La mirada privilegiada: esoterismo y misticismo en la pintura novohispana
Estudios February 18, 2026 Isabel González García
An eighteenth-century painting from Puebla is analyzed as a site where mysticism and esotericism converge. Using Antoine Faivre's criteria for Western esotericism, William James's concept of mystical experience, and Victor Stoichita's work on visionary imagery, the article interprets the painting through iconological-hermeneutic visual analysis. It argues that the painting's representational strategies—gesture, imagination, and symbolic mediation—render mystical experience visible and socially legible through shared codes between mystics and painters. Such imagery served as mediating devices between the human and the divine, feeding back into the cultural and religious horizon of its context.