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THE IBERO-AMERICAN BAROQUE
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The IBERO-AMERICAN
BAROQUE Edited by Beatriz de Alba-Koch
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London
© University of Toronto Press 2022 Toronto Buffalo London utorontopress.com Printed in the U.S.A. ISBN 978-1-4426-4883-8 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4426-1884-8 (EPUB) ISBN 978-1-4426-1883-1 (PDF) Toronto Iberic _____________________________________________________________________________ Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Title: The Ibero-American Baroque / edited by Beatriz de Alba-Koch. Names: De Alba-Koch, Beatriz, 1957– editor. Series: Toronto Iberic. Description: Series statement: Toronto Iberic | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 2021028725X | Canadiana (ebook) 20210287322 | ISBN 9781442648838 (cloth) | ISBN 9781442618848 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781442618831 (PDF) Subjects: LCSH: Civilization, Baroque – Latin America. | LCSH: Latin America – Intellectual life. | LCSH: Latin America – Civilization – European influences. Classification: LCC F1412.I24 2022 | DDC 980/.013–dc23 ___________________________________________________________________________________ We wish to acknowledge the land on which the University of Toronto Press operates. This land is the traditional territory of the Wendat, the Anishnaabeg, the Haudenosaunee, the Métis, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario, for its publishing activities.
Funded by the Financé par le Government gouvernement du Canada of Canada
Em memória de Luís de Moura Sobral, estimado colega e querido amigo
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Contents
List of Figures ix Acknowledgments xiii Introduction: The Ibero-American Baroque as the First Global Culture 3 beatriz de alba-koch
Part 1. Painting, Sculpture, and Other Arts 1 Transfers, Encounters, Innovations: The Church of the Third Order of Saint Francis of Penance in Ouro Preto 25 luís de moura sobral
2 The Elevation of the Genre of “Shrine Paintings” in Peru 52 evonne levy
3 Baroque Reliquaries and Automata as Representations of Eternal Life 77 enrique fernández
4 Marian Sculpture in Baroque Portuguese America 95 maria beatriz de mello e souza
Part 2. Architecture 5 Presence and Absence: The Holy House of Loreto in Ibero-America 113 clara bargellini
viii Contents
6 From Intimate to Infinite Presence: The Camarín at Tepotzotlán 139 ricardo l. castro
7 Passion in Motion: The Way of the Cross as Performance in New Spain 159 alena robin
Part 3. Music 8 Music in Processions at the Jesuit Reducciones of Moxos and Chiquitos in Bolivia 183 piotr nawrot
9 Neapolitan Technology and Galant Style in a Novohispano Context: Eight Concerted Responsories by Ignacio Jerusalem 210 lucero enríquez rubio
10 The Resonance of Sor Juana’s Villancicos in Spanish Cathedral Archives 225 aurelio tello/translated by janice shewey Part 4. Textual Continuities and Change 11 Emblems and Wit in the Hispanic Baroque according to Baltasar Gracián 247 pablo restrepo gautier
12 The Baroque as Paradox: Novelty and Printed Courtly Sermons in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century New Spain 273 perla chinchilla pawling
13 The Literary Dream in Querétaro: A Baroque Genre and Enlightenment Ideals in New Spain 296 beatriz de alba-koch
List of Contributors 323 Index 329
Figures
Interior of Church of Saint Francis of Assisi, Goa, India 8 Bom Jesus de Matosinhos, Congonhas, Brazil 12 Bom Jesus do Monte, Braga, Portugal 13 Church of the Third Order of Saint Francis, Ouro Preto, Brazil 26 1.2 Frontispiece of São Francisco, Ouro Preto, Brazil 28 1.3 Manuel da Costa Ataíde, Vanitas Vanitatum 30 1.4 Volat illud et incandescit eundo, Second Centuria, Emblem 28, Sebastián de Covarrubias 31 1.5 Theodor Matham, Vanitas 33 1.6 Detail, Manuel da Costa Ataíde, Vanitas Vanitatum 34 1.7 Johann Elias Ridinger, Memento Mori 35 1.8 Hendrick Goltzius, Quia Evadet 37 1.9 Azulejos panel, São Francisco Monastery, Salvador, Brazil 38 1.10 Manuel da Costa Ataíde, ceiling, Church of the Third Order of Saint Francis, Ouro Preto, Brazil 41 1.11 Ataíde, detail of ceiling, Church of the Third Order of Saint Francis, Ouro Preto, Brazil 42 1.12 Page l of the Officium Parvum Beatae Mariae 43 1.13 Chapel of the Franciscan Third Order, Saint Francis Church, Évora, Portugal 45 1.14 Chapel of the Franciscan Third Order, Faro, Portugal 47 1.15 Capela Dourada, Convent of Saint Anthony, Recife, Brazil 48 1.16 Chapel of the Third Order of Saint Francis of Penance, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 49 2.1 Cusco School, Virgin of Rosary of Pomata 53 2.2 Luis Niño, Virgin of the Victory of Málaga 54 2.3 Caravaggio, Madonna of Loreto 57 0.1 0.2 0.3 1.1
x Figures
2.4 Avanzino Nucci, Madonna of Loreto 58 2.5 Raphael, Sistine Madonna 61 2.6 Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery 64 2.7 Cusco School, The Child Mary Spinning 66 2.8 Cusco School, Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple 67 3.1 Speaking reliquaries, Church of Saint Roch, Lisbon, Portugal 82 3.2 Estatuas de vestir, Church of Saint Roch, Lisbon, Portugal 84 3.3 Mechanical monk, attributed to Juanelo Turriano 85 4.1 Retable of the Imaculada. Church of Our Lady of Bonsucesso, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 99 4.2 Retable of the Imaculada. Church of Our Lady of Bonsucesso, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 100 4.3 Imaculada, Church of Our Lady of Montserrat, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 102 4.4 Sleeping Christ Child on a Heart 103 5.1 Entrance to the Holy House of Loreto at Tepotzotlán, Mexico 117 5.2 José de Ibarra, The Return of the Holy Family to Nazareth from Egypt 118 5.3 Former Loreto Chapel, Biblioteca Iberoamericana, Guadalajara, Mexico 119 5.4 Façade of Loreto Church, San Luis Potosí, Mexico 121 5.5 The Annunciation, Loreto Chapel, Santa Rosa, Paraguay 124 6.1 Layout of conventual complex, Tepotzotlán, Mexico 140 6.2 Loreto Chapel and Church of Saint Francis Xavier, Tepotzotlán, Mexico 141 6.3 Exterior of the camarín, Tepotzotlán, Mexico 142 6.4 Interior of the camarín, Tepotzotlán, Mexico 143 6.5 Holy House and corridor leading to the camarín, Tepotzotlán, Mexico 145 6.6 Retable of Our Lady of Loreto, Tepotzotlán, Mexico 146 6.7 Lantern of camarín, Tepotzotlán, Mexico 147 6.8 Andrea Pozzo, ceiling of Sant’Ignazio, Rome, Italy 151 7.1 Anonymous, Sentence and Flagellation 164 7.2 Anonymous, Paseo de la Alameda de México 165 7.3 Fifth station, Way of the Cross, Puebla, Mexico 166 7.4 Sixth station, Way of the Cross, Puebla, Mexico 167 7.5 Calvary Chapel, Puebla, Mexico 168 7.6 Calvary Chapel, Antigua, Guatemala 169 7.7 Interior of the Church of El Encino, Aguascalientes, Mexico 170
Figures xi
7.8
Interior of the Church of San Francisco, San Luis Potosí, Mexico 171 7.9 Anonymous, Fifth Station 172 8.1 Iesu dulcissime 186 8.2 Tata Jesu Christo 187 8.3 Bico payaco borechu 188 8.4 Regina coeli laetare 190 8.5 Tantum ergo 192 8.6 Venite, exsultemus 195 8.7 Amado Dueño mío 197 8.8 Lauda Sion Salvatorem 199 8.9 Jerure para la fiesta Santísima Trinidad 203 8.10 Machetero de Navidad 203 9.1 Textual sources, Ignacio de Jerusalem, Saint Joseph’s Matins 217 9.2 Text and musical sections, Ignacio de Jerusalem, Saint Joseph’s Matins 218 10.1 Ritornello, anonymous, Cómo se debe venir a la mesa del altar 233 10.2 Refrain, anonymous, Cómo se debe venir a la mesa del altar 234 10.3 Tenor’s coplas, anonymous, Cómo se debe venir a la mesa del altar 234 10.4 Violin duet, Melchor López Jiménez, Los que tengan hambre vengan y hallarán 236 10.5 Refrain, Melchor López Jiménez, Los que tengan hambre vengan y hallarán 237 10.6 Major triad, Melchor López Jiménez, Si Dios se contiene en el Sacramento 240 10.7 Refrain, Melchor López Jiménez, Si Dios se contiene en el Sacramento 242 10.8 Coplas, Melchor López Jiménez, Si Dios se contiene en el Sacramento 243 11.1 Andreas Alciatus, Emblem 185 253 11.2 Andreas Alciatus, Emblem 113 255 11.3 Andreas Alciatus, Emblem 167 256 11.4 Andreas Alciatus, Emblem 125 257 11.5 Andreas Alciatus, Emblem 28 259 11.6 Andreas Alciatus, Emblem 181 261 11.7 Andreas Alciatus, Emblem 108 263 11.8 Andreas Alciatus, Emblem 188 264 12.1 Cases of admiration, ingenio, novelty, agudeza, and inventiveness 278 12.2 Sermons with several aprobaciones and pareceres 278
xii Figures
12.3 12.4 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 13.6 13.7
Author/order, year, sermon, and paratexts 279 Chronological distribution of paratexts 281 Fountain of Neptune, Querétaro, Mexico 299 Church of the Congregation of Guadalupe, Querétaro, Mexico 301 Church interior of Santa Rosa de Viterbo, Querétaro, Mexico 302 Church of El Carmen, Celaya, Mexico 304 Francisco Eduardo Tresguerras, Portrait of His Wife 306 Francisco Eduardo Tresguerras, Envy 307 Francisco Eduardo Tresguerras, frontispiece, El sueño verdadero 308
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Juan Luis Suárez, principal investigator of “The Hispanic Baroque Project,” a Major Collaborative Research Initiative financed by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and all the contributors who patiently waited to see the fruits of their research in print. I also thank Suzanne Rancourt, Christine Robertson, and Anne Laughlin of the University of Toronto Press as well as Manuel Campirano, Enrique Fernández, and Matthew Koch for their help preparing this volume.
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THE IBERO-AMERICAN BAROQUE
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Introduction: The Ibero-American Baroque as the First Global Culture beatriz de alba - koch
Beginning in the seventeenth century, and in Ibero-America continuing into the early nineteenth century, the Baroque was the first culture to “go global.”1 The Ibero-American Baroque inscribes itself in the excitement and engagement with the Baroque as a historical moment.2 The volume illuminates the dissemination and transformation of the Baroque as a dynamic transoceanic, global culture. Its findings are thought-provoking, focusing on select, often little-studied events and works, many of which shed light on the media, institutions, and technologies that were central to cultural exchanges in a broad early modern Iberian world, brought into being in the aftermath of the arrival of the Spanish and Portuguese in the Americas. The concern of The Ibero-American Baroque is not the era of first contact or early colonial consolidation, but rather the mature, mid- to late-colonial period from 1600 to 1825. The Baroque was the seal of imperial presence in the Spanish American and Brazilian worlds, but it was also fundamental to the emergence of distinctive Latin American cultures.3 Despite nineteenth-century republican repudiation of its aesthetics, the Baroque has continued to define Latin American identities in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.4 The continuities of the Baroque into the present, labelled the Neo-Baroque, are beyond the scope of this volume.5 In the fundamentally important La expresión americana, José Lezama Lima contends that the historical Baroque was a period of great vitality characterized by what he calls “plutonism,” deep societal forces that allowed the appropriation of European culture to be transformed into a “counter-conquest” vision and praxis.6 This appropriation became, according to Irlemar Chiampi, the “shaping paradigm and authentic beginning of a truly American reality.”7 Following the essentialist ideas of Eugenio D’Ors, Alejo Carpentier sees the Baroque as “a spirit and not a historical style,” affirming the concept’s identity-forming capacity.8
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According to Carpentier, “America, a continent of symbiosis, mutations, vibrations, mestizaje, has always been baroque.”9 Focused on constructing an identity for the region, Carpentier’s and Lezama Lima’s sweeping, grandiloquent assertions do not go far in demonstrating how and why Latin America became identified with the Baroque, or how to understand this concept concretely. Walter Moser cautions that, while attempting to come to terms with the Baroque, “scholars find themselves in a conceptual Babel” if they seek a universal language that can “reveal the way out of the labyrinth.”10 Indeed, conceptualizations of the Baroque are richly plural but also contradictory, as the term has been variously seen as a human constant, an era, a regional identity marker, a broad aesthetic paradigm, a specific artistic style, a measure of modernity, and an ethos.11 Although definitions of the Baroque vary greatly, some elements recur in these interpretations. A rebellion against the strictures of classicist aesthetics is seen as the core of the Baroque, and the decentring that is fundamental to this rebellion can be understood to have encouraged a novel interplay of distinct cultural traditions as well as a dissolution of the boundaries distinguishing media.12 The famous complexity and richness of Baroque design has been interpreted as fostering a unifying disposition of awe towards the Christian sacred that in Ibero-America also celebrated the ruling dynasty, reinforced by the accessibility and visceral emotional appeal of Baroque naturalism. This focus on the divine accounts for the Baroque insistence on this existence as transitory and beguiling. Our volume, while attentive to these debates, does not purport to offer another definition of the Baroque. Rather, anchored in extensive empirical research, it provides evidence for understanding how forms of expression commonly understood as Baroque came to be the most inclusive, far-reaching, and enduring culture of the early modern period. The global Baroque reached and gave voice to a great multiplicity of heterogeneous actors through continuous processes of negotiation, while not challenging the asymmetrical relationships to power of the ethnicities of the Portuguese and Spanish empires that were central to Iberian imperialism.13 Through pioneering cross-disciplinary studies, readers are invited to view this period from the perspective of the formation of cultural patterns, their diffusion and re-imagination over the vast and varied territories of the Iberian monarchies. The American polities under Iberian domination, united by administrative structures and a transoceanic grid of communication that reached across the Pacific to the Philippine archipelago and Asia, were central to the first global culture. As demonstrated by the contributors to this volume, Baroque culture in the
Introduction 5
Ibero-American world was sufficiently programmatic in its projects and designs to provide church and state with an ideal of control and a sense of unity, even as diverse realities encouraged a defining flexibility in response to enduring, local particularities. As such, across an enormous geographical expanse, the Ibero-American Baroque embodies how the Spanish monarchy and Portugal came to depend not just on force and constraint for their expansion and consolidation, but also on their capacity to adapt to an array of locally negotiated arrangements, racial and cultural ambiguity, degrees of spiritual heterodoxy, sheer paradox, and the identity-forming participation of a stunning variety of Christianizing royal subjects. The Ibero-American Baroque features the original investigations of an interdisciplinary team of researchers of international stature working in history, art history, architecture, literary studies, and musicology. The authors first came together in pursuit of a line of research centred on “technologies of culture” that I coordinated for the Hispanic Baroque Project, a Major Collaborative Research Initiative directed by Juan Luis Suárez and funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. A string of focused scholarly conferences allowed for the development of the interdisciplinary nature of this collection.14 Departing from the norm in other, related works, The Ibero-American Baroque offers readers a wide and multifaceted understanding of the Baroque that is not limited to the visual arts.15 While painting is also important for The Ibero-American Baroque, the studies devoted to this art are associated with contributions focusing on music, sculpture, architecture, sermons, fictional texts, processions, and devotional practices. In many of our contributions, disciplinary perspectives are intertwined, offering a richer, more comprehensive understanding of the Baroque. In terms of the volume’s geographical span, while half of the essays focus on Spain’s northernmost American possession, the viceroyalty of New Spain, chapters exploring the peninsular Spanish kingdoms and the vast South American viceroyalty of Peru balance the coverage of the Hispanic American world. For the lusophone world, connections between Portugal and Brazil as well as Goa in Portuguese Asia are considered. A further, notable strength of the volume is its chronological span, which is not limited to the prototypically Baroque long seventeenth century. Our authors are interested in continuities through the eighteenth century, and the vitality of Baroque aesthetics in the early nineteenth century. In exploring aspects of Baroque culture and its diffusions, the volume demonstrates the various ways in which “technologies of culture” were understood and became mobilized: a variety of practices and elements of material culture are examined here as the means by which a culture was
