main difference between the two saints is St Michael's wings.
It is worth mentioning that during Spanish colonial rule, a mainly religious painting was developed, aimed at Christianising the indigenous peoples. Local painters were modelled on Spanish works, which they followed literally in terms of type and iconography. The most frequent models were harquebusier angels and triangular virgins; however, in the early years of the 19th century, at the time of independence and the political opening up of some of the colonies, several artists began to represent a new model of painting with its own identity.