(b Mexico City, 1843; d Mexico City, 1894). Mexican sculptor and teacher. He studied in the studio of Manual Vilar, who recommended that he should enrol in the sculpture class at the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City. There his training comprised copying plaster casts of ancient Greek sculptures. Noreña exhibited for the first time in 1856 as Vilar’s pupil; his simple study of feet and hands was praised by the critics for being ‘modelled with intelligence’. His first important work outside the Academia was a sculpture of Don Vicente Guerrero (1865), cast in bronze 18 years later and erected in the Plaza de San Fernando, Mexico City (in situ). In 1869 he rejected the offer of the directorship of sculpture at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, undertaking instead a study trip to Europe. On his return to Mexico in 1873 he accepted the post and went on to train young sculptors, including Jesús F. Contreras and Gabriel Guerra. Noreña became widely known as a sculptor of public statues, most notably the Cuauhtémoc monument (bronze, 1878; Mexico City, Paseo de la Reforma) and Juárez Seated (1891; Mexico City, Recinto Homenaje Don Benito Juárez), which was cast in bronze from cannons.

• Noreña, Miguel
  • Mexico, §IV, 2(ii): Painting, graphic arts & sculp.: Realism & political art, c 1870–c 1895
  • collaboration
    • Contreras, Jesús F.
  • pupils
    • Guerra, Gabriel
  • works
    • Mexico City, §II, 2: Later history and urban development, 1822–1920