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not only reproduced but, more often than not, recreated, accenting a diversity inherent in the complex nature of Baroque cultural expression. The Baroque, then, is treated in this volume as having shown an outstanding capacity to encompass, harness, and reconstrue a broad range of expressions within a dynamic framework of imposed and shared values. This capacity fostered the inclusion and participation of a wide spectrum of social actors on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond. In one of the seminal studies of art and architecture in the missions of the Society of Jesus, Gauvin Alexander Bailey discusses the adaptation and transformation of early modern European styles to reflect Asian and Latin American sensibilities and priorities.16 The Society of Jesus and the Franciscans played central roles in the creation of Baroque art across the globe. These religious orders were aware that their churches, as carefully constructed and decorated public spaces that induced wonder and guided the soul on its route to God through music and ritual, were among the most effective technologies of Baroque culture. Highlighted in the present volume is the legacy of the Jesuits and the Franciscans in the flourishing of the Baroque in some of the most remote confines of the Spanish monarchy and within Portugal’s possessions in the Americas. Chapters dealing with sacred sites interconnect with those dealing with sacred practice: discussions of religious architecture, painting, sculpture, and music are concerned with the impact of images and space on cultic practice and devotion, as well as on community formation and identity. Studies primarily concerned with processions and devotional rituals consider the importance of music, painting, sculpture, architecture, and the arrangement of sacred space for religious practice. The volume also features chapters devoted to the study of literary texts that consider the relationship of the Baroque to modernity and to what degree changes in Baroque style and world views can be taken as indicators of social and political transformations. The volume is organized in four parts. Part1, “Painting, Sculpture, and Other Arts,” brings together four studies. Luís de Moura Sobral opens the volume with his analysis of a distinctive religious and artistic expression fostered by the Third Order Franciscans. In “Transfers, Encounters, Innovations: The Church of the Third Order of Saint Francis of Penance in Ouro Preto,” Moura Sobral demonstrates how the splendour of late lusophone Baroque is due to artists working for this lay order, artists who masterfully combined the technologies of the “total work of art” to create sumptuously decorated churches. Magnificent spaces of worship were created in the Portuguese empire’s most important cities, including many churches in Brazil’s Minas Gerais, by organically integrating architecture, painting, gilded sculpture, tilework, and music. The church of
Introduction 7
the Franciscan Third Order in Ouro Preto, carefully documented and contextualized by Moura Sobral, exemplifies the importance of the circulation of engravings for the diffusion of visual vocabularies across the Atlantic. However, O Aleijadinho (António Francisco Lisboa), who masterfully sculpted the main altar and the façade of the church, and Manuel da Costa Ataíde, who painted the Vanitas of the narthex and the quadratura of the nave’s ceiling, went well beyond merely transferring European art to Brazil. The evolution of this global culture involved not only transoceanic reproduction but, more significantly, local appropriation and differentiation. Thus, while quadraturas are found in Portugal and Brazil, but apparently not in India (fig. 0.1), their iconographic themes are not the same. In Ouro Preto, the centrality assigned to the Virgin in the quadratura distinguishes this church from its Iberian counterparts. Saints other than the Virgin and Franciscan figures are more dominant in the decoration programs of Third Order churches in Portugal and, in contrast with the theme in Ouro Preto, the Iberian churches do not necessarily associate Mary with an admonition against worldly dangers and vanity. Positing an original perspective on Andean pictorial depictions of the Virgin, Evonne Levy argues in “The Elevation of the Genre of ‘Shrine Paintings’ in Peru” that these works were an original and striking contribution to the history of art that merits more attention. Very few of the artists that created shrine paintings have been identified, yet through them Indigenous sensibilities found recognition and a successful application to a European medium. The representations of the Virgin studied by Levy, related to the dressed religious images, or imágenes de vestir, are instances of the importance assigned to sumptuously dressed saints. From the perspective of early modern art theory, shrine paintings from Cusco appear to be guided by long-standing devotional practices and not by invention. In pre-contact Cusco, textiles were key conveyors of prestige and were central to religious life, a tradition that remained strong during the colonial period. Revising the categories and concepts normally used by art historians, Levy posits the concept of a “textilic imagination” to discuss the unique characteristic of this genre, one that is indebted to the Andean and especially Incan tradition of textile weaving. The centrality of Marian devotion for the Ibero-American Baroque is here exemplified again, albeit through a unique lens that provides evidence for the key role played by Indigenous peoples in the creation of an enduring, local Catholicism. Particularly novel in this volume is the attention devoted to relics and automata, two aspects of material culture related to architecture, painting, and sculpture often neglected by scholars of the Baroque.
Figure 0.1. Interior of Church of Saint Francis of Assisi, Goa, India. Photo by the author.
Introduction 9
Relics were highly valued in the Catholic world: Portuguese and Spanish churches assembled large collections of these conduits of the divine. Throughout the Americas, the Society of Jesus promoted the veneration of relics; the Jesuits were the first to bring them to the Western Hemisphere, where they were assigned particular importance in their churches. In “Baroque Reliquaries and Automata as Representations of Eternal Life,” Enrique Fernández discusses the significance for the Counter-Reformation church of the physicality of relics. Paradoxically, relics underline a central preoccupation with transcending the material realm. Heretofore, automata have not been considered central to the Baroque, but as Fernández demonstrates, they developed from imágenes de vestir and share many of the characteristics of relics. Despite their differences, automata and relics hinted at an otherworldly reality. While automata are associated with the advancement of the mechanical sciences, they reveal that the Baroque not only was open to modernity but also fostered its development. The first part of the volume closes with a study that again focuses on the lusophone world. The centrality of Marian devotion in Brazil, previously discussed by Moura Sobral, is amply documented by Maria Beatriz de Mello e Souza in “Marian Sculpture in Baroque Portuguese America.” Religious sculptures created for church altars as well as for private devotion have received less attention than other Brazilian Baroque works of art. This chapter demonstrates how the global nature of the Portuguese empire facilitated the circulation, reproduction, and reconfiguration of a distinctive religious iconography. Among the cases analysed here are the clay and wood Christ Child sculptures, abundant in churches of Rio de Janeiro and Salvador, that developed from ivory sculptures of the same image produced in Goa. Focusing on the Virgin Mary and her many invocations, Mello e Souza relates the devotion to and portrayal of Mary to power dynamics between the Hispanic and Portuguese empires, noting a greater emphasis on painting in Spain and its colonies, in contrast to Brazil, where sculpture played a key role. Part 2, “Architecture,” groups three chapters focused on religious structures in New Spain that are particularly representative of the Baroque, yet have not been fully explored as sites of sacred practice. Clara Bargellini studies the dissemination by the Jesuits of the devotion to the Virgin of Loreto throughout the Americas. The Order deployed the replica of the Holy House as a focal point of worship. In her “Presence and Absence: The Holy House of Loreto in Ibero-America,” Bargellini provides a history of how the relic of the Holy House became a symbol of the church as an institution and how the Jesuits used its reproduction to promote conversion. Provided here for the first time is
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an inventory of these architectural structures, not all of which are extant. Based on letters and other documents related to the patronage of the Houses of Loreto, Bargellini details the individual characteristics of each site of devotion and the reasons that moved Italian Jesuits working in New Spain, such as Juan Bautista Zappa and Juan María Salvatierra, to promote the construction of these replicas. The establishment of sites of worship dedicated to the Virgin of Loreto in their missions in what are now the states of Chihuahua, Sinaloa, and Sonora, areas in which Bargellini has done much research, is indicative of the priority ascribed by the Jesuits to using this technology to foster Catholicism in remote, heavily Indigenous areas. Also considered here are the Jesuit missions in Brazil and Alto Perú dedicated to the Virgin of Loreto where no replicas of the Holy House or chapels devoted to her were built. Chapels for this avocation promoted by Italian Jesuits are found in Bajo Perú, Argentina, and Paraguay, although in these cases too Holy Houses are lacking. This deployment of the House of Loreto in new spaces exemplifies one of the ways in which the Jesuits contributed to the creation of a global culture in the seventeenth century. The representation of sacred infinity, another central concern for the Baroque, was masterfully materialized in Jesuit churches through architectural illusions that generated awe and reverence. In “From Intimate to Infinite Presence: The Camarín at Tepotzotlán,” Ricardo Castro studies with a fresh perspective the richly decorated Camarín de la Virgen (Chamber of the Virgin), one of the masterpieces of the Baroque. This chamber is a structure adjacent to the reproduction of the House of Loreto built in a side chapel of the main church at the Jesuit complex of Tepotzotlán to the north of Mexico City, an important educational centre for the Order that now houses the Museo Nacional de Virreinato (National Museum of the Viceroyalty). Further analysing one of the sites discussed by Bargellini, Castro focuses on how the camarín, despite its limited and enclosed space, offers viewers a breathtaking sense of infinity. The spectacular use of painting, light, and a profusion of sculpted angels that decorate the small cupola and its steep lantern guide the gaze upwards, providing an illusionary opening to an unending, celestial realm signified by the Holy Ghost painted over translucent alabaster. Working with the concept of architectural presences and availing himself of literary theoretical underpinnings, Castro discusses how the spatial paradox that characterizes the Baroque remains wondrously present in the camarín, offering the devout an intimate aesthetic experience within the sacralized space. “Passion in Motion: The Way of the Cross as Performance in New Spain,” by Alena Robin, closes the section devoted to architecture by
Introduction 11
focusing on chapels as well as other spatial markers within churches used to recreate the pathos associated with the Stations of the Cross. Robin discusses from the novel perspective of performance theory the devotional practices developed by the Franciscans that symbolically brought to the faithful the holiness of Jerusalem, a pilgrimage site that few could visit at the time. In Spanish America, particularly in Mexico City and Puebla, the Franciscans erected free-standing chapels for each Station of the Cross; they also constructed similar chapels in Santiago de los Caballeros (now Antigua), in the Captaincy-General of Guatemala. Robin also analyses pictorial representations of the Passion of Christ used in these settings and the practices associated with them. Unlike processions that are meant to involve all sectors of a community of faith, Robin explains that the Way of the Cross can be experienced as an autonomous, individual procession in which the believer mentally retraces the steps of Jesus Christ during Holy Week, as if in pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Robin elucidates the performative aspects prescribed for this practice through her study of sermons and devotional books providing instructions for the Way of the Cross: the worshipper moved from one point or station to the next, with each station marking a significant moment of the journey to Calvary and requiring particular prayers and reflections enabling the participant to observe Christ’s Passion. The itinerary traditionally begins with Christ condemned to death and ends with his entombment. Sanctuaries related to the Stations of the Cross with their tableaux vivants of the Passion are considered quintessentially Baroque. The most striking of these architectural ensembles is found not in Europe but in Brazil, where the Third Order of the Franciscans enlisted the great architect and sculptor Aleijadinho to design and decorate the pilgrimage site of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos at Congonhas (fig. 0.2). Completed at the end of the eighteenth century, the Brazilian site was commissioned as a replica of the Santuário do Bom Jesus do Monte in Braga, which began to be envisioned as a replica of Calvary in 1629 (fig. 0.3). The artistic achievement of Aleijadinho and his atelier at Congonhas is without peer: the life-size statues produced for each scene of the Passion and the twelve prophets crowning the church’s atrium are considered masterworks of the Baroque, despite their Rococo setting.17 Less well known, however, are the sites studied by Robin spanning from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century, attesting, as in the case of the lusophone sites, to the interest in this devotional practice over the Baroque centuries. Part 3, “Music,” highlights the importance and malleability of Baroque music in radically different contexts. This section opens with a study that calls into question the urban nature of the Baroque, which has been posited as one of its main characteristics. In “Music in Processions at
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Figure 0.2. Bom Jesus de Matosinhos, Congonhas, Brazil. Photo by the author.
the Jesuit Reducciones of Moxos and Chiquitos,” Piotr Nawrot surveys the works composed and performed for a variety of processions at the Indigenous settlements established by the Jesuits in the heart of South America. As concrete, regularized, and well-honed expressions of belief, processions were among the main practices that ordered self and society throughout Ibero-America. Processions were also generative, rendering a dynamic array of sacred rituals, images, and music efficacious to participants and spectators. Believers were seeing, hearing, and moving to make their sacred –an intensely localizing sacred– present. In the former Chiquitano and Moxos reducciones of what is now Bolivia, works of some of the most renowned European musicians were regularly played, including compositions of the former organist of the Church of the Gesù
Introduction 13
Figure 0.3. Bom Jesus do Monte, Braga, Portugal. Photo by the author.
in Rome, Domenico Zipoli, a Jesuit who lived with and composed for the Guaranis of the neighbouring reducciones in Paraguay. Nawrot’s threevolume catalogue of over five thousand pages of scores preserved in the Moxos region is the result of more than two decades of collaboration; many individuals and institutions were involved in gathering, restoring, and cataloguing this historical legacy. Based on the Moxos archive, funded in part by the Hispanic Baroque Project, Nawrot’s groundbreaking study looks at the music composed for a diversity of religious and secular processions and dances. As Nawrot demonstrates, this music and the integral involvement of the communities gave the processions an
14 Beatriz de Alba-Koch
enduring, identity-forming quality. After the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, these traditions were kept alive: instruments were made locally, scores were copied by hand, and the missionary music style that was created there by combining European and Indigenous languages, tunes, and instruments continued to be performed. To this day, Baroque music helps give cohesion to these communities. In the eighteenth century, music not only facilitated the enduring integration of local Indigenous traditions with the liturgical repertoire but also the adaptation of cathedral music to Italian stylistic novelties that appealed to the increasingly secularized urban elites. Italian musicians worked as effectively in remote settlements of the tropical savannas as they did in cosmopolitan capitals of the Spanish empire’s viceroyalties. In “Neapolitan Technology and Galant Style in a Novohispano Context: Eight Concerted Responsories by Ignacio Jerusalem,” Lucero Enríquez Rubio proposes the concept of “concerted responsories” to elucidate the compositional innovations that allowed Jerusalem to respect the requirements of the liturgical office while giving chant a fashionable twist. Despite its elegance, the galant style introduced by Jerusalem was short-lived. In contrast, the Moxos and Chiquitos peoples adopted and transformed Baroque music into identity markers of their culture. In “The Resonance of Sor Juana’s Villancicos in Spanish Cathedral Archives,” Aurelio Tello attests to the adaptability of Baroque technologies to later aesthetic frameworks and their currency beyond the seventeenth century. That texts written in New Spain were set to music in Iberia challenges the widely accepted assumptions that envisage the colonial condition as dominated by centre-to-periphery cultural disseminations. The well-known poet and playwright Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, cloistered in the Convent of San Jerónimo in Mexico City, received numerous commissions to pen lyrics for the music played during masses in the cathedrals of Mexico City, Puebla, and Oaxaca, as well as in other churches. Tello’s findings in Spain, based on extensive archival work supported by the Hispanic Baroque Project, demonstrate that cultural capital did not flow only from the empire’s metropolis to the colonies. The “lettered city” was a transoceanic phenomenon, and institutions such as the Catholic Church contributed to the globalization of culture by integrating innovations and fostering diversity that did not appear to destabilize dogma. In a world where the overwhelming majority of artists and intellectuals were men, the value ascribed to Sor Juana’s works, which were published and admired in her own time, offers an important exception to the gender dynamics of the culture, despite the poet being silenced by the church in her final years.
