'Miraculous' Image of Guadalupe painted - News and Comment - Brief Article

Mexico City's Image of Guadalupe--a sixteenth-century portrait of the Virgin Mary supposedly imprinted miraculously on an Aztec convert's cloak--has been confirmed as merely a painting. Nevertheless Pope John Paul II is scheduled to confer sainthood on the Aztec, Juan Diego, despite the pleas of some Catholic scholars. These include the former curator of the Basilica of Guadalupe, who doubts the historical existence of Juan Diego and said such a canonization would be "recognition of a cult."

Now a ubiquitous symbol of Mexican Catholicism, the image, say critics, was painted by a native artist named Marcos Cipac de Aquino. It was probably utilized by Spanish conquerors to convert the Indians to Catholicism. (A church to enshrine the image was built in front of a site where the Aztecs had had a temple for their virgin goddess Tonantzin, thus grafting the Catholic tradition onto the Indian one--a process folklorists call syncretism.)

Recently, the results of a secret 1982 scientific study of the image were reported by the Spanish-language magazine Proceso (in its May 12 and 19, 2002 issues). Art restoration expert Jose Sol Rosales examined the cloth with a stereomicroscope and determined it did not originate supernaturally but was instead the work of an artist who used the materials and methods of the sixteenth century.

According to Rosales, the canvas appeared to be a mixture of linen and hemp or cactus fiber. It was prepared with a brush coat of white primer (calcium sulfate), and the painting was then rendered in distemper (i.e., paint consisting of pigment, water, and a binding medium). The artist used a "very limited palette," stated the expert, consisting of black (from pine soot), white, blue, green, various earth colors ("tierras"), reds (including carmine), and gold.

Rosales's report confirms and amplifies what skeptics had determined from early records, infrared photographs, and other evidence. (See Joe Nickell and John E Fischer, "The Image of Guadalupe: A Folkloristic and Iconographic Investigation," SKEPTICAL INQUIRER 9:3 [Spring 1985], 243-255.)

In addition, new scholarship suggests that, while the image was painted not long after the Spanish conquest and was said to have miraculous powers, the pious legend of Mary's appearance to Juan Diego may date from the following century.

Meanwhile, none of this appears to have had any effect on the Vatican, which seems set to make a saint of "Juan Diego," fictitious or not.

Joe Nickell is CSICOP's Senior Research Fellow and columnist for the SKEPTICAL BRIEFS.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group