Hacienda at Queretaro, Mexico
Having pinpointed the more likely location, I next moved into the other detail Madelina Farnsworth provided. Not only had she bought the painting in a "colonial city north of Mexico City," she had also bought it at a "hacienda." In Spanish, a hacienda translates to an estate, but implies a form of land system. Haciendas are associated with a type of work. For us, as Americans, it's easiest to think of the Hacienda system as an exaggerated Southern plantation. Mexican Haciendas are quite large, usually never under "2,500 acres" with which to cultivate agriculturally. One head family owns the entire hacienda and lives in the main house, which is called a citadel in the Hacienda land system, with servants who work inside and workers that work outside. The differnece being that these workers are considered free albeit that they are tied to the hacienda because they need the money.
More specifically, El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro in Southern Queretaro was the highly traveled route where "minerals, goods, and people" came to and fro during the Viceroyalty. Because of the high traffic, the lands surrounding this road grew in population, forming haciendas in this region. This in turn produced a relationship between great wealth in the area and the opulent estates. The map of Aztec cities is also a useful tool here as many of the haciendas were formed in the 16th century, at the decline of the Aztec Empire. The family living at the hacienda from which Wheaton's Colonial Painting of St. James is from had most likely been in control of the hacienda since the Spanish colonized the area in the 1500's.
So, it is here, in a hacienda in Southern Queretaro that this painting was commissioned to hang in the owner's estate in the 1800's. It is most likely that the head of household commissioned the painting as the most powerful person at the hacienda and also the personal owner of the house. This hacienda is an example of where this painting could have come from. Hacienda La Llave is perhaps the most popular in Queretaro. It was originally owned by a man named Don Juan Jaramillo, a soldier or Hernán Cortés.
Reaching forward into the late 1950's when Madeline travelled to Mexico, there was a resurgence in the popularity of St. James the Moorslayer in Mexico. Specifically, the Archdiocese of Boston (the largest in the United States) supported by the Pope, created the Missionary Society of St. James the Apostle to combat encroaching communism in 1958. St. James was selected to raise domestic pride and historical tradition, and became a figurehead of Mexico in the late 1950's and '60's. This is support for reasining why the art dealer would be selling such a piece at this time. The American tie with the Mexican anticommunist movement also supports reasoning for Madeline's purchase. Therefore, I will place Madeline Farnsworth's purchase of this painting at either 1958 of 1959, because she claimed to have not bought it in the 1960's.
As a side note, Queretaro is a huge tourism site specifically known for its colonial architecture and remains of the great historical haciendas, reinforcing that Madeline Hunter Farnsworth would have come here at that Queretaro was a strong candidate for this type of acquisition. As many of the great haiendas turned into hotels, it is possible that she acquired it at an estate sale because the hacienda was in need of money, or that she was at the hacienda for work with the Rockefeller family. They, being well connecteted, could have been the connection that allowed her entry into an otherwise private home.
Image Source:
Secretery of Tourism, Queretaro, Mexico
Text Sources:
George M. McBride, The Land Systems of Mexico, (New York: American Geographical Society, 1923), passim.
Queretaro, Mexico, Secretary of Tourism.
Garneau, James F. "Santiago Macrocomunistas"? Cardinal Cushing's Cusade against Communism in Latin America and the St. James Society," U.S. Catholic Historian, Vol. 22, No. 4, Ctholic Anticommunism (Fall 2004), pp. 97-114, accessed Feb. 19, 2014.