Introduction 15
The three studies in part 4, “Textual Continuities and Change,” shed light on the capacity of Baroque culture to adapt old forms to new paradigms; they also demonstrate the permanence of Baroque forms in the long eighteenth century, when they coexisted with the values of the Enlightenment. Few would dispute the importance of books of emblems for an allegorical understanding of the world in a Baroque context. Emblems and emblematic thought, while originating in antiquity and persisting during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, flourished during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and were found in novels, poetry, theatre, painting, architecture, sermons, and pedagogical works. The ubiquity of emblems brings to the fore the commonalities between the Hispanic and the lusophone Baroque. In “Emblems and Wit in the Hispanic Baroque according to Baltasar Gracián,” Pablo Restrepo Gautier discusses the origin and conceptual debates surrounding emblems and conceits. He argues that emblems exemplify the underlying centrality of conceptual challenges for defining Baroque culture. Looking carefully at Gracián’s 1648 theoretical disquisition Agudeza y arte de ingenio (Wit and the Art of Inventiveness), he demonstrates the interest in fragmenting and recombining the sign system that characterized Baroque culture. This complex cultural system privileged deriving moral teachings from unexpected connections and new meanings from well-known motifs. Gracián, a Jesuit, was a talented rhetorician capable of explicating difficult concepts. The Baroque has often been considered as an expression of an oppressive, deeply conservative culture. While indeed the Baroque could be decidedly conservative, in Perla Chinchilla Pawling’s study, “The Baroque as Paradox: Novelty and Printed Courtly Sermons in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century New Spain,” we see that the priority ascribed to novelty by preachers led to a new framework for conceptualizing art, one open to modernity. Gracián was not alone in his fascination with the intricacies of rhetoric. Printing particularly eloquent sermons and dedicating them to a patron was commonplace in New Spain. Given that all texts destined for the presses required written approval from church authorities, a large corpus of elaborate dedications and approbatory texts that resulted from this requirement were also printed. Penned by the clergy, these accompanying commentaries to homilies offer a window on the changing relationship at the heart of the church between the sermon as religious exhortation and the sermon as artistic achievement. Chinchilla Pawling looks specifically at the use of amplification to enhance the persuasiveness of sermons. Intended to move the senses towards piety, like other techniques such as the “composition of place” developed by the Jesuits or the Stations of the Cross of the Franciscans,
16 Beatriz de Alba-Koch
sermons had traditionally relied on repetition. However, with the printing of sermons, they increasingly employed conceptista conceits to engage the mind more than the senses, revealing a progressive modernization of art. The volume closes with a study of the continuation of key aspects of the seventeenth-century Baroque in later periods. This continuation has been examined at length in Latin American works and exhibitions of the twentieth- and twenty-first century labelled as Neo-Baroque. Yet, as Beatriz de Alba-Koch discusses in “The Literary Dream in Querétaro: A Baroque Genre and Enlightenment Ideals in New Spain,” eighteenthand early nineteenth-century literary dreams were other instances of transfers from the Baroque to what has conventionally been seen as another, more modern discursive paradigm. Contextualizing the 1797 literary dream of Francisco Eduardo Tresguerras and that penned by José Mariano Acosta Enríquez in 1803, Alba-Koch study returns to a number of facets of the Baroque discussed in the volume. Painting, architecture, sculpture, Stations of the Cross, automata, emblems, conceits, Spanish Golden Age fiction, and art at the service of a memento mori reappear in the texts of Acosta and Tresguerras. However, they convey a very different message than the one transmitted during the ancien régime. In the twilight of the viceroyalty, the Baroque was espoused by the lettered elite to convey the discontent that was to manifest itself in the struggle for independence. As a volume that studies a style of mainly Italian origin, The Ibero-American Baroque offers comparisons and considerations of European architecture, painting, sculpture, automata, music, and texts. However, as the contributors argue, each in their own manner, the long-lasting impact of the Baroque in the Americas is a legacy that cannot be explained satisfactorily as a mere cultural belatedness or transatlantic diffusion and reproduction arising from the colonial condition. That the Baroque eventually coexisted with and even reinforced values generally ascribed to the Enlightenment is suggestive of the persistence and adaptability of its cultural expressions, pointing to its capacity, ultimately, to provide a unifying stability for dynamic and complex systems of culture. The interdisciplinary nature of the volume will allow readers to more fully engage with the complexity of Baroque culture; by the same token, the rich panorama of the Baroque in the Spanish and Portuguese Americas offered here will foster a more comprehensive understanding of these regions, especially since this collection is unusually attentive to the lusophone world and more geographically remote connections. Unlike the Solomonic columns that became the well-known signifiers of Baroque architecture throughout Ibero-America and Ibero-Asia, other artistic
Introduction 17
elements proved to have less global currency. Yet despite local, regional, or continental differences, the forms of expression that blossomed in the seventeenth century and continued to be preferred by many for more than two centuries are proof of a culture that circled the globe for the first time. The same year that Christopher Columbus fortuitously encountered two continents new to him, Antonio de Nebrija presented to the Catholic Monarchs his Gramática de la lengua castellana (Grammar of the Castilian Language), a first for a Romance language. Nebrija is often quoted as having said that language is the companion of empire, a tool to ensure control over territorial expansion. Nearly a century later, with the union of the Portuguese and Spanish empires in 1580, the great-grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, Philip II of Castile (Philip the I of Portugal), came to rule the largest empire then known to humanity.18 When the union of the crowns was dissolved in 1640 into the again rivalling empires of Iberia, the conditions for the first global culture to flourish during the Baroque had been well established. Paradoxically, Nebrija’s statement of linguistic unity would be truer for the Ibero-American world in the postindependence era than during the colonial period. The strategy of the religious orders entrusted in the sixteenth century with bringing into the fold the new members of the church and subjects of the crown did not support Nebrija’s claim exactly as he had envisioned. Instead of using his Gramática, they followed his lead by creating grammars for the Indigenous languages in order to more effectively facilitate the Christianization of neophytes in their mother tongues. They thereby significantly contributed to the creation of a new unifying culture while inadvertently helping to preserve the linguistic diversity of the Americas. Without neglecting the power of the word for empire and nation, the studies assembled here, however, point to the enduring unifying power of other languages – spatial, visual, sonorous, and performative – that created the long-standing Baroque identity that is still very much with us.19 NOTES 1 Giovanni Careri’s Baroques opens with the following affirmation: “From Rome to Würzburg, Andalusia to Latin America, and Portugal to Brazil, Baroque art was the first artistic expression to go global.” Careri, Baroques, 7. His thematic discussion of the Baroque is lavishly illustrated with examples from across the globe. The Baroque as a global style is briefly discussed by Robert Harbison in his Reflections on Baroque. In his chapter on colonial Baroque he studies four Mexican churches, two Hindu temples, and the Jesuit opera San Ignacio from Chiquitos. By contrast, our volume is entirely
18 Beatriz de Alba-Koch dedicated to offering detailed empirical studies that illustrate in different media how in Ibero-America, transoceanic networks of communication allowed for the creation of artistic idioms that were idiosyncratically local yet recognizably Baroque. 2 At the inaugural exhibit of the Museo Internacional del Barroco (International Museum of the Baroque) in Puebla, Mexico, welcome videos used to set the stage for experiencing the displays that awaited the visitors focused on the global nature of the historical Baroque. The titles “The Art of Nations,” “The Baroque as Global Art,” and “Baroque, the Art That Conquered the World” flashed from gigantic screens, followed by a dazzling array of images that invited the spectators to step into the past with admiration and curiosity. 3 While responding to other priorities, the dynamic, transoceanic nature of the Baroque is also evident in the mosques built in Istanbul in the eighteenth century. Ünver Rüstem explains that in the Ottoman empire’s capital, the Baroque flourished, “above all, because it was meaningful in its (early) modern context, providing a manifold apparatus by which to connote magnificence and power at a time when the increased movement of people, objects, and ideas gave new impetus to competitive and cosmopolitan shows of visual splendour.” Rüstem, Ottoman Baroque, 16. 4 An important case of the repudiation of the Baroque emerges from the writings of one of the founders of a Mexican national literature, Ignacio Manuel Altamirano. As a liberal who fought in Mexico’s War of Reform in favour of the separation of church and state, Altamirano associated the viceregal period with conservative oppression. He considers his famous compatriot, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, as a victim of this period. See AlbaKoch, “Writing the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Mexico,”104. 5 For a recent discussion of Neo-Baroque culture see Moser, Ndalianis, and Krieger, New Baroques. 6 Lezama Lima states: “Entre nosotros el barroco fue un arte de la contraconquista” (Among us the Baroque was a counter-conquest art). Lezama Lima, La expresión americana, 80. 7 Chiampi, “The Baroque at the Twilight of Modernity,” 512. 8 Carpentier, “The Baroque and the Marvelous Real,” 95, italics in the original. 9 Ibid., 98. 10 Moser, “The Concept of the Baroque,” 11. 11 An overview of different understandings of the Baroque and a detailed genealogy of Baroque esthetics is offered by John R. Snyder in La estética del Barroco. 12 John Rupert Martin’s Baroque remains current for its concise presentation of the defining characteristics of Baroque art and architecture.
Introduction 19 13 José Antonio Maravall’s pioneering La cultura del Barroco is invaluable in underscoring the socially and politically conservative character of the Baroque. 14 Team members met in Mexico in 2008, Bolivia in 2010, and Brazil in 2011. These conferences provided the opportunity to exchange ideas with local scholars, some of whom are contributors to this volume. A number of publications resulted from these meetings, the most notable and complementary of which is the multi-author and multi-disciplinary Lexikon of the Hispanic Baroque: Transatlantic Exchange and Transformation, edited by Evonne Levy and Kenneth Mills. Unlike the Lexikon, whose crisp, short essays are conceived around key concepts, approached provocatively by pairs of authors – one treating the peninsular Spanish kingdoms, the other the Americas – The Ibero-American Baroque distils fewer and more sustained contributions. 15 Research on the Baroque has often tended to be approached solely from the perspective of art history, as can be seen in the collection coordinated by Jonathan Brown and Juana Gutiérrez Haces, La pintura de los reinos: Identidades compartidas en el mundo hispánico (Painting of the Kingdoms: Shared Identities in the Hispanic World). This four-volume work grew from the eponymous exhibition held at the Prado and the Palacio Real of Madrid as well as at Mexico City’s Palacio de Iturbide. La pintura de los reinos analyses visual language and is most concerned with finding commonalities and/or differences among local schools of painting. It covers approximately the same time frame as The Ibero-American Baroque and includes contributions by some of the authors represented in this volume. Another work worthy of mention, but which is distinct in its objectives from the present volume, is the more theoretical Rethinking the Baroque, edited by Helen Hills. Taking on a wider geographical compass and not limiting itself to one linguistic family or culture, it also explores the Baroque from the vantage point of the visual arts. Variously described as bel composto, Gesamtkunstwerk, or the total work of art, the Baroque is best understood as effectively harnessing the rhetorical capacity of urban and landscape design, architecture, painting, sculpture, music, texts, and programmed action. A pioneering collection of articles with a somewhat similar interdisciplinary perspective to ours is the two-volume collection Struggle for Synthesis: The Total Work of Art in the 17th and 18th Centuries, coordinated by Luís de Moura Sobral and David Booth, which also includes studies by some of our contributors. 16 Bailey’s introduction eloquently paints the global nature of Jesuit art in its missions: “From the jungles of Paraguay to the jungles of the Philippines; from the rivers of Venezuela to the rivers of India; from the islands of the Amazon to the island of Macao, late Renaissance and Baroque art was
20 Beatriz de Alba-Koch claimed, altered, and enriched by the people of the four corners of the earth.” Bailey, Art on the Missions in Asia and Latin America, 4. 17 Monterroso Teixeira, Aleijadinho, O Teatro da Fé. 18 See Alba-Koch, “The Spanish Colonial Empire in the Renaissance.” 19 For a complementary discussion of Baroque culture and identity see the collection of articles edited by Pérez-Magallón and Braun, The Transatlantic Hispanic Baroque. WORKS CITED Alba-Koch, Beatriz de. “Writing the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Mexico: Liberalism, Cosmopolitanism, and Indigenismo in Altamirano.” Hispanófila 142 (2004): 101–16. – “The Spanish Colonial Empire in the Renaissance: Establishing the First Global Culture.” In A Companion to the Spanish Renaissance, edited by Hilaire Kallendorf, 89–120. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Bailey, Gauvin Alexander. Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America, 1542–1773. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. Brown, Jonathan, and Juana Gutiérrez Haces, eds. La pintura de los reinos: Identidades compartidas en el mundo hispánico/Painting of the Kingdoms: Shared Identities in the Hispanic World. 4 vols. Mexico: Fomento Cultural Banamex, 2008–9. Careri, Giovanni. Baroques. Translated by Alexandra Bonfante-Warren. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. Carpentier, Alejo. “The Baroque and the Marvelous Real.” Translated by Tanya Huntington and Lois Parkinson Zamora. In Magical Realisms: Theory, History, Community, edited by Wendy Farris and Parkinson Zamora, 89–108. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. Chiampi, Irlemar. “The Baroque at the Twilight of Modernity.” Translated by William Childers. In Baroque New Worlds: Representation, Transculturation, Counterconquest, edited by Monica Kaup and Lois Parkinson Zamora, 508–28. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. Harbison, Robert. Reflections on Baroque. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Hill, Helen, ed. Rethinking the Baroque. London: Ashgate, 2011. Levy, Evonne, and Kenneth Mills, eds. Lexikon of the Hispanic Baroque: Transatlantic Exchange and Transformation. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013. Lezama Lima, José. La expresión americana. Edited by Irlemar Chiampi. Mexico: FCE, 1993. Maravall, José Antonio. La cultura del Barroco: Análisis de una estructura histórica. Barcelona: Ariel, 1975.
