Past exhibition
30 September - 31 October 2025
Location
Gonzalo Eguiguren Gallery
Justiniano 3, Madrid
About the exhibition
Across the Pacific, silk, lacquer and mother-of-pearl carried more than precious materials: they carried images, techniques and ideas between Asia, the Americas and Europe.
The Arts of the Manila Galleon, organised by Gonzalo Eguiguren Gallery, traces the global circulation of ornamental motifs, artistic techniques and sacred objects between Asia and the Ibero-American world from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century.
The exhibition brings together outstanding examples of barniz de Pasto, lacquerware from Michoacán, Asian textiles and devotional paintings, including Bartolomé de Arenas's remarkable Saint Barbara (c. 1670). Together, they reveal how Asian influences were absorbed, reinterpreted and amplified in the art of colonial Latin America.
Exhibition highlight
A world embroidered in silk
Manila shawl
Flowers, birds and human figures unfold across a dark silk ground. Seen at this scale, the embroidery reveals the material richness at the centre of the exhibition's dialogue between textiles, painting and lacquer.
Embroidered silk. Reproduced in the exhibition catalogue, pp. 60-61. A detail is also retained in the exhibition image archive.
The visual journey begins with Asian works in the Namban tradition, including objects incorporating mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell. It then follows the impact of these forms on Mexican enconchado painting and on the hybrid lacquer traditions of New Spain and the Andes.
At the symbolic heart of the exhibition is the Manila shawl: a silk shawl embroidered in Canton, China, which crossed the Pacific aboard the galleon and became a mark of distinction among Creole elites. Its visual language influenced not only fashion, but also painting, portraiture and the decorative arts.
The exhibition poses a central question: which came first - the textile, the painting or the lacquer? Or did all three share a common source of inspiration in the global movement of images and materials?
