4.12. 2014
Research Week 2 Day 2

More about western influence:

https://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/michigan/detroit/riveramurals/east.html

"The placement of the frescoes is purposeful with images of fertility and new life in the east while a version of death and the Last Judgment occupy the west wall. Diego had seen Giotto's frescoes in Italy, and just as the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua depicts the Annunciation in the east/altar end, (the Annunciation being the moment of Christ’s conception in Catholic theology), here positive images of fertility and birth are represented."

Description of Rivera's Zapata:

"Emiliano Zapata, a champion of agrarian reform and a key protagonist in the Mexican Revolution, here leads a band of peasant rebels armed with makeshift weapons, including farming tools. With the bridle of a majestic white horse in his hand, Zapata stands triumphantly beside the dead body of a hacienda owner. Though Mexican and U.S. newspapers regularly vilified the revolutionary leader as a treacherous bandit, Rivera immortalized Zapata as a hero and glorified the victory of the Revolution in an image of violent but just vengeance."

More useful information on the print:

http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2011/rivera/content/mural/agrarian/hotspots.php

"Dressed as a humble peasant in huaraches and a white cotton shirt and trousers, Rivera’s portrait of Zapata departs from portrayals propagated by popular press images and by the rebel himself."

"Rivera’s vision of Zapata as a humble peasant offers a sympathetic portrait of a folk hero tirelessly devoted to Mexico’s disenfranchised agrarian workers."


Some thoughts:
Many western works had images of humble figures such as Christ. Rivera probably wanted Zapata to resemble this humble figure as well by having him dressed in a certain fashion rathen than nice military clothing.

Paolo Uccello (Italian, c. 1397–1475). The Battle of San Romano (detail). c. 1438. Tempera on wood. Full panel: 71 3/4" x 10' 5 1/2" (1.82 x 3.22 m). Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Photograph by Erich Lessing/Art Resource, New York

Important find:"Rivera ennobles Mexican history—and Zapata—in this work by linking them to the grandeur of European artistic tradition. The steed, whose owner Zapata has just dragged from his saddle, shares the color and imposing presence of horses in Paolo Uccello’s early 15th-century painting The Battle of San Romano, which Rivera studied on a 1920–21 trip to Italy."