Introduction 21 Martin, John Rupert. Baroque. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. Monterroso Teixeira, José de. Aleijadinho, O Teatro da Fé. São Paulo: Metalivros, 2007. Moser, Walter. “The Concept of the Baroque.” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 33, no. 1 (2008): 11–37. Moser, Walter, Angela Ndalianis, and Peter Krieger, eds. New Baroques: From Latin America to the Hollywood Blockbuster. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Moura Sobral, Luis de, and David Booth, eds. Struggle for Synthesis: The Total Work of Art in the 17th and 18th Centuries. 2 vols. Lisbon: IPPAR, 1999. Pérez-Magallón, Jesús, and Harald Braun, eds. The Transatlantic Hispanic Baroque: Complex Identities in the Hispanic World. London: Routledge, 2014. Rüstem, Ünver. Ottoman Baroque: The Architectural Refashioning of EighteenthCentury Istanbul. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019. Snyder, Jon. La estética del Barroco. Translated by Juan Antonio Méndez. Madrid: Machado, 2014.
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1 Transfers, Encounters, Innovations: The Church of the Third Order of Saint Francis of Penance in Ouro Preto
luís de moura sobral
The Church of the Third Order of Saint Francis in the old Brazilian town of Vila Rica, now Ouro Preto, in the state of Minas Gerais, is one of the architectural masterpieces of the eighteenth century (fig. 1.1). The elegance of its shape and proportions; the distinctive composition of its front elevation, together with a refined frontispiece and painted and sculpted ornamentation, all integrated into a unitary artistic concept, give this monument a unique personality in the context of American late Baroque and Rococo art and architecture. It also marks a peak in the history of Franciscan Third Order art and architecture in the Luso-Brazilian world. Proudly silhouetted against the surrounding mountains in the outskirts of the town, the Ouro Preto church is a free-standing building, and is not associated with a Franciscan monastery of the First Order, as is common with Third Order chapels. In that, it symbolizes the central position of Third Orders (and lay confraternities in general) in the structure of the colonial society in Minas Gerais.1 This region, in the hinterland of Rio de Janeiro, was colonized in the eighteenth century, following the discovery of rich deposits of gold and precious stones. To further control the development of these resources, the Portuguese crown prohibited religious orders from settling in the area. This situation greatly favoured the growth of confraternities, then emancipated from the control of the old institutions. It also favoured the search for new architectural solutions. Indeed, Ouro Preto was soon to adopt vigorous, inventive structures, formed by ellipses or combinations of ellipses, uncommon in the Portuguese tradition and almost unknown in Hispanic America. This led to the emergence of a group of buildings with a strong, dynamic personality, sometimes not very accurately called the “Borrominesque churches” of Minas Gerais. The São Francisco church was built between 1766 and 1794; its decoration was completed thirty years later. Two major artists are associated with the church, António Francisco Lisboa (1735–1814), the celebrated
26 Luís de Moura Sobral
Figure 1.1. Church of the Third Order of Saint Francis, Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil, 1766–94. Photo by the author, 2011.
Aleijadinho, and the painter Manuel da Costa Ataíde (1762–1830). The first was long considered the architect of the building, but that thesis has fallen out of favour.2 Aleijadinho is, however, the sculptor-designer of the high altar, the decoration on the vault of the sanctuary (capela-mor), the pulpits, and of the outstanding lavabo in the sacristy. He also designed the frontispiece and the main portal of the chapel, and, alone or together with José António de Brito, carved or supervised the carvings of their sculpted decoration. Between 1801 and 1812, Ataíde painted the quadratura on the ceiling, together with several other pictures for the nave, the sanctuary, and the sacristy. This study deals with a few aspects of the decorative scheme of the church, especially the sculptures of the façade, and the paintings on the ceilings of the narthex and of the nave. I will try to explain the conceptual unity of this decoration by analysing the correspondences between its parts. I will also investigate graphic and textual sources for some painted elements and, finally, I will briefly discuss the singularity of São Francisco in regard to the iconographical tradition of the Franciscan Third Orders in the Lusitanian world.
Transfers, Encounters, Innovations in Ouro Preto 27
The Façade The front elevation of São Francisco is formed by a narthex of trapezoid plan, flanked by two cylindrical towers located slightly towards the back, thus marking the transition with the nave. Columns and pilasters accentuate angles and changes of direction of the walls, emphasizing the verticality of the elevation. The free-standing, lateral ionic columns with unfluted shafts, placed diagonally at 45-degree angles, draw the eye to the shape of the towers. The round, lateral protrusions of the latter impart to the composition a sculptural, almost sensuous character, and are among the most striking features of the building. At the same time, the composition highlights the sculpted frontispiece which welcomes the visitor. The frontispiece proper, designed by Aleijadinho around 1774, is justly considered the most accomplished work of its kind in Minas and the most beautiful Rococo composition of any material to be found in Brazil (fig. 1.2). The sculpted elements on greenish-grey soapstone (or steatite) delicately harmonize with the ochre itacolomito (a variety of quartzite) of the lintels and jambs of the door and the windows. The sculptures are divided into two parts, a roundel at the top, representing the stigmatization of Saint Francis, and a more complex, triangular composition resting on the lintel of the doorway. The latter comprises a medallion of the Virgin Mary and a double, finely carved Rococo cartouche, or rather a pair of cartouches, featuring the five wounds of Christ and their heraldic transposition into the coat of arms of Portugal. The very idea of penance, intrinsic to the order, is thus conspicuously related to the figure of the mother of Christ. Two angels sit on fragments of pediments on both sides, inviting the visitor to enter the monument. They carry symbols of the Passion (actually the one on the right side no longer carries his symbol, perhaps a spear). An imperial crown placed above the head of Mary makes the transition with the relief of Saint Francis. The figure of the Virgin Mary, in the centre of the façade, announces the main theme of the decoration of the temple. More or less forgotten on most descriptions of the façade, two phylacteries are placed on both sides of the Virgin. They are inscribed with the versicle and the response lines that follow the two stanzas of the old antiphon “Ave Regina Caelorum: DIGNARE ME LAUDARE TE VIRGO SACRATA” (Allow me to praise thee, O holy Virgin), on the left side, and “DA MIHI VIRTUTEM CONTRA HOSTES TUOS” (Against thy enemies give me strength), on the right. The Ave Regina, recited or sung at different moments of the divine office, celebrates Mary as a privileged vehicle for salvation.
28 Luís de Moura Sobral
Figure 1.2. António Francisco Lisboa, the Aleijadinho, and José António de Brito (?), frontispiece of São Francisco, Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil, 1774–5. Photo by the author, 2011.
Mary is the “Queen of Heavens” (Regina Caelorum), the “Lady of Angels” (Domina angelorum), according to the first two lines of the antiphon, and this is precisely the figure the Ouro Preto chapel wants to celebrate. The crown above the head of Mary refers to her regal status, so repeatedly invoked in the incantations of the Litany of Loreto: “Regina Angelorum … Regina Patriarcharum … Regina Prophetarum … Regina Apostolorum … Regina Martyrum.” Furthermore, on the inscription of the
Transfers, Encounters, Innovations in Ouro Preto 29
quotations from the antiphon on the façade evokes from the outset the importance of music in the liturgy – and hence in the life of the chapel. The Narthex The third and fourth lines of the antiphon Ave Regina Caelorum present Mary as the “door from whom unto the world, the light has arisen” (porta/Ex qua mundo lux est orta), a motif no doubt familiar to the faithful who regularly attended church services. Still, crossing the São Francisco doorway, visitors are not yet immersed in the light announced by the antiphon. Instead, they face a monumental and sombre vanitas painted on the ceiling of the narthex (fig. 1.3). Painted by Manuel da Costa Ataíde, between 1801 and 1812, at the same time he was working on the nave, it shares formal characteristics with the latter: Rococo ornaments in tonalities of red-orange, grey, blue, and white. Framed by a Rococo cartouche, the Vanitas also relates to the decoration of the façade, sculpted thirty years earlier. Clearly, one of the functions of the picture is to connect the façade to the decoration inside the church. Other devices stress this connection: the scriptural material (phylacteries, cartello), and the angels seated on the frame of the Vanitas, who repeat the poses of the ones on the portal. The angel in the middle, at the top of the frame, holds a phylactery with the inscription “VANITAS VANITATUM” (everything is vanity), the well-known motto from Ecclesiastes 1:2. The other angels hold penitence symbols, a scourge, a belt with nails, a rosary, and a skull. A second inscription is found on a sheet of paper inside the cartouche: “MEMENTO MORI” (remember you will die). Indeed, there is no way for the visitor to ignore the meaning of the picture. The Vanitas proper, inside the cartouche, follows the formula of a series of objects displayed on a table. Those objects symbolize the transience of life, of beauty, of glory; the danger of the senses, and the imminence of death. Death is represented at the very centre of the composition: a skull crowned with laurel leaves, a couple of bombards, one of them firing three (?) stone bullets, and a candle. The bullets engulfed in flames have yet another meaning. In fact, they very much resemble the same motif of emblem 28 of the second Centuria of Sebastián de Covarrubias’s Emblemas Morales (Madrid, 1610), whose motto “Volat illud et incandescit eundo” is taken from Ovid (Metamorphoses 2.728) (fig. 1.4). As the emblem’s subscriptio indicates, “the one-piece bullet that ignites / Running through the air … is the very symbol of Fame” that grows and increases as it flies from one ear to the other, “asserting much more than what has been.” The idea of the futility of fame and glory is therefore shared by the two motifs at the centre of the
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Figure 1.3. Manuel da Costa Ataíde, Vanitas Vanitatum, 1801–12, Church of the Third Order of Saint Francis, Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Photo by the author, 2011.
composition, the firing bombard and the crowned skull. To the right of the skull, the lit, smoking candle reminds us that life is only but a small flame that vanishes into smoke. In front of the skull, slightly to the left, a blue vase contains fresh flowers, illustrating the beauty of life and, at the same time, the inexorable flow of time. Behind the skull stands a framed painting representing a frail tree with blossoming branches, echoing similar meanings. Close to the firing bombard, this picture within a picture may refer to the story of the good and the bad tree (Matthew 7:18–19): “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” On an engraving by Gillis van Breen after Karel van Mander, dating from around 1600, this theme was used to illustrate two types of life, one guided by pleasures, the other by faith and virtue, a type of moralizing symbolism often present in vanitas paintings.
Transfers, Encounters, Innovations in Ouro Preto 31
Figure 1.4. Volat illud et incandescit eundo, Second Centuria, Emblem 28. Sebastián de Covarrubias, Emblemas Morales (Madrid, 1610).
Other objects in the cartouche relate to literary glory and to the futility of knowledge: a book, a sheet of blank paper, a quill, an inkpot, and what appears to be a wooden ruler. A hexagonal tube or case (a telescope? a measuring instrument?) may refer to science or technology – or to geometry and ballistics, since it is placed close to the bombards. Finally, to the right, there is an hourglass, one of the most common vanitas symbols; a book with musical scores; and a mandolin. Announced in a rather discreet way by the phylacteries of the façade, the theme of music is now clearly put forward. This time, however, the reference is to profane, or secular, music. The mandolin was indeed traditionally associated with profane music, and this is the type of music
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written on the page, comprising mostly triplets (groups of three notes). This indicates probably a minuet or a gigue.3 The traditional association of profane music with luxury is explicit, for example, on a vanitas engraved by Theodor Matham in 1622 (fig. 1.5). On a table dressed before us, we see a group of four musical instruments (a mandolin, a pipe or a bombard, a lute, and a viol), and an open book with a musical score composed by Joan Albert Ban (c. 1597–1644), based on lyrics by Ovid. To the left there are other symbols of riches and of the senses: a coffer with jewels, a pewter pitcher, and two glasses. A ballroom scene with lavishly dressed couples dancing and drinking, and musicians on a balcony, can be seen on the background through a window. From the entrance of São Francisco, the observer cannot see the lower part of the Vanitas, hidden by the windscreen (guarda-vento) that separates the narthex from the nave. The composition comprises in fact a smaller cartouche, a kind of appendage to the bigger one, with the following text: “Quid quia [sic, for quidquid] agis prudenter agas, et respice finem. Sir. 7. cap.” (Whatever you do, be prudent and think about the end) (fig. 1.6). The sentence is wrongly identified as a quotation from chapter 7 of the Book of Sirach, that is to say, the Ecclesiasticus. To be sure, the origin of the sentence on the Ouro Preto Vanitas is obscure. Preserved in the medieval Gesta Romanorum, maxims of comparable meanings can be found in Herodotus, Aesop, Publilius Syrus, Petrarch, La Fontaine, and so on.4 Still, the proverb was not taken from the Ecclesiasticus, although it has often been confused with verse 7, line 40: “Omnibus operibus tuis memorare novissima tua, et in aeternum non peccabis.” Where, then, could the Ouro Preto painter have found it? I suspect the answer lies on a mezzotint made circa 1760 by the German engraver Johann Elias Ridinger (1698–1767), which presents striking similarities with the Ataíde painting (fig. 1.7). Indeed, the mezzotint shows the central motif of a skull placed on a book, flanked by a candleholder, and a vase with a bouquet. Under the book, the engraver placed a blank sheet of paper that Ataíde would use to write the inscription MEMENTO MORI. Ridinger put the same title on the text, below the image, together with the Latin maxim and its German translation. It is worth noting that both the spelling and the punctuation are practically the same in the print and in the painting. On the former, Ridinger wrote “Sir. 7. Cap.” under the text, and this is exactly the abbreviation Ataíde used in his cartouche. It is therefore possible that the Brazilian artist had with him a copy of the German print when preparing his magnum opus. The Ouro Preto Vanitas belongs to a pictorial category elaborated at the end of the sixteenth century in the humanistic circles close to the
Transfers, Encounters, Innovations in Ouro Preto 33
Figure 1.5. Theodor Matham (c. 1605–1676), Jacob Matham, publisher (1571– 1631), Vanitas, 1622. Engraving, image: 229 mm x 330 mm. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, Inv. 1963.30.13265.
