Saint Francis of Assisi has returned to his home in Teotihuacán. The parish of San Francisco Mazapa, located in the town of the same name, behind the Pyramid of the Sun, in the State of Mexico, managed to recover an oil painting of the saint painted in the 18th century, stolen 24 years ago. The painting arrived at Mexican auction house Morton in 2017, and after the registration process – contracts, photographs for the catalog – they uploaded the piece to the Art Loss Register, a global database where a record of stolen or lost pieces is kept. “They booed us,” David Collepardo, Morton’s director of antiques and books, says by phone. “We stopped the auction process. Art Loss Register submitted the relevant complaints to the prosecutor’s office and we tried to contact the owner who provided us with the work, but we never received a response,” he says.
Collepardo explains that it took eight years to return the work because that was the length of the process. “We’re not very aware of what (the legal process) was like; it’s something that, fortunately, doesn’t happen to us very often,” he adds. He says last year the investigation concluded and they were told they could begin the logistics of sending the piece to San Francisco Mazapa Parish.
The bishop of the diocese of Teotihuacán, Guillermo Francisco Escobar Galicia, held a ceremony this weekend accompanied by representatives of the auction house and 1,000 people from the community, to welcome the painting. “More than a work of art, it is a religious symbol that strengthens the faith of the community” said the bishop during the event. On Morton’s Instagram account they posted some photos and said that this action is a reminder that stolen cultural heritage, which is often considered lost forever, can be returned to its rightful owner.
The work measures 180 centimeters high by 146 centimeters wide. According to the 3Museos website (a cultural place in Monterrey, Nuevo León where the Museum of Mexican History, the Palace and the Northwest are located), the painting was created in 1728 by the Mexican Antonio de Torres, who boasts a vast production of images of the Virgin of Guadalupe and is considered one of the most prolific and appreciated painters of the time.
The saint is represented standing and wearing a sack – a sort of woolen tunic – while holding a skull in his right hand and a small cross with Jesus in his left; stigmata appear on the tops of the palms and feet; In the lower left part, a dedication reads: “To the devotion of Don Gregorio Juan, current mayor in three days of the month of December of the year 1747”. According to the Facebook page Cosmovisión Indígena Mazapa, Gregorio Juan was an indigenous mayor of the community.
