Miguel Aucell (1728–c.1795)
• Miguel Aucell was a Spanish painter.
• Born in Valencia, Spain.
Aucell lived in Cádiz for a year before crossing the Atlantic and settling in Buenos Aires in 1754.
• By the late 1770s, he had established himself as a premier talent in the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata.
• The city's Cabildo commissioned him for high-profile political portraiture, paying him 95 pesos to paint the Spanish monarchs.
• He was famously tasked with painting a life-sized portrait of the first Viceroy of the Río de la Plata, Pedro de Cevallos.
• The work was never completed because the Viceroy flatly refused the artist's requirement to pose for two hours a day over a span of three to four days.
• In the capital of the viceroyalty, his first three canvases immediately obtained a true consecration: Saint Ignatius; the Resurrection of Christ from 1760; and the Holy Founder of the Jesuit Order in an attitude of prayer accompanied by two angels and crowned by the Holy Trinity, surrounded by cherubs.• He was active until 1787.
