AJUP Catalog
Saint Joseph's University
The Peters Collection is a permanent exhibition of forty-four Mexican devotional retablos (oil paintings on tin), two nineteenth-century Mexican oil-on-canvas paintings, and two Philippine bultos (statues). In 1993, this remarkable collection was presented to Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia by Joseph and Ruth Peters, longtime retablo collectors and connoisseurs.
In Spanish, the word retablo usually refers to painted or sculpture retables or altar pieces that first became popular in Europe in the fourteenth century. However, in Mexico, retablo not only has the general meaning of altarpiece, but also the specific meaning of a religious image painted in oil on a tin-plated sheet of iron that was produced from the early nineteenth century through the early twentieth century.
This second meaning of retablo seems to have developed from the tradition of votive paintings. In the early eighteenth century, ex-votos or milagros, "miracles," that expressed gratitude to Christ, the Virgin Mary, or one of the saints, for recovery from illness, accident, or natural disaster, began to be referred to as retablos. These votive paintings were usually placed on the walls of a church or a shrine near the retable or altarpiece that depicted the sacred person who had intervened on behalf of the petitioner. It is likely that the name retablo was transferred to these ex-votos by association.
In the early nineteenth century, the retablo developed a second form: small paintings of Christ, the Virgin, and saints that were intended as devotional objects for use by ordinary people in the privacy of their own homes. While the retablo ex-voto continues to be produced today and to be seen in abundance in shrines and churches in Mexico, the retablo santo or devotional retablo flourished only until the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when it was supplanted by inexpensive, mass-produced color lithographs.
Since the publication of Gloria Fraser Giffords' pioneering study Mexican Folk Retablos in 1974, there has been a burgeoning interest in retablos. For example, in 1991 a major exhibition of devotional and ex-voto retablos, "The Art of Private Devotion: Retablo Painting of Mexico," was mounted with venues at museums in Chicago, Dallas, San Antonio, San Francisco, and elsewhere. In 1992, a revised edition of Giffords' book was published.
This catalogue of The Peters Collection aims to advance the scholarly conversation begun by Giffords and continued by more recent studies. It achieves this aim by sharing insights from the collectors into how and why this particular collection came together, in addition to information on the technical and stylistic facets of specific retablos in The Peters Collection. This volume also attains its purpose by presenting scholarly research on heretofore neglected artistic and literary sources for many devotionalretablo subjects, as well as commentary on each piece of the collection that offers a more detailed discussion of the iconography of devotional retablo subjects than is often found in the standard works on this art form.
An Anthology of Readings from Jerónimo Gracián's Summary of the Excellencies of St. Joseph (1597)
Translated and edited with an introductory essay and commentary by Joseph F. Chorpenning, O.S.F.S.
Illustrations by Michael L. McGrath, O.S.F.S.
The Discalced Carmelite friar Jerónimo Gracián (1545-1614) was St. Teresa of Ávila's religious superior, spiritual director, and closest friend and collaborator. After Teresa had been cured of a crippling illness through the intercession of St. Joseph, she labored tirelessly to spread devotion to this saint. Gracián made a major contribution to the realization of this dimension of the Teresian apostolate by publishing his Summary of the Excellencies of St. Joseph (1597), which became the most important and popular treatise on St. Joseph of the early modern period.
Just Man makes available twenty selections from the Summary, translated into English for the first time. Each selection is introduced by a pen and ink drawing executed specifically for this volume by a contemporary artist and is accompanied by a commentary. The anthology is preceded by an introductory essay that gives the reader a firm hold on Gracián and the Summary in their historical context, as well as offers an overview of Gracián's life and writings and of the Summary's editions, origin, spirituality, and influence on art.
"Joseph Chorpenning not only gives us a brilliant translation of Gracián's book, but his own commentaries, following each of the chapters, make use of all the major books on St. Joseph from the 16th century to the present.…This is a book that needs to be read many times…This translation of Gracián's book is for the reader an informative experience, but more importantly it is a spiritual experience."
- – Marcella M. Holloway, C.S.J.
"[This book] should appeal to anyone who is interested in the lives of the saints.…It should appeal to anyone who carries the name of 'Joseph.' It belongs in the library of every Catholic institution named for St. Joseph—parishes, schools, hospitals, and other institutions."
"Chorpenning has the ability to bring to life and to make relevant, without manipulation or forced interpretations, the texts and the thought of a sixteenth-century author. This is a remarkable achievement and an example for other scholars to imitate. This book is also a valuable and estimable contribution to the theology of St. Joseph, the fundamentals of which recently have been closely examined and explained by Pope John Paul II in his apostolic exhortation Guardian of the Redeemer."
"A valuable contribution to our knowledge of 16th-century spirituality and the Discalced Carmelites."
A catalogue of an exhibition held at Saint Joseph's University in spring 1992, this volume contains essays on the contribution of St. Teresa of Ávila and of St. Francis de Sales to the development of devotion to St. Joseph and on Joseph's iconography in Golden-Age and Colonial Spanish art. It also includes photographs of each of the works exhibited, as well as a preface by the renowned Spanish art historian Santiago Sebastián, biobibliographical notes, and suggestions for further reading.
Devotion to St. Joseph was firmly established in the New World within the first decade of the conquest of Mexico (begun in 1518 and completed in 1521). It became so widespread that in 1555 Joseph was proclaimed patron of the Viceroyalty of New Spain (present-day Mexico, Central America, and the Philippines). In 1524 New France (Canada) followed suit and chose Joseph as its patron. Historically St. Joseph can indeed be called "Patron Saint of the New World."