University of Leyden, in the Low Countries. That was a time of serious religious and political troubles in Europe, and the genre reflects the intellectual instability of the period. Often, vanitas were infused with neo-Stoic ideas and feelings. Such is the case in the 1603 oil on wood panel by Jacques de Gheyn II, held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; it is considered the oldest vanitas painting preserved. De Gheyn represents what became some of the most typical elements of the genre: a skull, a soap or crystal bubble, vases with fresh and dried flowers, pieces of silver and gold. The particular philosophical turn of the picture is given by the representation of Heraclitus weeping and Democritus laughing. From then on, the genre developed in different directions, and some themes gained traction. The homo bulla (man as bubble), for instance, is one of them. Hendrick Goltzius’ well-known engraving Quia Evadet, dated 1594, shows a naked putto reclined on a skull, making soap bubbles, as ephemeral as smoke and as life itself (fig. 1.8). One year
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Figure 1.6. Manuel da Costa Ataíde, Vanitas Vanitatum, lower part, 1801–12, Church of the Third Order of Saint Francis, Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Photo by the author, 2011.
later, Hendrick Hondius engraved a memento mori after Frans Pourbus: a putto holds a skull, as he reclines over an open book, in front of an hourglass and a vase of flowers. It is of course possible to see reflections of these prints, known and circulated worldwide, in the composition by Ataíde. Aleijadinho might as well have used similar models when he was working on the soapstone lavabo in the sacristy, dated 1777–9. At the top of his monumental work he placed a putto holding a skull, pendent to another with an hourglass, and in the lower part of the lavabo the sculptor placed two more putti showing a scourge and a belt with nails. These are the same motifs represented on the Vanitas of the narthex, which accentuate in an almost obsessive manner the visual coherence of the decorative scheme. Jacques de Gheyn’s picture implied a critical, general reflection on human reality, on human life. It does not contain, however, any direct references to the idea of Christian salvation. In the post-Tridentine Catholic world, though, things tended to be somewhat different. For example, a painting on copper by the Antwerp artist Jan van Kessel I, The Virgin Mary
Transfers, Encounters, Innovations in Ouro Preto 35
Figure 1.7. Johann Elias Ridinger (1698–1767), Memento Mori. Mezzotint, ca 1760.
Surrounded by Symbols of Vanitas (c. 1665, private collection), shows those symbols having both positive and negative meanings; the painting is furthermore surmounted by a crucifix and the Eucharist, leaving no doubt about its interpretation. Similarly the Seville painter Juan de Valdés Leal includes in his Allegory of Salvation (c. 1660, York Art Gallery) books on pious subjects, a picture of the crucifixion on the Golgotha, and an angel pointing to the crown of salvation.
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Some of the same motifs are seen in the allegorical novel Compendio Narrativo do Peregrino da America (Narrative Compendium of the Pilgrim in America), written by Brazilian-born Nuno Marques Pereira (1652– 1728) and published in Lisbon in 1728. The book is about the spiritual wanderings of a young man, the Pilgrim, in northwest Brazil. At some point, the Pilgrim enters a church to pray. On the façade of this church he sees a skull accompanied by a sonnet that speaks of the vanity of worldly things. On the other side of the façade, there is a painting representing “a soul burning in ardent fierce flames,” waiting, as the respective sonnet puts it, for “deliverance from my complaints.”5 The opposition between good and evil, sin and salvation, is of course proverbial in the moralistic literature of the period, and we can only speculate about the possibility that the book was in the possession of the patrons and the artists of the Ouro Preto chapel. Going back to the Ouro Preto Vanitas, there is no direct religious symbol on the still life proper. Seated on the frame of the painting, the angels holding penitence instruments promote practices of mortification as an antidote to sin. From another point of view, the angels function as an Albertian admonitory. They are intermediaries between the observer and the picture, and invite us to meditate on the futility of all things. In fact, they play the same role as the sonnets on the church façade of Marques Pereira’s Pilgrim in America. To be sure, the vanitas theme is rather unexpected at the entrance of churches of the Third Order, even though images with comparable meanings can be seen in Franciscan houses. In the São Francisco monastery in Salvador, Bahia, for example, the huge azulejos panel to the right side of the entrance, circa 1737, representing scenes of the life of the saint, includes at its top an emblem of penitence, formed by a book, a skull, a scourge, and a cross (fig. 1.9). Similar emblems can be seen on the azulejos of circa 1760–75 in the cloisters of the monastery in Olinda, Pernambuco, representing, again, scenes of the life of Saint Francis of Assisi. Still these works refer to the saint, as his personality and history had been reinterpreted by post-Tridentine sources, as Émile Mâle has shown long ago. Manuel da Costa Ataíde himself represented in 1794–5 this penitent Saint Francis, consoled by angel-musicians and yet accompanied by mortifying symbols (skull, cilice, scourge, hourglass), on the ceiling of the sacristy of the Third Order in Mariana, a town very close to Ouro Preto. And before him, António Simões Ribeiro (active in Brazil from 1735 to 1755), painted a Saint Francis seemingly accompanied by a book and a skull on the quadratura of the nave of the Third Order of Saint Dominic in Salvador, Bahia.
Transfers, Encounters, Innovations in Ouro Preto 37
Figure 1.8. Hendrick Goltzius, Quia Evadet, 1594. Engraving.
The Ouro Preto Vanitas is, however, a completely different work. First, it is not related to the person of Saint Francis. Second, even if it was conceived as part of an ensemble, the painting appears as an autonomous composition, separated from the quadratura of the nave. Third, it seems to pay particular attention to the universe of music, profane music, however, as we have seen. In that, the Vanitas announces one of the themes of the quadratura of the nave: sacred music, music to honour and glorify the Mother of God. The Quadratura The ceiling of São Francisco is covered with what can be considered the last meaningful experiment with quadratura painting in Brazil (fig. 1.10).
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Figure 1.9. Workshop of Bartolomeu Antunes, detail of azulejos panel, c. 1737. São Francisco Monastery, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. Photo by the author, 2011.
Here, in fact, the architectural structure inherent to the genre has almost completely disappeared. There are no walls with fanciful constructions, no openings leading to fantastic spaces as seen, for instance, in the ceilings by Caetano da Costa Coelho in Rio de Janeiro or by António Simões Ribeiro in Salvador, the earliest preserved examples of quadratura in Brazil (first half of the eighteenth century). In Ouro Preto, Ataíde painted a diaphanous superstructure made of porticos, pilasters, consoles, and columns that stand almost miraculously against a blue sky. At the centre of the composition, the Virgin Mary in Glory is surrounded by myriad angel musicians, singers, and cherubs. The Virgin stands on the crescent moon, while a couple of young angels hold a crown of stars above her head, two attributes normally associated with the Immaculate Conception. In the middle of the long sides of the quadratura, Ataíde painted two balconies with angels offering flowers to the Mother of God. In the corners of his composition, at the base of the structure, he placed the four doctors of the Latin church: Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose, and Gregory.
Transfers, Encounters, Innovations in Ouro Preto 39
Around the Virgin, the singers and musicians are roughly distributed into three groups, each with a conductor identified by a rolled sheet of music he holds in his hands. Seven angels playing bass flute, horn, triangle, flutes (two instruments), mandolin, and pipe (or bombard) form the first section, to the left. The angel playing the bass flute, older than his companions, has stopped playing and is absorbed in contemplation of the Virgin. The section to the right also comprises seven angels plus the choirmaster: one violin, one pipe (or bombard), one trumpet, and four singers, three of whom are reading musical scores. The string section, below the figure of Mary, is centred on King David with his harp, and is formed by two cellos, one violin, two lutes, one triangle, and possibly one more instrument, no longer visible. The meaning of King David in the quadratura is manifold. First, his position at the feet of the Virgin evokes the theme of the Tree of Jesse, the genealogy of Christ, whom David prefigures. Second, his prominent place in the composition makes him appear as the principal musician in the orchestra. Third and foremost, King David was supposedly the author of the Psalms, one of which is seemingly being interpreted by the orchestra. In fact, the word Domine appears repeatedly on the score held by the angels at his feet, evoking the old Gregorian hymn Domine, Dominus Noster (“Domine, Dominus noster, quam admirabile est nomen tuum in universa terra!”), often put to music. The hymn was taken from Psalms 8:2 (“Domine Dominator noster quam grande est nomen tuum in universa terra qui posuisti gloriam tuam super caelos”), and the following line, verse 3, could quite literally be applied to the quadratura and may help us understand the entire decorative program: “Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger” (“ex ore infantium et lactantium perfecisti laudem propter adversarios meos ut quiescat inimicus et ultor”). The infantium et lactantium can be identified as the singing angels, while the inimicus et ultor could as well be understood as an answer to the Ave Regina Caelorum on the façade: “Against thy enemies give me strength” (“Da mihi virtutem contra hostes tuos”) (fig. 1.2). Other elements of the ceiling decoration emphasize the conceptual unity of the ensemble, stressing the continuity between the exterior and the interior of the temple. At the centre of the small sides of the quadratura, respectively above the entrance and above the sanctuary, Ataíde painted two porticos – indeed, triumphal arches - made of columns, pillars, arches, and broken pediments. These porticos fulfil now, thanks to the power of painting, the promises of the Ave Maria Caelorum inscribed on the frontispiece: indeed light floods into the temple.
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Angels recline on the pediments of the porticos, echoing the carved motifs at the entrance and the painted ones of the Vanitas. Furthermore, those angels flank cartouches inscribed with verses from other antiphons to Mary. The one above the entrance reads “Speciosa facta es, et suavis in deliciis tuis, Sancta Dei genitrix” (Thou art made fair and sweet in thy delicateness, o holy Mother of God). At the opposite side, the cartouche above the sanctuary reads “Assumpta est Maria in caelum: gaudent Angeli, laudantes benedicunt Dominum” (Mary is assumed into heaven: the Angels do rejoice, their lauding does bless our Lord). Both antiphons are sung during the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, at vespers and at lauds, respectively. The painted porticos accentuate the longitudinal axis of the temple that leads to the sanctuary; the cartouche with the Assumpta est Maria announces the group representing the assumption of the Virgin and her reception in the heavens by the Trinity, sculpted by Aleijadinho around 1791–2, above the main altarpiece. Finally, a third cartouche was put below King David (fig. 1.11). Its inscription says: “Ego Mater pulchrae dictionis (sic, for dilectionis), & timoris & agnitionis, & Sanctae spei” (I am the mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope). The quotation is from the Book of Ecclesiasticus, or the Book of Sirach, and this time, contrary to the quotation on the Vanitas, it does correspond verbatim to chapter 24: 24. This text is recited during the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, at Compline (Ad Completorium). Let us now consider the calligraphy of this last inscription. Before the text Ataíde put the abbreviation Cap. for Capitulum, the way this section is termed in the breviary discussed below. After the text, he wrote Deo gratias, preceded by a monogram formed by the letter R and the digit 7. This monogram is used in liturgical books to identify the response (refrain) of the choir or the congregation to another recited part. Furthermore, the capital E, the first letter of the word Ego, is two lines high, as was usual in typographical layouts. However, such graphic displays have no real utility, since the quadratura is positioned too high to be viewed from the floor. A similar layout of the same text appears, for instance, on page l of the Officium Parvum Beatae Mariae included in the Horae Diurnae Breviarii Romani, Ex Decreto sacrosancti Concilii Tridentini restituti, published by Plantin in Antwerp in 1763, a possible source for Ataíde’s cartouche (fig. 1.12; see bottom left column and top right). Beyond its meaning as a text, the sentence acquires in the quadratura the status of an image. Consequently, Ataíde treated it like any other visual device, simply copying it from the model if that proved satisfactory. The Mother of God is, therefore, the central figure of the decoration of the Church of the Third Order of Saint Francis in Ouro Preto.
Transfers, Encounters, Innovations in Ouro Preto 41
Figure 1.10. Manuel da Costa Ataíde, ceiling of the nave, 1801–12, Church of the Third Order of Saint Francis, Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Photo by the author, 2011.
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Figure 1.11. Ego Mater pulchrae, detail of the ceiling of the Church of the Third Order of Saint Francis, Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil, 1801–12. Photo by the author, 2011.
This Marian celebration is organized in a polyphonic manner, using different artistic techniques, and numerous references to written, visual, and musical culture. Music plays a major role in this celebration and, as I have already suggested, becomes in itself a major theme of the decoration. At the same time that it praises Virgin Mary, the church pays homage to the so-called Minas School of Music. Indeed, the paintings coincide with the end of what musicologists consider the golden age of musical life in Minas, marked in particular by the renowned composers Emérico Lobo de Mesquita (1746–1805), author of several antiphons to the Virgin Mary, and João de Deus de Castro Lobo (1794–1832). Both worked for the Third Order in Vila Rica – the latter was born in Ouro Preto
Figure 1.12. Page 1 of the Officium Parvum Beatae Mariae, included in the Horae Diurnae Breviarii Romani, Ex Decreto sacrosancti Concilii Tridentini restituti (Antwerp: Ex Architypographia Plantiniana, 1763). Photo by the author.
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– and it is almost impossible not to see in the works by Ataíde, incidentally a musician himself, a proud testimony to the vitality of the local artistic scene.6 Decoration in the Franciscan Third Order After a long period of decline, the Franciscan Lay Third Order of Penance was restored in Portugal at the beginning of the seventeenth century, with enormous success, especially among the elite classes.7 The movement was soon to extend to Brazil. For the decoration of their temples, Third Orders mainly focused, as was usual with religious institutions, on series of notable figures of the order, saints, and beatified and venerable individuals, reflecting the generalized interest in hagiography in the post-Tridentine Catholic world. On the other hand, by the end of the seventeenth century, a particular decorative modality was established that tended to completely cover the interiors of the temples with combinations of paintings, gilt woodworks and carvings (talha dourada), and ceramic tiles (azulejos). The influential Lisbon confraternity, first installed in the Franciscan Convent of Jesus, commissioned an early example of this type of decoration. In 1640 the brotherhood built a new chapel, adjacent but separated from the convent. For its decoration, completed by the end of the century, Marcos da Cruz (c. 1610–1683) painted eight canonized figures of the Third Order, six of which still exist: those of Rose of Viterbo, Marguerite of Cortone, Elizabeth of Hungary, Louis of France, Elzear, and Conrad of Piacenza.8 In other instances, saints were represented alongside lesser known or less celebrated personalities. In Évora, also in Portugal, a far more modest chapel was installed in the north transept of the gothic church of Saint Francis. The decoration, combining azulejos and paintings in superposed stories, dates from the first third of the eighteenth century. Figure 1.13 shows the disposition of the works on the right side wall: Blessed Roberto de Malatesta and Geraldo Maltese on the azulejos, and Saint Rose of Viterbo and Venerable Raymond Lull on the paintings. The Third Order church in Faro, in the southern province of Algarve in Portugal, an autonomous building, erected close to the now disappeared São Francisco monastery, has a complex history. The walls and vault of the nave were entirely covered with azulejos in 1730 (fig. 1.14). With some important alterations (the very orientation of the church was later reversed; some azulejos were replaced and moved) this decoration is still extant. It is divided into roughly two parts, the vault and the lateral walls. As in Ouro Preto, the vault is dedicated to the Virgin Mary. A
Figure 1.13. South wall of the chapel of the Franciscan Third Order, Saint Francis Church, Évora, Portugal. Photo by the author, 2013.
