GM1015 - Our Lady of Guadalupe

Size: 8 x 14" tableau

Our Lady of Guadalupe is a celebrated image of the Virgin Mary located at the Basilica of our Lady of Guadalupe in Tepeyac, Mexico, the most visited Catholic shrine in the world.

According to tradition the image appeared miraculously on the cloak of Juan Diego, a simple peasant, on the hill of Tepeyac near Mexico City on December 12, 1531. Our Lady of Guadalupe is Mexico's most popular religious and cultural image.

Miguel Sanchez, the author of the 1648 tract Imagen de la Virgen María, described her as the Woman of the Apocalypse from the New Testament, Revelation 12:1, "arrayed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars." Our Lady of Guadalupe is also described as a representation of the Immaculate Conception. Yet, despite this orthodoxy, the image also contains a hidden layer of coded messages for the indigenous people of Mexico, and sheds light on her powerful impact. Her blue-green mantle was the color reserved only for the divine.