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Fray Escoba
Fray Escoba
© Carlos Vega. Photo by Peter Paul Geoffrion.

Fray Escoba

Artist (Born in Melilla, Spain, 1963)
Date2005
MediumOil and collage on canvas
Dimensions19 × 17 inches (48.26 × 43.18 cm)
ClassificationsMixed Media
Credit LineGift of Douglas Smooke, A.B.’90
Object number2019.21.1
Collections
  • MODERN & CONTEMPORARY
Label TextFray Escoba depicts a young man of color sweeping in a spare room, overlaid above a city and handwritten text, as if a combination of distant memories. The image may reference Saint Martin de Porres, also known as the Saint of the Broom (Fray Escoba), a Dominican saint born in Peru in the late sixteenth century. The illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman and a freed slave, De Porres was not allowed to become a full member of a Catholic religious order, and so began his calling as a volunteer sweeping and cleaning a church in Lima. There he became a healer and performed miraculous cures. He is the patron saint of mixed-race people, public health workers, and social and racial justice. A number of movies made in Spain and Mexico in the 1960s and ‘70s popularized the friar’s story. Carlos Vega’s painting combines such modern popular culture with the historical genre of portraiture and religious iconography to embrace concepts of the spiritual across time and space.