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complex, dense structure made of pilasters, pediments, consoles, architraves, balconies, and niches frames nine episodes of the life of the Virgin Mary, distributed into three parallel rows. The four doctors of the Latin church and the four cardinal virtues are also represented in the vault. The sidewalls are decorated in turn with scenes of the life of Saint Francis and with more than a dozen individuals of the Third Order, most of them of secondary importance. Portuguese azulejos of this period used exclusively blue hues. This technique does not allow the differentiation of the levels of reality (frames, architectural elements, figures all present the same monochromatic consistency), making it difficult to read large displays. Contrasting with the clarity of the Ouro Preto ceiling, the Faro chapel stands as an example of the more or less convincing experiments of integral decoration with azulejos carried out in Portugal during the Baroque period. In Brazil, two chapels of the Third Order are justly considered among the most accomplished examples of Baroque total decoration in the Luso-Brazilian world. In Recife, Pernambuco, the Capela Dourada (Guilt Chapel) was grafted to the church of the Franciscan Convent of Saint Anthony. It dates from the very end of the seventeenth century. Its decoration was completed less than twenty years later (fig. 1.15). The interest in the building, constructed as a large rectangular hall, lies in its rich decoration. The walls and the ceiling are divided into a system of regular compartments prominently framed by gilt woodwork. The compartments correspond to the altars and the paintings. These represent individually forty-eight tertiaries, and the virtues of faith, fortitude, charity, and hope. The program is completed by two long paintings evoking the Martyrs of Japan, murdered in Nagasaki in 1597. This series of portraits is by far the most impressive of its kind in Brazil. Adjacent to the Franciscan monastery in Rio de Janeiro, the chapel of the Third Order was decorated between 1726 and 1738 (fig. 1.16). This impressive decoration was realized by some of the most important artists of the period, the woodcarvers Manuel de Brito and Francisco Xavier de Brito, and the painter Caetano da Costa Coelho. Author of the quadraturas in the sanctuary and in the nave, Coelho was the initiator of this demanding technique in Brazil. As for the iconographic program, the sculptures and paintings represent Franciscan figures, mostly of the Third Order, with few exceptions (the church fathers, being the most notable). We are now better positioned, I think, to appreciate the singularity of the Church of the Third Order of Saint Francis in Ouro Preto. Its singularity is due above all to the conceptual refinement of the project and to the quality of its execution. It is also due to the intelligence of
Figure 1.14. Chapel of the Franciscan Third Order, actual sanctuary (former nave); azulejos by Policarpo de Oliveira Bernardes (1730) and others (1761). Faro, Portugal. Photo by the author, 2011.
Figure 1.15. Capela Dourada, Convent of Saint Anthony, end of seventeenth–eighteenth century. Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil. Photo by the author, 2011.
Figure 1.16. Chapel of the Third Order of Saint Francis of Penance, first half of the eighteenth century. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Photo by the author, 2011.
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the iconographic program. Even if several Franciscans are represented in the sanctuary and in the nave, the brotherhood reaffirmed the traditional Baroque devotion to the Virgin Mary. By doing so, they appear to go beyond the more domestic devotions. Moreover, the integration of a vanitas into a (symbolic) spiritual journey reveals a degree of visual refinement not often found in similar works. Drawing on different genres and traditions, and paying particular attention to local realities, the Ouro Preto monument accomplishes a unique synthesis on both cultural and artistic levels. NOTES Boschi, Os Leigos e o Poder. 1 2 For the history of the building, see Bazin, A Arquitetura Religiosa Barroca no Brasil, and Oliveira, O Rococó Religioso no Brasil e seus Antecedentes Europeu. See also Bastos, A Maravilhosa Fábrica de Virtudes. 3 I thank Sebastián Ferrero for helping me with musical matters. The suggestion of the gigue was made by Norberto Broggini; mention appears in Hill, “Fragmentos de mística e vanidade na arte de um templo de Minas.” 4 Tosi, Dizionario delle sentenze Latine e Greche, 707–8. I thank António Andrade from the University of Aveiro for making this text available to me. 5 Pereira, Compendio Narrativo do Peregrino da America, 393–4. 6 For this and other related musical matters see Monteiro, João de Deus de Castro Lobo. 7 Esperança, História seráfica da Ordem dos Frades Menores, 384–5. 8 On this series of paintings see Sobral, Bento Coelho. WORKS CITED Bastos, Rodrigo. A Maravilhosa Fábrica de Virtudes: O Decoro na Arquitetura Religiosa de Vila Rica, Minas Gerais (1711–1822). São Paulo: Editora da Universidade de São Paulo, 2013. Bazin, Germain. A Arquitetura Religiosa Barroca no Brasil [1956–1958]. 2 vols. Translated by Glória Lúcia Nunes. Rio de Janeiro: Record, 1983. Boschi, Caio César. Os Leigos e o Poder: Irmandades Leigas e Política Colonizadora em Minas Gerais. São Paulo: Ática, 1986. Esperança, Fr. Manuel da. História seráfica da Ordem dos Frades Menores na Província de Portugal: Part I. Lisbon: 1656. Hill, Marcos S. “Fragmentos de mística e vanidade na arte de um templo de Minas: A Capela da Ordem Terceira de São Francisco de Ouro Preto” Revista do IAC/UFOP 2 (1994): 38–48.
Transfers, Encounters, Innovations in Ouro Preto 51 Monteiro, Maurício. João de Deus de Castro Lobo e as práticas musicais nas associações religiosas de Minas Gerais (1794–1832). MA thesis in history, University of São Paulo, 1995. Oliveira, Myriam Andrade Ribeiro de. O Rococó Religioso no Brasil e seus Antecedentes Europeu. São Paulo: Cosac & Naify, 2003. Pereira, Nuno Marques. Compendio Narrativo do Peregrino da America. Lisbon: Manoel Fernandes da Costa, 1728. Sobral, Luís de Moura, ed. Bento Coelho (1620–1708) e a Cultura do seu Tempo. Lisbon: Instituto Português do Património Arquitectónico, 1998. (Cat. nos. 86–7). Tosi, Renzo. Dizionario delle sentenze Latine e Greche. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2000.
2 The Elevation of the Genre of “Shrine Paintings” in Peru
evonne levy
In colonial Spanish America the genre of shrine paintings, that is, depictions of a sculpture of the Virgin and Child as in a shrine (with or without an altar mensa proper) not only flourished but advanced beyond its European origins, taking on distinctive and uniquely vibrant forms (figs. 2.1–2.2). In their American iterations these paintings almost invariably represented either a dressed sculpture or an imagen de vestir, a schematic wood figure made to be dressed, which was popularized in Spain (especially Andalusia) in the sixteenth century.1 Representing either newly carved figures or true effigies of European cult statues, the paintings made after these sculptures constitute one of the most interesting genres of Spanish American painting (there was no equivalent genre in Brazil), most likely inspired by engraved images of shrines rather than European examples of shrine paintings, though this is not to be excluded.2 These paintings have become well known through exhibitions, yet why these paintings took off in the way and form they did in the Americas has yet to be fully explored.3 Though much discussed, the genre is still in need of precise terms of analysis. Barbara Duncan called them “statue paintings”;4 Ramón Mujica Pinilla qualified them as “dressed statue paintings”;5 and José de Mesa and Teresa Gisbert classified them as paintings of the Virgin and Child “derived from images” and related them to the “pintura de bodegón,” or still life paintings.6 Recently, a group of Spanish and American examples were grouped together as “Vírgenes de Bulto.”7 Alfonso Pérez Sánchez, addressing Spanish examples, called them “trampantojos a lo divino” (divine tricks), or sacred trompe l’oeil,8 emphasizing the play between representation and realism aimed at imbuing the image with supernatural aura.9 I will refer to them as “shrine paintings” because it is the representation of the statue in a specific context, an altar (with mensa) or shrine (without) with the designations of honour typical of shrines (lamps,
Figure 2.1. Cusco School, Virgin of Rosary of Pomata, oil on canvas, latter part of the eighteenth century. Museo Pedro de Osma, Lima, Peru. Photo: Museo Pedro de Osma.
54 Evonne Levy
Figure 2.2. Luis Niño (active in Potosí), Virgin of the Victory of Málaga, oil on canvas, c. 1740. Denver Art Museum Collection: Gift of John C. Freyer for the Frank Barrows Freyer Collection, 1969.345. Photo: Courtesy of the Denver Art Museum.
The Elevation of the Genre of “Shrine Paintings” in Peru 55
garlands of flowers, or curtains), that distinguishes these images from other representations of the Virgin as a living being and in a naturalistic setting (that is, in paintings that purport to open onto a world). The shrine paintings should be grouped together as a type with the conceptually equivalent group of Spanish American images of crucifixes on altars.10 Shrine paintings were produced all over the Spanish Americas; the same Spanish models and motivations existed in both the novohispano and Peruvian viceroyalties. A case can be made for my argument in New Spain, where Indigenous practices, beliefs, materials, and events shaped the genre in distinctive ways.11 Here I focus, however, on the particular forms and motivations for such works produced in the Andes, specifically in and around Cusco; there the European system of illusionism was resisted at the close of the seventeenth century in ways which gave a particular appearance and conceptual logic to shrine paintings. A general history of the genre, though, will cross into both viceroyalties; the origins of these shrine paintings in both places have been ascribed to the ubiquitous European devotional engravings and to painted Spanish prototypes. That these works were initially based on engravings does not preclude our view of them as new and elaborated forms of expression, “creative re-elaborations” as Tom Cummins has put it.12 The few examples of Spanish shrine paintings that have reached publication are mostly anonymous or by minor artists, but those by some major artists like Alonso Cano contributed to the development of the genre in Spain, where it was probably more prevalent than the literature on Golden Age painting would suggest.13 There are also a handful of fine examples of this genre of painting (all representations of the Virgin of Loreto) ascribed to well-known Italian artists (and many more unattributed works by minor artists) from around the turn of the seventeenth century.14 To my knowledge, the analysis of the circulation of shrine paintings between Italy, Spain, and the Americas has yet to be broached. Symptomatic of this blind spot in the history of a genre associated with the Spanish empire was the attribution in the recent comparative Iberian and American exhibition “Pintura de los Reinos” of a very close version of the Virgin of Loreto by the Italian artist Carlo Saraceni to a painter of the Lima School.15 Compared with Spanish shrine paintings, their Italian counterparts have been taken even less seriously by art historians, and for one crucial reason: in a teleological narrative that dominates the history of Italian art of the early modern period, one in which art is gradually freed from its cultic purpose, a shrine painting is too tied to its use as a cult object to be considered a legitimate genre of painting. Why the European examples have been treated in art history as derivative works, ex votos of cult
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practices, rather than as art, is worth exploring, while taking note of the different ways these works have been absorbed into narratives of early modern Spanish and Italian painting.16 First, ex votos, commissioned in supplication and thanks to an image, tend towards particularity over universality; though they often tell stories, they are not considered in the same category as narrative paintings or historie, the genres of painting ranked highest by the Italian theorist of narrative painting Leon Battista Alberti in the inaugural early modern treatise on painting, De Pictura (1425). Spanish American shrine paintings could have been ex votos – though we often know little about the circumstances of their commission and their intended locations – but place primary emphasis on the vestments adorning a particular Virgin and the appearance of the dressed statue in its richly endowed shrine. The second and more important reason for the non-definition of the genre in European art is that, because of the desirability of replication in cultic images, shrine paintings allow for limited invention, while invention was a core value in early modern painting as first articulated by Alberti. It is not surprising that a genre whose power was based on the value attributed to the sameness of the image, to the “trueness” of an effigy, has not earned a place in a history of art driven by a telos of either invention or progressive naturalism. Thus, to focus on one symptomatic work of the period in the history of art, Caravaggio’s Madonna of Loreto (1605– 6; fig. 2.3) creatively restages the image of one of the most sought-after icons in Italy as a living event of pilgrimage; it has long been considered a narrative work, a historia rather than a cult image.17 It is worth noting that Caravaggio’s well-known painting quickly lost its association with the Loretan cult object – a reference further resisted until only recently by many Italian art historians, who, now coming full circle, propose that Caravaggio’s painting is a kind of ex voto18 – and was truly a dead end iconographically, inspiring virtually no imitations.19 By contrast to the place that Caravaggio’s singular historia has earned in the history of art, the cult images of the Virgin of Loreto – which inspired hundreds of images of the statue in various guises and media on both sides of the ocean – have earned no place at all.20 These images were far more widespread than we can now imagine. But since they were inevitably by lesser artists (fig. 2.4) and, over time, fell into poor condition, were moved into basements, or were destroyed, they have become almost invisible in the history of art (though not in material histories of cults).21 There is a deep irony in the art historical marginalization of the shrine painting, an irony which can be fleshed out by describing the role in art history of one of the most emblematic works of Italian Renaissance painting: Raphael’s Sistine Madonna (fig. 2.5). Raphael’s painting should
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Figure 2.3. Caravaggio, Madonna of Loreto, oil on canvas, 1601–2, Church of Sant’Agostino, Rome, Italy. Photo: Scala/Art Resource, NY.
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Figure 2.4. Avanzino Nucci, Madonna of Loreto, oil on canvas, 1580–1620. Pinacoteca Diocesana Senigallia, Italy.
