Juan Gerson

The Four Riders of the Apocalypse, 1575, Painted tree bark applied as fresco, Church of the Franciscan monastery, Tecamachalco; akg-images / Gilles Mermet

An Indigenous Apocalypse

Commentary by Eric C. Smith

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The apocalyptic paintings by Juan Gerson adorning the Church of the Franciscan Monastery in Tecamachalco, Mexico, are a double commentary. First, Gerson’s art interprets the extravagant text of Revelation 6 and its four horsemen in a visual register, giving form to the Apocalypse’s strange world. Second, Gerson glosses the work of Albrecht Dürer, the German printmaker and painter, reproducing Dürer’s compositional structure and iconography while subtly overwriting and altering them to suit a new context and circumstance.

Juan Gerson was an indigenous man, of the Nahua people, working in the 1560s in what is now the Mexican state of Puebla during the height of Spanish conquest and colonialism. Perhaps because his art adorns the walls of a Franciscan monastery church, Gerson’s work is more straightforwardly pious and generous to the clergy than Dürer’s, whose German Reformation version of this scene famously placed a Catholic bishop in the mouth of Hades. Compositionally, Gerson followed the lead of Dürer, whose woodcuts were by then about sixty years old, and which must have travelled quickly to the ‘new world’. But Gerson was no imitator. The third horseman, who rides on a black horse and seems to signify profiteering from the sale of the essentials needed for sustaining life, is depicted in Gerson’s version as a Spaniard in a nobleman’s clothing—perhaps a commentary on the economic injustice brought by conquest. And while the fourth horseman, Death, carries a three-tipped spear in both Dürer’s and Gerson’s versions, for Dürer the spear points backward where it does no harm, but in Gerson’s version the spear is poised at the moment of killing a man, its points on the verge of bringing Death itself.

Gerson, who painted first on a kind of indigenously produced paper made from tree bark and then pasted those paintings onto the surfaces of the church, was using his compositions to interpret Revelation 6 for his own moment and place. Faced with violent conquest and social upheaval, Gerson adapted the ominous symbols of the Apocalypse’s world to speak to the death, deprivation, and apocalypse of the world he knew.  

 

References

O’Hear, Natasha, and Anthony O’Hear. 2015. Picturing the Apocalypse: The Book of Revelation in the Arts over Two Millennia (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 70–92

See full exhibition for Revelation 6

Revelation 6

Revised Standard Version

6Now I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures say, as with a voice of thunder, “Come!” 2And I saw, and behold, a white horse, and its rider had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.

3 When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4And out came another horse, bright red; its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that men should slay one another; and he was given a great sword.

5 When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come!” And I saw, and behold, a black horse, and its rider had a balance in his hand; 6and I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; but do not harm oil and wine!”

7 When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!” 8And I saw, and behold, a pale horse, and its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed him; and they were given power over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth.

9 When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne; 10they cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before thou wilt judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell upon the earth?” 11Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brethren should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.

12 When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, 13and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale; 14the sky vanished like a scroll that is rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. 15Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the generals and the rich and the strong, and every one, slave and free, hid in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, 16calling to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; 17for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand before it?”

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