COLLECTION NAME:
Santo Collection
Record
Creator display:
Aragón, José Rafael, Follower of (Colonial Spanish American santero)
Creator role:
creator
Creator note:
Probably worked with his brother, José, creating santeros in colonial Santa Fe. Some scholars believe this brother, the legendary "José Aragon," is instead a man with a similar name from the Las Cruces area.
Date display:
1830-1860
Title:
San Acacio
Title:
Saint Acacius of Mount Ararat
Description:
Nontraditional image of Saint Acacius. Instead of crucified, male figure stands with arms extended to his sides, revealing stigmata on his hands. Dressed in military garb, figure looks downward upon one of the two soldiers flanking him on either side.
Note Fr. Steele:
"by Rafael Aragon (says Nat Owings, and see New Kingdom of the Saints, p. 27, pl. 182; I think it's by a follower of RA; see New Kingdom of the Saints p. 216, pl. 194)."|"wonderful rich red color"|"It's strange for him to stand apparently without a cross and nails--the soldiers' awareness of an gazing at the saint, rare if not unique, is perhaps the viewer's way of getting him/herself into the picture by late-medieval empathy."
Location name:
New Mexico
Materials display:
paint on wood panel
Material name:
paint
Material name:
panel (wood by form)
Source name:
Thomas J. Steele, S.J.: The Regis University Collection of New Mexico and Colorado Santos.
Subject term:
Acacius, of Mount Ararat, Saint
Subject type:
PersonalName
Work type:
retablos (panel paintings)
Provenance note:
"Formerly belonged to the poet Witter Bynner (b. 1881 Brooklyn, educated at Harvard, to NM 1922, d. 1968)."
Acquisition note:
1993, from Owings-Dewey Fine Art, Santa Fe.
Accession number:
RU0180
Measurements display:
20.9 x 16 cm
Santo Subject:
San Acacio (Saint Acacius of Mount Ararat)
Santo Subject Type:
Male Saints
Feast Day:
June 22
Patronage:
Patronage: The penitential Brothers took an interest in this patron of those who experience crucifixion; Acacio is also a military protector against any intruders (see Brown, Hispano Folklife of New Mexico, p. 216).
Note:
In German understanding of him, San Acacio was the leader of about ten thousand Roman soldiers who were converted to Christianity in Armenia and crucified; he was unheard of before the late fourteenth century. See José E. Espinosa, Saints in the Valleys, (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1967), pp. 92-93; Yvonne Lange, "In Search of "San Acacio," El Palacio94 # 1 (Summer-Fall 1988), 18-24, notes that Acacio was never much venerated in Spain or the southern portion of New Spain but only in New Mexico and what is now northern Mexico and that the crown of thorns rather than the traveler's or vaquero's hat was the headgear of the original iconography. Usually bearded, on a cross, wearing an eighteenth-century military uniform, crucified, wearing a crown of thorns, laurel, or occasionally roses or a hat, flanked by two or more soldiers, each of whom holds a drum, pennant, sword, or musket.
Rights text:
IN COPYRIGHT - EDUCATIONAL USE PERMITTED
