Mexico City - The wrought iron railings of the Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral have been adorned with Don Quixote illustrations as part of an open-air exhibition to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the death of Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616).

The "El Quijote. Imagenes y artistas" (Quixote: Images and Artists) exhibit, inaugurated Tuesday by the Cultural Center of Spain in Mexico and the Mexico City-based Franz Mayer Museum, features illustrations from different Don Quixote editions.

Those illustrations are part of the Franz Mayer Museum's Rogerio Casas-Alatriste H. Library, which houses one of the most important Quixote collections in the Americas.

The museum's director, Hector Rivero, said Mayer's collection contained "nearly 11,000 objects, plus a collection of rare books and collectors books," including around 800 different editions of the Cervantes' masterpiece from 1605 to 1905.

High-quality photographs were taken of 60 different illustrations from those editions and, of those, 21 were selected to grace the cathedral railings on the side facing Calle Republica de Guatemala for the open-air exhibit.

"The one I like the most is that of Gustave Dore, a 19th-century French illustrator, which was perhaps the best-known," Carlos Ruiz, cultural attache at the Spanish Embassy in Mexico and director of the Cultural Center of Spain in Mexico, told EFE.

Referring to Dore's illustration, which depicts Alonso Quijano (Don Quixote) and the books of chivalry that drove him mad, he said that work of art was the "most representative because it portrays a very bitter Don Quixote, very grief-stricken ... (and) very accurately reflects the hidalgo's personality."