(b Mexico City, 1830; d Mexico City, 1909). Mexican painter. A grant awarded to him in 1854 enabled him to study in Paris, where he joined Charles Gleyre’s studio and painted two works, Abraham and Isaac and Dante and Virgil (both 1856; Mexico City, Mus. N.A.), which he sent to Mexico City to be exhibited at the Academy. He also showed at the Paris Salon in 1859, receiving an honourable mention. In 1860 he settled in Rome, where in 1865 he was commissioned to produce a painting commemorating the visit of the Archduke Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico (reg 1864–7), and his wife Carlota Amalia to Pius IX. Although the painting was never completed, there are two surviving sketches (e.g. Meeting of Pius IX and Maximilian, 1865–6; Mexico City, Mus. N. Hist.) that suggest that he worked from photographs and conformed to the fashion for depicting historical events as scenes from everyday life. Although on his return to Mexico in 1869 Pina was made professor of painting at the Academy in Mexico City, by the time of his death his work had lost credibility among the students, who felt a growing dissatisfaction with the values imposed by religious painting.

• Pina, José Salomé
  • Izaguirre, Leandro