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be considered a shrine painting but in fact has come to stand for the very opposite since the Romantic pre-history of the modern discipline of art history. The Virgin and Child appear in a heavenly setting on a cloud. The papal tiara and two winged angels peering out at the spectator (whose gestures have been linked to the rituals associated with the celebration of the mass), define the altar mensa. A parted green curtain, the type that typically covered images on altars, reinforces the identity of the space as an altar.22 Yet, with the clouds appearing to occupy space in front of the curtain we are not sure whether what is represented is a painting on an altar or whether we are to experience the Virgin and her entourage directly, as real, which is to say, a vision or a dream. In its constitutive parts, the Sistine Madonna looks a lot like a shrine painting although art historians have resisted precisely this possibility, having considered it, among other things, a historia, an enlivened version of the sacra conversazione, a vision (of the Virgin, not of an image of the Virgin) and, most symptomatically of all, have considered the curtain not a covering of a venerated image but a framing of a window.23 For art historians there is a key difference between Raphael’s Sistine Madonna and the hundreds of works like it that experimented with analogous imagery,24 and the shrine paintings under discussion here. First, Raphael’s Virgin is Raphael’s own invention (and by this is meant the pose, the expression, the characterization of her face); she is not a cult image. Scholars have not tied this work to a historical or local image to which Raphael would have referred to.25 And thus if the image is copied, it is as a Raphael, not as a cult image. What is more, the fact that the work was painted for an altar but once removed from it (in the late eighteenth century) became one of the most exalted works of art has made this an emblematic modern work of art. As Hans Belting put it, the Sistine Madonna is the work that has been used by art history to mark the loosening of art from its predominantly cultic use in the Middle Ages in the direction of disinterestedness and autonomy: art about art, not art in the service of cult.26 The secular cult of art was enacted around this image in a nineteenth-century display in Dresden’s Gemäldegalerie, where the painting was equipped with an altar-like element installed on the wall beneath the work and an inscription that identified the painting’s original location on the high altar of the church of Santo Sisto in Piacenza. This wooden addition (which was provided for this work alone, though many others in the collection had come down from altars) was intended to single the Sistine Madonna out for special reverence, as it was considered the most perfect work of art in the entire collection.27 And yet, the time is now ripe to disrupt precisely the polarity frequently drawn between cultic Spanish American works and the works of art produced
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for altars in Europe. Hans Belting’s narrative in Cult and Image, which associates the inauguration of the work of art in the Renaissance with the disruption of the cult image, is in the process of being dismantled not only by scholars of European art who are reinvesting cultic art with mediality but by those who are now isolating “iconic modes of participation” in Renaissance art.28 Yet, it is crucial to recognize that with the Virgin and Child in a shrine as its subject and its sophisticated illusionistic play of real and represented, the Sistine Madonna could be, if not the source, then the Urexample of the genre to which the shrine paintings belong: that is to say, a creative reinvention of a static form. This is less an apologia for the colonial shrine paintings than a notice that the Sistine Madonna is in fact a pre-eminent example of a type categorized by European scholars as merely devotional, though no specific icon has emerged as its putative subject. For this reason, it can lie at the very roots of a debate about the loosening of art from a cultic era of art. It has taken much effort to recuperate the devotional nature of this image, for from the very beginning it was recognized as a sublime work of art. To see just how European artists brought cultic references into the more valued genre of history painting, let us consider two examples. Pieter Brueghel the Elder’s grisaille painting of Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery (fig. 2.6) has the vestige of a shrine painting turned suggestively into a narrative work. It has been argued recently that this work was a reaction to the atmosphere in Antwerp leading up to the iconoclastic outbreak, seeking a modus vivendi for images between Catholic and Protestant practices.29 Hence the statue-like figure of the Magdalen, placed one step up, as if on an altar, honours the Magdalen; in terms of genre, the painting straddles icon and historia. Similarly, Caravaggio’s Madonna of Loreto takes a very famous Virgin, places her at the door to the Virgin’s house in Loreto, framed by the famous doorway, one step up, as on an altar, a mother and child spontaneously recognized by pilgrims on the street. It is unimaginable that Caravaggio would have painted a static cult image (a statue) rather than this living woman. Spanish artists followed on a similar track as their Italian counterparts in painting the Virgin mostly as a historical figure, or in the more portrait-like naturalistic paintings, a “step past” the repetitive cult images seen across Europe. So why, given the overwhelming narrative trend in Europe, did the shrine painting become such an important and unique genre in the Spanish Americas? I answer this question in two ways. The first has to do with the subject matter of these works and the role they played in local religion. The second, related, answer, will take us to a more speculative part of the essay, in which I argue that the fact that the statues
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Figure 2.5. Raphael, Sistine Madonna, oil on canvas, 1518. Gemäldegalerie alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Germany. Photo: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY.
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represented in shrine paintings were dressed allowed this genre of painting to acquire the prestige ascribed to textiles (“el arte mayor,” as Teresa Gisbert ranks it)30 in pre- and post-contact culture, as well as to mimic its formal effect. The imagen de vestir, as it developed in Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was a remarkable product of local cults. The dressing of the statues, which were paraded through the streets in processions, was the prerogative of local confraternities. While the Catholic Church often deemed the dressing of statues of the Virgin in increasingly sumptuous and secular dress inappropriate, and prohibited it at various times, the practice persisted and grew because it allowed a very direct participation with the divine.31 These statues functioned for a lay confraternity essentially as did the elaborately dressed dolls of the Christ Child (many examples of which are preserved in early modern convents in Spain), allowing a personal, physical, and emotional tie to a remote figure.32 Indeed, the more elaborate the dress, the more jewels and gold pinned on it, the more flowers around it and at its altar, the more successful the local attachment to the image, which then mirrors back to the audience the local reverence of the image. The local and individual investment in the image explains in part why the shrine image was successful in reflecting how cult images established themselves in new places. There is no doubt that in Spain the wildly popular practice of dressing statues is reflected above all in the splendid architecture that grew up around the wardrobes of the Virgin, the camarín connected to her shrines. But in South America (where there were also camarines dedicated to the Virgin), the shrine painting took off as the genre that expressed this particular form of cult activity. I propose that it is the special value accorded to textile and dress in the Andes to which the genre owes its unique development.33 Paintings on canvas are themselves painted textiles. In ancient Peru there was a developed art of painting: pigment was applied to cotton canvas with a “pincel,” or with ceramic stamps or seals, or by staining. These works, usually patterned and repetitive in character, are thought to have possessed a magical-religious power and functioned as a form of invocation.34 The “textilic turn” that is detectable in Cusco School shrine paintings is not a transfer of a pattern type from one medium to another, but is an enhancement of the medium of painting, which may also recall and invoke the properties ascribed to pattern in Indigenous belief practices. There were a variety of ways in which European devotion, specifically to the Virgin, had a felicitous encounter with the different medial values encountered in the Americas, allowing the “textilic imagination” to fuel the unique American development of the shrine painting. It has
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been recognized by several scholars that in the Americas the practice of dressing Catholic cult objects was yet another instance in which Indigenous practices could easily be mapped onto the practices of the new belief system. For it was common for the Inca to dress their mummies, some cult images, and even stones or trees that had sacred functions in their cult sites. Karen Michelsen has argued that the practice of dressing the Virgins so neatly mapped onto Inca practices of dressing their huaca (sacred object) with the most noble textiles (cumbi), that the Virgin was effectively added to the Andean pantheon.35 The prestige textiles that were created for the huaca continued to be made well into the eighteenth century and some were even used on statues of the Christ Child, as represented in shrine paintings of such objects. The claim here is not that the dressed Virgin statues represented in the shrine paintings were subversive representations of Inca dress. That may have occurred, but not necessarily in these images in which the Virgin is dressed in European-styled and patterned textiles. Rather, since the devotees of several of the statues represented in these paintings, like the Virgin of Copacabana and the Virgin of the Rosary of Pomata, are known to have been dominated by Indigenous people or mestizos,36 the scale and sumptuousness of the paintings suggest that the prestige attached by these communities to textiles and to dress transferred to the dressed Virgins. Devotion to the Virgin found common ground with the honour accorded to textiles in the Andes in the image that developed uniquely in the Americas (fig. 2.7) after a Spanish prototype of the young Virgin with a spindle making yarn or thread.37 The basis for the Catholic type is the apocryphal account that from her entrance in the temple at the age of three to her marriage to Joseph, the young Virgin Mary spun thread for the veil of the temple. There is a long tradition in Europe of images of the Virgin sewing, embroidering, weaving, and spinning, such that spinning and sewing became an attribute of her virtue.38 Though a very typical iconography, one which had new impetus in Europe in the seventeenth century, it is worth asking why the image of the Virgin making wool was particularly popular and developed a distinct type in the Andes? One element that distinguishes the European from the Peruvian paintings of the young Virgin as spinner is her costume, which is much more elaborate in the latter images. Gilded, stamped, and embroidered, the Virgin so dressed is certainly not represented as a humble servant. Lending further specificity to the Andean type is the lliclla, or shawl, draped over her shoulder; it is clasped by a gold tupu, a distinctive Andean pin; a tupayari, a version of this pin, is worn in her hair as well.39 In the Andean
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Figure 2.6. Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery, oil on canvas, 1565. Accademia Carrara, Bergamo, Italy. Photo: Scala/Art Resource, NY.
versions, honour to the Virgin is shown through the relationship of her dress to her activity and is reinforced by a garland of flowers. One wonders here whether this Andean Virgin resonated with the Incan myth of its own civilization. For it was believed that Mama Uqllu, the first Incan Queen, introduced textile clothing to the Andean peoples (who had previously worn leaves or hides); it was she who first taught them to spin, weave, and make clothing. This Virgin weaver corresponds neatly to the idea of the Queen of the Inca as the primordial teacher of weaving. But even more likely, the young Virgin weaving for the temple exactly parallels the Incan acclacuna, the virgin girls of royal blood chosen between the ages of four and twelve as the cloistered weavers who worked for the king and the sun cult.40 It is suggestive that the wool that the Andean Virgin has spun is white since the acclacuna worked with the rare and prized white hair taken from a flock of vicuñas reserved for their use alone.41 This new, uniquely Andean Virgin was both a model as a weaver for elite Andean women – Incan princesses were outfitted with a spindle in the colonial portraits42 – but also a special weaver whose work
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was capable of forming and animating the prestigious medium, just as the shrine paintings animate the dressed statues.43 This image of the young Virgin weaver thus contains a mutually supporting system of signs: the Virgin is shown spinning wool because textiles were honoured things and their production was an honoured activity. Notable in this painting (and the many versions of it) is the way the Virgin holds the thread as it emerges from the raw wool, before it is wrapped on the spindle. The painter calls attention to this “line” of wool expressively snaking down the canvas, like a loosened thread. The thread in its appearance here demonstrates that the embroiderer and painter share line as an expressive medium. I would like to make a further proposal about the textilic imagination (which has been, using other terms, widely discussed in the historiography of Andean art of the colonial period)44 and for this I focus on the peculiar properties of painting in Cusco, where shrine images have been identified as an important product of a school of Indigenous and mestizo artists who separated from the Spanish painting guild in 1688 to form their own.45 What emerged in Cusco at this time was a characteristic style of painting in which gilded brocateado (brocade patterns), closely resembling the estofado of polychrome wood sculpture, were applied to the draperies of figures. While this type of gold pattern had a long history in European painting stretching back to the Middle Ages, and even stretching further back to Byzantine painting, its employment by the painters of the Cusco School is distinctive.46 The application of these flat gilded patterns, placed without regard to the folds of the garment and the recession of those surfaces into space, defied any efforts at the depiction of plasticity or spatial recession. As a result, the paintings adhere to the surface; in works in which draped figures are crowded together it is obvious that artists sought to create as continuous a pattern as possible across the surface as the narrative would allow (fig. 2.8). The effect is to call attention to the surface, that is, to the canvas itself. In some cases the stamps so dominate the image that they begin to function as a pattern that competes and even dominates the rendered parts of the image.47 In cases where not only the drapery is patterned but decorative rugs and brocades fill up the picture plane, it looks like the objective is to represent a textile:48 the use of these repeated patterns, stamped rather than drawn, is a process that approximates or restores the painted canvas to its pristine state as a textile. In some of the Cusco School shrine paintings – with this pull towards the imagination of the painted canvas as a textile in mind – we might observe that these paintings can, with the growing scale of the Virgin and her massive dress, come to resemble a textile. In various examples of this
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Figure 2.7. Cusco School, The Child Mary Spinning, oil on canvas, eighteenth century. Framed: 51 x 43 x 7 inches; unframed: 31 1/8 x 24 7/8 inches. Thoma Collection, Chicago. Courtesy of the Marilynn and Carl Thoma Collection.
Figure 2.8. Cusco School, Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, oil on canvas, eighteenth century. Framed: 47 x 61 x 3 inches; unframed: 37 3/4 x 51 1/2 inches. Thoma Collection, Chicago. Courtesy of the Marilynn and Carl Thoma Collection.
