Portrait of Fray Mamerto Esquiú. Catamarca (?) Circa 1870.

Vintage photograph on albumen paper in the well-known Portrait Cabinet format; copy mounted on vintage cardboard in orange tone and printed with fillets and ornaments in red ink on its lower edge and which includes the legend: "Album Portrait". Measurements: 13.2 x 9.7 cm / 5.19 x 3.81 in. Work in good condition, preserved in a beautiful handcrafted design folder.

The use of a secondary standard type support - only provided by photographic supplies houses - and the lack of identification on the work, indicates that we are dealing with an itinerant professional photographer and operating in a makeshift studio in the province, probably in Catamarca and, obviously , without the tinsel and ornamental furniture used in similar portraits by his colleagues in the big capitals.

With the Franciscan posing seated in front of the camera with his unmistakable habit, a flowered carpet at his feet and having a neutral curtain behind to better cut out his austere figure, that nineteenth-century photographer - probably a foreigner - was far from imagining that, in the At the precise moment of the shot, he was capturing the wet collodion on his negative, who would be considered one of the greatest religious figures in Argentina.

This exceptional photographic portrait - one of the few that is known about his figure - is definitely the best known of Fray Mamerto Esquiú, both in full or partial image and has been published since the end of the 19th century in numerous religious prints, illustrations and even covers. of books, pictorial works or monuments. Now and with the recent designation -Saturday, September 4, 2021 - of Blessed of the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church by Pope Francis, a gigantic 9 x 10-meter pictorial mural has been inaugurated by the artist Luciano Reynoso who, based on this The same photograph recalls him in the venerated San José de Piedra Blanca Church (Catamarca), the birthplace of his birth.

Fray Mamerto de la Ascención Esquiú (1826 - 1883), of Catamarca origin, a religious with a committed task in the oath of the national Constitution of 1853. In his province, Father Pedro Alejandrino Zenteno, the deputy who had been a member of the Constituent Assembly it prompted the rejection of it for including freedom of worship. On the instruction of Justo José de Urquiza, on July 9, 1853, the swearing-in of the Magna Carta was organized throughout the country, but in Catamarca its governor sought popular disapproval and for this, he invited Esquiú to read a patriotic sermon justifying such rejection. However, this friar surprised with his position in favor of it: "without law," he said, "there is no homeland, there is no true freedom, there are only passions, disorder, anarchy, dissolution, war ...)". It was his most outstanding oratory piece and even Urquiza himself had it published and disseminated throughout the country. Fray Mamerto Esquiú continued with his noble patriotic task and the following year he was the vice president of the Convention that sanctioned the provincial Constitution. That commitment, after the battle of Pavón led him to write: “Here lies the Argentine Confederation, at the hands of betrayal, lies and fear. May the Buenos Aires land be light for him ”. And without further ado he left politics to seclude himself in the Franciscan convent of Tarija, and later, in Peru and Guayaquil. He returned in 1878 and two years later he was appointed Bishop of Córdoba.

S.O-XIV-DOM