​J Michael Walker

One of my favorite genres of art is that of the portraits of crowned nuns, las monjas coronadas, painted in the 18th-19th centuries in Viceregal Mexico. Commemorations of a young lady’s formal induction into an order of nuns, the subject is generally dressed in her new habit, topped with an elaborate floral and gilded crown, bears a large decorated candle, and sports other accoutrements of religious and symbolic significance.

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From the moment I first saw them I wanted to draw a self-portrait in the style; and, in 1993, to commemorate my wife’s and my sixteenth anniversary, I did.

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I was also listening to a lot of Latin American boleros at the time, so I titled the piece, in the text panel at the bottom, after a particularly lovely one – “El Día que Me Quieras” (The Day that You Love Me), a great Carlos Gardel composition; the song’s lyrics inspire a number of the drawing’s elements, as well.

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The banner unfurling from my left hand and wrapped around the candle bears the lyric “Desde el azul del cielo / las estrellas celosas nos miraran pasar” (From the blue of the sky / the jealous stars will watch us pass by). The small religious card of the Sacred Heart bears the lyric “Ella aquieta mi herida” (She quiets my wound). And so on.

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The crown shares elements from the lyrical Indigenous-Baroque Templo de Santa María Tonantzintla, in Cholula, Puebla; the ceramic árbol de la vida (tree of life) artesanias of Metepec, Edo. De México; the bodegones (still-life paintings) of 19th century Mexican artist Agustín Arrieta; and the traditional Mexican Bingo-like game of Lotería.

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