Of the Altar Del Perdon by Thomas A. Janvier

This painter, Senor, who by a miracle painted the most beautiful picture of Our Lady of Mercy that is to be found in the whole world -- the very picture that ever since has adorned the Altar del Perdon in the Cathedral -- in the beginning of him was a very bad sinner: being a Fleming, and a Jew, and many other things that he ought not to have been, and therefore straight in the way to pass the whole of Eternity -- his wickednesses being so numerous that time would have been wasted in trying to purge him of them in Purgatory -- in the hottest torments that the devil his master could contrive. He was a very agreeable young gentleman, of a cheerful and obliging nature, and both witty and interesting in his talkings -- for which reason the Viceroy had a great liking for his company and had him often at the Palace to the banquets and the festivals of the court. His name, Senor, was Don Simon Peyrens; and the Viceroy his patron -- in whose suite he had come from Spain expressly to beautify the Palace with his paintings -- was Don Gaston de Peralta, Marques de Falces: who was the third Viceroy of the Province, being the successor to the good Don Luis de Velasco when that most worthy gentleman ceased to be a Viceroy and became an angel in the year 1564.[2]

Well, Senor, it happened some years later -- in the time of Don Martin Enriquez de Almanza, the fourth Viceroy, with whom Peyrens remained in favor -- that the Chapter of the Cathedral, desiring to make splendid the Altar del Perdon, offered in competition to all the painters of Mexico a prize for the most beautiful picture of Our Lady of Mercy: which picture was to be placed in the centre of that altar and to be the chief glory of it. And, thereupon, all the painters of Mexico, save only Peyrens, entered into that competition with a reverent and an eager joy. And then it was, Senor, that Peyrens made plain the wickedness that was in him by his irreverent blasphemies. At a banquet at the Palace a very noble gentleman asked him why he alone of all the painters of Mexico -- and he the best of all of them -- had not entered into the competition; to which that sinful young man answered with a disdainful and impious lightness that the painting of what were called sacred pictures was but foolishness and vanity, and that he for his part could not be tempted to paint one by all the gold in the world!