Research Catalog

Miera y Pacheco : a Renaissance Spaniard in eighteenth-century New Mexico / by John L. Kessell.

Title: Miera y Pacheco : a Renaissance Spaniard in eighteenth-century New Mexico / by John L. Kessell.
Author: Kessell, John L.
Publication: Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, 2013.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Filter by

1 Item

Item details
Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Request in advance	F799 .K377 2013	Off-site

Details

Description

xviii, 194 pages : ill. (some color), maps (some color); 24 cm

Summary

Remembered today as an early cartographer and prolific religious artist, don Bernardo de Miera y Pacheco (1713?1785) engaged during his lifetime in a surprising array of other pursuits: engineer and militia captain on Indian campaigns, district officer, merchant, debt collector, metallurgist, luckless silver miner, presidial soldier, dam builder, and rancher. This long-overdue, richly illustrated biography recounts Miera?s complex life in cinematic detail, from his birth in Cantabria, Spain, to his sudden and unexplained appearance at Janos, Chihuahua, and his death in Santa Fe at age seventy-one. In Miera y Pacheco, John L. Kessell explores each aspect of this Renaissance man?s life in the colony. Beginning with his marriage to the young descendant of a once-prominent New Mexican family, we see Miera transformed by his varied experiences into the quintessential Hispanic New Mexican. As he traveled to every corner of the colony and beyond, Miera gathered not only geographical, social, and political data but also invaluable information about the Southwest?s indigenous peoples. At the same time, Miera the artist was carving and painting statues and panels of the saints for the altar screens of the colony. Miera?s most ambitious surviving map resulted from his five-month ordeal as cartographer on the Domínguez-Escalante expedition to the Great Basin in 1776. Two years later, with the arrival of famed Juan Bautista de Anza as governor of New Mexico, Miera became a trusted member of Anza?s inner circle, advising him on civil, military, and Indian affairs. Miera?s maps and his religious art, represented here, have long been considered essential to the cultural history of colonial New Mexico. Now Kessell?s biography tells the rest of the story. Anyone with an interest in southwestern history, colonial New Mexico, or New Spain will welcome this study of Miera y Pacheco?s eventful life and times.--Amazon.com.

Subjects

Genre/Form

Biographies
History

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 179-185) and index.

Processing Action (note)

committed to retain

Contents

Estefania's prometido -- Just long enough in El Paso -- A patron -- The year 1760 -- Artist for hire and rancher -- A vision quest with the friars -- Anza in command -- "To die in Your Royal service."

ISBN

9780806143774 (hbk. : alk. paper)
0806143770 (hbk. : alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2013004244

OCLC

828775860
SCSB-12537637

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library