Some of the works exhibited portrayed events in the life of St. Joseph such as the marriage of Joseph and the Virgin Mary, the nativity of the Lord, the flight into Egypt, and the daily life of the Holy Family at Nazareth. Others depicted variations on the image of St. Joseph with the Christ Child, e.g., Joseph holding or walking with Jesus. The countries of origin of these art works are Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador. These representative images attest to St. Joseph's popularity and to the intense interest in him in the New World.
1992, viii + 61 pp., ISBN 0-916101-11-8 $14.95 (paper)
Presented as the inaugural Saint Joseph's Day Lecture at Saint Joseph's University, this study offers answers to two critical questions that have been neglected by historians of Spanish Colonial art: First, why was the Holy Family consistently portrayed in a setting reminiscent of the Garden of Eden? Second, what are the artistic sources for this paradisal landscape? This publication is illustrated with twenty-eight small black and white photographs.
1992, 24 pp., ISBN 0-916101-13-4 $4.00 (paper)
The Hopkins Quarterly is a major research journal widely quoted in Victorian Studies. In scholarly articles and book reviews, it focuses "on the lives and works of Gerard M. Hopkins, S.J., and his friends: Robert Bridges, Richard W. Dixon, and Coventry Patmore." Welcoming both traditional and new approaches to Hopkins and his circle, it offers the international and inter-religious perspectives of Britain, Canada, France, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United States.
Founded in 1974, The Hopkins Quarterly has published essays and reviews by the world's foremost Hopkins scholars: Michael Allsopp, Jerome Bump, James Finn Cotter, David J. DeLaura, David A. Downes, René Gallet, Lesley J. Higgins, Norman H. MacKenzie, Paul Mariani, Michael D. Moore, Walter J. Ong, S.J., Catherine Phillips, Rachel Salmon, Kunio Shimane, Graham Story, Alison G. Sulloway, R.K.R. Thornton, Norman White, and Tom Zaniello.
Forthcoming issues include an edition of four newly discovered Hopkins letters with introduction and annotations by Joseph J. Feeney, S.J.; essays on Hopkins' friends and relatives by Lesley Higgins and Tom Zaniello; the annual Hopkins bibliography by Pamela Palmer; a description of the new Bischoff Collection at Gonzaga University, Spokane; and articles on Hopkins' poetry and esthetics.
The Hopkins Quarterly is co-edited by Joseph J. Feeney, S.J., (Saint Joseph's University) and Joaquin Kuhn (University of Toronto); its book-review editor is Lesley J. Higgins (York University, Ontario).
A collection of original articles by such experts as Henry Abraham, Jay Dolan, J. William Frost, Philip Kurland, and Judge John Noonan which traces the development of religious liberty and the controversies it has sparked and continues to spark from colonial times to the present. The volume provides the reader with an overview of the social, political and legal forces that have produced America's unique relationship between Church and State.
1990, 191 pp., ISBN 0-916101-08-8 $25.00 (paper)
No scholar has done more than Elisabeth Stopp to make St. Francis de Sales known in the English-speaking world in the twentieth century. This volume collects ten talks and essays by Dr. Stopp delivered or published over the past thirty years. These pieces focus on De Sales' education at the Jesuit Collège de Clermont in Paris, attitudes to friendship, literary art, ecumenism, reception in Anglican England, and links with other major figures of the Christian tradition, such as St. Francis of Assisi, St. Teresa of Ávila, and Cardinal Newman.
Dr. Stopp is a Fellow of Girton College and formerly University Lecturer in Modern and Medieval Languages at Cambridge University. She has published a half-dozen books on the Salesian saints, including St. Francis de Sales: Selected Letters (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), Madame de Chantal: Portrait of a Saint (London: Faber & Faber, 1962; Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1963; Spanish translation, Madrid: Rialp, 1966), and St. Francis de Sales: A Testimony by St. Chantal (London: Faber & Faber, 1967).
1996, ISBN 0-916101-22-3 (paper)
In spring 1996, Saint Joseph's University hosts the exhibition "The Holy Family as Prototype of the Civilization of Love: Images from the Viceregal Americas," which commemorates the 75th anniversary of the introduction of the Feast of the Holy Family to the liturgical calendar of the Universal Church. The exhibition displays paintings from the Spanish Colonial period, rare books and engravings from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe, and lithographs and devotional paintings on tin from nineteenth-century Mexico and New Mexico. Culled from private collections, galleries in New York and Miami, and institutional collections of several Catholic universities, these art works offer a visual chronicle of the evolution of devotion to the Holy Family.
A catalogue of the exhibition, this volume contains essays on the historical development of the Holy Family devotion from the late Middle Ages to the late twentieth century, the subject of the Holy Family in Western art, and the encounter of European and Inca cultures observable in images of the Holy Family in Andean viceregal art. It also includes color photographs of books and art works exhibited, each of which is fully explained in accompanying commentary.
1996, ISBN 0-916101-21-5 $45.00 (paper)
The first editions of the Discalced Carmelite friar Jerónimo Gracián's Summary of the Excellencies of St. Joseph were illustrated with a set of six engravings, which may have been reproduced in several subsequent editions. Executed by Christophorus Blancus, a French engraver who worked in Rome, these engravings portray scenes from the life of St. Joseph and the Holy Family which visualize the principal points of Gracián's theology of the saint. Neglected by modern scholars who have studied this important book, Blancus' engravings are reproduced for the first time since the sixteenth century, and each is explained in light of Gracián's text by the Summary's English translator. This monograph is a companion volume to the Just Man anthology, also by Chorpenning (see p. 57).
1996, ISBN 0-916101-20-7 $8.95 (paper)