Page:Mexico of the Mexicans.djvu/107

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Art, Music, and the Drama
91

singularly rich just now in gifted artists in statuary, among the best being the brothers Yslas, usually working in collaboration, whose finest and most famous work, completed in 1880, is their large monument to the patriot, Benito Pablo Juarez, author of Los Reyes de la Reforma. This imposing memorial is contained in the Pantéon de San Fernando, Mexico city; another very noteworthy piece of sculpture in the capital being the Monumento á la Independencia Nacional, which was unveiled in 1910, and to the making of which various different artists contributed, the chief being Enrique Alciati, a professor in the Académia Nacional de San Carlos. Two further sculptural monuments of great note, in Mexico city, are one commemorating the Portuguese cosmographer, Enrico Martinez, and that more famous one to the memory of the last prince of the Aztecs, Guatemotzin; the latter work finished in 1887, the former in 1881. It is in the Jardin del Seminario, and was modelled by Miguel Noveña; while as regards the other work, standing in the second glorieta of the Paseo de la Reforma, here once again there were several different artists employed. The general idea apparently came from Francisco Jiminez, but parts of his design seem to have been carried out, not by himself, but by Noveña, who was sole sculptor, furthermore, of certain tablets let into the base, depicting episodes in the Conquest of Mexico; while some neighbouring tablets, of a votive order, are by Gabriel Guerra, one of those comparatively few Mexican masters who are well known in the United States. Sculpture is also well represented by Señores Bringas, Toledo, Goitia, and Rosas.

The almost constant friction between the United States and Mexico has necessarily tended to inhibit, rather, a just recognition of Mexican artists in the former country, which really has a far greater love of the fine arts, withal, than most Europeans seem willing to realise. At the great Panama Pacific International Exhibition, held at San Francisco in 1915, the superb collection of painting and sculpture