Museo de AméricaCiudad Universitaria, Moncloa
New Spain Lacquered Bateas: A Cultural Crossroads
This exhibition has ended.
An exceptional collection of lacquered wooden bateas from colonial Mexico, tracing production centres from Uruapan to Yucatán and Indigenous-Asian-European artistic exchange.
Museum websiteMore in Madrid
On one ceramic piece in this show, a small angel makes what any Madrileño would read as a corte de mangas. In its day the gesture was protective, meant to ward off harm. It may be the only corte de mangas in Madrid that counts as a blessing.
The rest is lacquer. Bateas are big trays carved from a single piece of wood and lacquered by Indigenous craftsmen in New Spain, mostly in the 17th and 18th centuries. They went into women's dowries and stood in salons beside the family silver. The museum owns 15, the most important set anywhere, and brings them out of storage with loans from the Descalzas Reales, the Real Academia de la Historia and the Complutense. The route runs workshop by workshop, from Uruapan and Peribán to Yucatán. Of all the trays you pass, only one carries a Christian symbol.
It's free, in the temporary exhibitions room, with limited capacity, and it closes on 18 October.
Look for
The one Maltese cross
Among trays covered in mythological scenes, coats of arms, fantastic animals and landscapes, a single batea carries an explicitly Christian symbol, a Maltese cross; finding it is the game.
The angel's rude-looking gesture
Look for the ceramic where a small angel makes what now reads as an obscene arm gesture, an apotropaic sign once meant to keep misfortune away.
A 1595 Spanish Ovid
The Complutense lent its 1595 Metamorphoses, whose title says its figures are for the use of craftsmen, one of three books showing where the trays' techniques and designs came from.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Locals Who've Seen It All
- Nerding Out
Skip if
You don't care for decorative arts: this is a room of lacquered wooden trays, plus a few books.
Also at Museo de América
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Image credits
4
- La moda a tus piesCourtesy of Museo del Traje
- De los que hicieron México su hogar: una ofrenda a la memoria del exilioCourtesy of Casa de América
- Museo de AméricaSimon Burchell, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Museo del TrajeZarateman, CC0