Antonio de Torres

Antonio de Torres was born, per most sources, in 1666 (an auction-listing variant gives 1667) and died in 1731; his exact birth and death dates, and his birthplace and place of death, are not documented in sources currently available. He worked as a painter in New Spain, with recorded activity in San Luis Potosi and Zacatecas, producing devotional and religious works. He had family connections to Nicolas and Juan Rodriguez Juarez, painters from one of the leading artistic families of colonial Mexico, and his own output is generally discussed in relation to that circle.

In 1722, according to his gallery biography, he was selected together with the Rodriguez Juarez brothers to formally inspect the original image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, a task described as a rare mark of prestige for a painter of the period. No school, degree, or apprenticeship record has been located for him, which is consistent with the limited documentary record surviving for many painters of colonial New Spain.

Institutional and curatorial sources consistently describe Antonio de Torres as one of the leading painters of early eighteenth century Mexico. LACMA's curatorial writing on its 2016 acquisition, Elevation of the Cross, situates him among Mexico's foremost painters of the period, active in San Luis Potosi and Zacatecas, and his gallery biography frames him similarly, emphasizing his kinship with Nicolas and Juan Rodriguez Juarez and his role within the devotional Baroque painting tradition of New Spain.

The best-documented public sale for Antonio de Torres is his 1718 painting Virgin of Guadalupe, reported by Reuters to have sold for USD 185,000, a figure the report described as a record for the artist; this claim could not be independently corroborated in later research and should be treated with caution. The report does not specify the auction house, city, or exact sale date, so this price should be treated as an unverified data point rather than a confirmed catalogue entry. A Christie's lot listing reportedly catalogues a canvas under the artist's name as signed and dated 1721, suggesting his work continues to appear at auction; this specific listing could not be independently corroborated in later research, and no price result for it is documented in current sources. There is no catalogue raisonne, and his overall auction history is thin and unevenly documented compared with better-tracked contemporaries.

The single most important thing for a collector to verify is identity: searches for "Antonio de Torres" will also surface Antonio de Torres Jurado, a nineteenth-century Spanish guitar maker with no connection to this painter, and provenance research should confirm which figure a given object or record actually concerns. Beyond that, the public auction record for the painter is thin, with the strongest documented data point, the reported but unconfirmed USD 185,000 sale of Virgin of Guadalupe, missing basic details such as the auction house and exact date. There is no catalogue raisonne, so attribution depends on signed and dated inscriptions and on institutional curatorial research, such as LACMA's, rather than on a comprehensive published scholarly record.