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type of painting the use of pattern and gold on the Virgin’s dress comes to dominate the canvas to such a degree that it has become almost a homogeneous surface, with little to no sense of depth. The effort seems to make the colours adhere to the surface, to defy the illusionism of the Albertian perspectival system that made the image a view into a world of representation, that is, to make it more, in sum, like cloth: a homogeneous cloth, dominated by rich hues typical of many uncu, or tunics. In some ways what I am proposing is an extension of Teresa Gisbert’s argument that there were Andean textile patterns that informed a wide range of Andean media: landscape, painted architecture, and textiles all shared an imagery rooted in textile production. Or perhaps what I am conveying is a bit closer to Michael Baxandall’s concept of “the period eye,” through which he describes how fifteenth-century mercantile culture informed an art that was geometrical, easily measurable in mercantile terms, or how the art of limewood sculpture of the German Renaissance can be understood in relation to, among other things, the value placed at the time on an elaborate calligraphic script.49 The shrine painting demonstrates a uniquely Andean reworking of the European medium and genre, a reworking in which painting is understood first as an honoured woven cloth that should not be painted away but serves as the precious ground for the depiction of textile. There is some kinship here with the accounts of the Indigenous grounds, the maguey cloth on which the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico and the manto on which the Virgin of Chiquinquirá were purportedly painted in Nueva Granada, but mostly insofar as the Creole accounts of those works emerged in the mid to late seventeenth century, around the same time the Cusco School of painting took its textilic turn.50 But in the Andean works under discussion here it is the medial kinship or intermedial fusion between ground and representation, their merging into one, that is of interest, for it helps to explain why this genre of painting flourished in the Peruvian viceroyalty more than it did in Europe and why this genre of painting is to be taken utterly seriously on all of the terms that it needs to explain itself. NOTES 1 Verdi Webster, “Shameless Beauty.” 2 This genre of painting was given a prominent place in the exhibition “Pintura de los Reinos,” where eight examples were displayed. Jonathan Brown characterized the relationship between the European and American paintings as a good reflection of “identidades compartidas y variedades locales,” the mark of an equally vibrant cult of the Virgin in both places. Brown “Introducción,” 19–20. With only one Spanish work and seven
The Elevation of the Genre of “Shrine Paintings” in Peru 69 American “reinterpretations” of the Spanish work displayed, the imperial project looks amazingly fecund. Here the emphasis is on the distinctness of the American genre rather than its derivativeness. 3 Guy Brett addresses a similar question in his investigation of the colonial Spanish American paintings of the archangels. Brett, “Being Drawn to an Image,” 3–9. 4 Duncan, “Statue Paintings of the Virgin.” 5 Mujica, The Arts in Latin America, cats. VI-111, 460. 6 Mesa and Gisbert, Historia de la pintura cuzqueña, 1:302. 7 AAvv, Pintura de los Reinos, 105–6. 8 Ceballos, “Trampantojos a lo divino,” 24–33. 9 They have also been called “portraits” of statues and “statue-paintings” in Palmer and Pierce, 95. For further examples of the genre see Wuffarden, “Virgin of the Rosary of Pomata,” cats. VI-99 and VI-117, 449 and 467. 10 See examples in Mesa and Gisbert, Historia de la pintura cuzqueña, 2:582. Another distinct subgenre of these shrine paintings shows the Marian shrine in a landscape where a topographical narrative of devotion unfolds. 11 The novohispano painter Cristóbal de Villalpando (c. 1649–1714), for instance, experimented with the genre in a spectacularly Rubensian idiom in a handful of important works: La Virgen de la Escalera (cat. 28), Santos Justo y Pastor (cat. 37), Virgen de la Soledad (after a Virgin in Madrid; cat. 38), Virgen con el Niño (of an unidentified, presumably Spanish, cult statue; cat. 67), Virgen del Rosario con Santos Dominicos (cat. 71), and the Virgen del Rosario (cat. 106), illustrated magnificently in Guitiérrez Haces et al., Cristóbal Villalpando. See below for the importance of the textile ground in the legend of the celebrated miraculous image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. 12 Cummins, “Imitación e invención,” 2:28–9. 13 “Although commonly associated with Latin American colonial art because of their abundance, paintings of famous cult images can be found throughout the Christian world. In fact, it is still unclear whether more of these paintings were produced in Spanish America than in Iberian Spain, owing to the fact that they have received less attention from art historians of peninsular Spanish art.” Alcalá, “The Image and Its Maker,” 62. 14 Four excellent Italian examples, all of the Virgin of Loreto, are known: 1) an unattributed work of around 1600 in Urbania (Museo Civico; previously Oratorio della Trinità di Urbania) and considered “a work of devotional value above all” which “could be linked the phenomenon of votive devotion,” though the work’s political resonance is acknowledged in the observation that the statue is crowned by the papal tiara (since Loreto had been absorbed in the Papal States); 2) a painting signed by Carlo Saraceni (Venice 1579–1620) in San Bernardo alle Terme in Rome, also considered an ex voto (and endowed with a papal tiara); 3) a painting attributed (very tentatively) to Avanzino
70 Evonne Levy Nucci (Gubbio 1552–Rome 1629) in Senigallia (Pinacoteca Diocesana), also considered an ex voto for Pope Clement VIII, who passed through Senigallia in 1598 (and whose portrait appears on the Virgin’s dress, which is a dalmatic rendered as a jewel-adorned map of the d’Este territories, also added to the papal states; the niche in which the statue is posed has also been decorated with the stars from the Aldobrandini coat of arms); 4) Francesco Vanni’s painting of 1605, Madonna di Loreto with Saints Paul and Francis, in the Church of San Giovenale in Logna (Cascia). For the first three works see Grimaldi and Sordi, L’iconografia della Vergine di Loreto nell’Arte, 142–3 (Benedetta Montevecchi), 144–5 (Livia Carloni), 126–8 (Livia Carloni). The Saraceni painting was reassessed by Morena Costantini, with reference to other examples of the genre, in Aurigemma, Carlo Saraceni, cat. 3. 15 I refer to the Virgen de Loreto (New Orleans Museum of Art), dated 1680 in Pintura de los Reinos, 105, which is an extremely close version of the painting by Carlo Saraceni in Rome (number 2 in n14 above). 16 For historians of Spanish art, interest in the shrine paintings, using the nomenclature of trompe l’oeil and still life, has incorporated these works more successfully into a history of so-called fine art, bypassing the judgment of the cultic by emphasizing their pictorial techniques, thus lending them a very strong connection to the highly naturalistic trajectory of Spanish Baroque painting. 17 For a treatment of the image’s iconography that is cognizant of the cult but which does not treat the work as a cult image, see Jones, Altarpieces and Their Viewers. 18 In a study of the iconography of the Virgin of Loreto, Caravaggio’s work is considered a “unicum,” having excluded “any dependence on the traditional Loretan iconography.” Maurizio Marini in Grimaldi and Sordi, L’iconografia della Vergine di Loreto nell’Arte, 134–6. 19 Already a decade after the work was finished visitors started to describe the work without reference to the Loreto shrine but with reference to the pilgrims represented in the lower right. The painting is commonly referred to as both the Madonna of Loreto and the Madonna dei Pellegrini. See Pupillo, “Lo schiamazzo e la preghiera,” 215–18, and Pupillo, “La Madonna di Loreto di Caravaggio,” 112. 20 See Alcalá, “The Image and Its Maker.” 21 For abundant examples, see Grimaldi, Mariano, and Sordi, La Madonna di Loreto nelle Marche. 22 Eberlein, “The Curtain in Raphael’s Sistine Madonna.” 23 For an introduction that draws on much previous scholarship, see Henning, “Raffael in Rom und die Entstehung der Sixtinische Madonna.” On the question of what the Sistine Madonna actually represents, and the subjective and objective criteria that have shaped opinions of this matter, see Lotz, “Raffaels Sixtinische Madonna im Urteil der Kunstgeschichte,” 118–28.
The Elevation of the Genre of “Shrine Paintings” in Peru 71 On the various interpretations of the curtain motif see the appendix in Eberlein, “The Curtain in Raphael’s Sistine Madonna,” 75–6. 24 See, for instance, the creative representations of divine images, made into living beings, in the vicinity of an altar (including that of the Virgin of Loreto) in early modern Umbrian painting in Barroero et al., Pittura del Seicento, especially, nos. 11, 27, 32, 32.1, 40, 42. 25 Scholars have not located a cult image from which Raphael painted his masterpiece, although there may have been one, the likelihood of which has not, in my view, been taken seriously enough. 26 Belting, Likeness and Presence, 478–84. For a similar phenomena in sermons see the chapter by Chinchilla Pawling. 27 Henning, “From Sacred to Profane Cult Image,” 171–88. 28 See Hamburger, “Art History Reviewed XI,” 43–4. 29 Jonckheere, Antwerp Art after Iconoclasm. 30 Gisbert, Arze, and Cajías, Arte textil y mundo andino, 3. 31 See Verdi Webster, “Shameless Beauty and Worldly Splendor.” 32 Some of them were also kinesthetic. Of course, the paintings of these statues did not profit from the anthropomorphic aspect of the imagen de vestir. Rather, they emphasize the dress and the rich accompaniments of the figure in a shrine. For a consideration of imágenes de vestir and automata see the article by Fernández. 33 The connection between the Inca and Spanish traditions of dressing statues was put forth by Johanna Hecht, citing Carol Duncan, in “Virgin of the Rosary of Guápulo,” cat. 82, 262. 34 Mujica, Perú, esp. 98–105. 35 Michelsen, “Syncretic Cloth, Virgins and Colonization in the Peruvian Andes.” 36 Wuffarden, “Virgin of the Rosary of Pomata,” cat. 84, 267n2. 37 Several nearly identical versions of this subject by Andean artists of the colonial period are known. For the versions in Santa Clara (the only signed version), and that in the Lechuga Collection, both in Cusco, see Mesa and Gisbert, Historia de la pintura cuzqueña, 2: figs. 142, 560. For the iconographic type (based on ten examples) see, especially, Gradowska et al., Magna Mater 35–8, 122–31, and the informed entry on the type, with an illustration of the “prototype” by the Spanish painter Juan de Roelas (originally identified as such by Katharina Schmidt) in the entry on the version in the Thoma Collection in Stratton-Pruitt, The Virgin, Saints and Angels, cat. 41. 38 See Mann, “The Annunciation Chapel in the Quirinal Palace,” 119–23. 39 Estabridis Cárdenas, “Virgen niña hilandera,” 125–8. 40 Gradowska et al., Magna Mater, 37; Phipps, “Garments and Identity,” 20. The Virgin spinning has been connected to the imperial Inca ñustas (princesses) as noted in Stratton-Pruitt, The Virgin, Saints and Angels, cat. 41, n.3.
72 Evonne Levy 1 Phipps, “Garments and Identity,” 35; Phipps, “Man’s Tunic,” 138. 4 42 See the anonymous eighteenth-century Portrait of a Ñusta [Inca Princess] in Phipps, “Garments and Identity,” fig. 30, p. 30. 43 Phipps, “Garments and Identity,” 24. 44 For Alfred Neumeyer’s inaugural linking of textile and colonial Latin American architecture (1948), San Cristóbal’s notion of “textilographic architecture” (1977), and the author’s own analogy of the organization of textiles and reliefs on church façades, see Bailey, The Andean Hybrid Baroque), 24–5, 38–40, 305, 331–3. For José de Mesa and Teresa Gisbert’s “textile style” (as the imitation of textiles in wall murals in Cusco and surrounds), see Mesa and Gisbert, Historia de la pintura cuzqueña, 1: 241–2. 45 Mesa and Gisbert, Historia de la pintura cuzqueña, 1:137–8, 1:270–1. The thesis of Mesa and Gisbert, that a distinct school of painting emerged at this moment because the Indigenous artists were liberated from the rules governing the production of art enforced by the guild exams, has been rigorously examined and questioned in Valenzuela, “The Guild of Painters.” 46 Mesa and Gisbert note that Spanish paintings of the sixteenth century employed the brocateado and the first examples in Cusco date to that century as well. While the first contract the authors were able to find to specifically mention this use of gold on canvases dates to 1750, they believe the practice dates to around 1680. See Mesa and Gisbert, Historia de la pintura cuzqueña, 1:271–2. 47 Examples include the following works of the Cusco school, all anonymous: Christ Revived by Dominican Saints, Saint Barbara and Saint Augustine (Collection of Anita Fernandini de Naranjo, Lima); Adoration of the Shepherds and Adoration of the Magi (Freyer Collection, Columbus Ohio), in Mesa and Gisbert, Historia de la pintura cuzqueña, 2: figs. 591, 599, 601. In the Circumcision (Private Collection, Lima), in Mesa and Gisbert, Historia de la pintura cuzqueña, 2: fig. 600, the same type of ornament repeats from the garment of one figure to the next so that they really adhere to the surface. 48 A good example is the painting attributed to Pedro Nolasco y Lara, Miracle of Saint Dominic in Infancy (Convento de Santo Domingo, Lima), in Mesa and Gisbert, Historia de la pintura Cuzqueña, 2: fig. 304. 49 Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy. 50 I offer this comparison in the spirit of the argument made by Tom Cummins in “On the Colonial Formation of Comparison.” WORKS CITED Alcalá, Luisa Elena. “The Image and Its Maker: The Problem of Authorship in Relation to Miraculous Images in Spanish America.” In Sacred Spain: Art and
The Elevation of the Genre of “Shrine Paintings” in Peru 73 Belief in the Spanish World, edited by Ronda Kasl and Alfonso Rodríguez G. de Ceballos, 55–73. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. Aurigemma, Maria Giulia, ed., Carlo Saraceni 1579–1620: Un Veneziano tra Roma e l’Europa. Rome: De Luca, 2014. Bailey, Gauvin Alexander. The Andean Hybrid Baroque: Convergent Cultures in the Churches of Colonial Peru. South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010. Barroero Liliana, et al. Pittura del Seicento: Ricerche in Umbria. Perugia: Electa Editori Umbri Associati, 1989. Baxandall, Michael. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972. – The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980. Belting, Hans. Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Brett, Guy. “Being Drawn to an Image.” Oxford Art Journal 14 (1991): 3–9. Brinck, Claudia, and Andreas Henning, eds. Raffael: Die Sixtinische Madonna. Geschichte und Mythos eines Meisterwerks. Munich and Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2005. Brown, Jonathan. “Introducción.” In AAvv, Pintura de los Reinos: Identidades compartidas en el mundo hispánico, 19–20. Exhibition catalogue. Palacio Real de Madrid and Museo Nacional del Prado. Mexico City: Banamex, 2010. Calvesi, Maurizio, and Alessandro Zuccari, eds. Da Caravaggio ai Caravaggeschi. Storia dell’Arte, Collana di Studi. Rome: CAM Editrice, 2009. Cummins, Tom. “On the Colonial Formation of Comparison: The Virgin of Chiquinquirá, the Virgin of Guadalupe and Cloth.” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 74–5 (1999): 51–77. – “Imitación e invención en el barroco peruano.” In Barroco peruano II, edited by Ramón Mujica Pinilla. Lima: Banco de Crédito, 2003. Duncan, Barbara. “Statue Paintings of the Virgin.” In Gloria in Excelsis: The Virgin and Angels in Viceregal Painting of Peru and Bolivia edited by John Stringer, Barbara Duncan, and Teresa Gisbert, 32–57. New York: Center for Inter-American Relations, 1986. Eberlein, Johann Konrad. “The Curtain in Raphael’s Sistine Madonna,” Art Bulletin 65 (1983): 61–77. Estabridis Cárdenas, Ricardo. “Virgen niña hilandera.” In Mestizo del renacimiento al barroco andino, edited by José Torres Della Pina. Lima: Colección Barbosa-Stern, 2008. Feigenbaum Gail, and Sybille Ebert-Schifferer, eds. Sacred Possessions: Collecting Italian Religious Art, 1500–1900. Los Angeles: Getty Institute Publications, 2010. Gisbert, Teresa, Silvia Arze, and Martha Cajías. Arte textil y mundo andino. La Paz: Plural Editores, 2006.
74 Evonne Levy Gradowska, Anna, et al. Magna Mater: El sincretismo hispanoamericano en algunas imágenes marianas. Caracas: Museo de Bellas Artes, 1993. Grimaldi, Floriano, M. Paola Mariano, and Katy Sordi, eds. La Madonna di Loreto nelle Marche: Immagini devote e liturgiche. Marche: Centro Beni Culturali, 1998. Grimaldi, Floriano, and Katy Sordi, eds. L’iconografia della Vergine di Loreto nell’Arte. Carilo: Cassa di Risparmio di Loreto, 1995. Guitiérrez Haces, Juana, Pedro Ángeles, Clara Bargellini, and Rogelio Ruiz Gomar. Cristóbal Villalpando (ca. 1649–1714). Mexico City: Fomento Cultural Banamex, 1997. Hamburger, Jeffrey. “Art History Reviewed XI: Hans Belting’s ‘Bild und Kult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst,’ 1990.” The Burlington Magazine 153 (2010): 40–5. Hecht, Johanna. “Virgin of the Rosary of Guápulo.” In Elena Phipps, Johanna Hecht, and Cristina Esteras Martín, The Colonial Andes: Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530–1830. Exhibition catalogue, Metropolitan Museum, New York. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Henning, Andreas. “Raffael in Rom und die Entstehung der Sixtinischen Madonna.” In Raffael. Die Sixtinische Madonna. Geschichte und Mythos eines Meisterwerks, edited by Claudia Brinck and Andreas Henning, 9–52. Munich and Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2005. – “From Sacred to Profane Cult Image: On the Display of Raphael’s Sistine Madonna in Dresden.” In Sacred Possessions: Collecting Italian Religious Art, 1500–1900, edited by Gail Feigenbaum and Sybille Ebert-Schifferer, 171– 88. Los Angeles: Getty Institute Publications, 2010. Jonckheere, Koenraad. Antwerp Art after Iconoclasm: Experiments in Decorum, 1566–1585. Brussels: Mercatorfonds, 2012. Jones, Pamela M. Altarpieces and Their Viewers in the Churches of Rome from Caravaggio to Guido Reni. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. Kasl, Ronda, and Alfonso Rodríguez G. de Ceballos, eds. Sacred Spain: Art and Belief in the Spanish World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. Lotz, Wolfgang. “Raffaels Sixtinische Madonna im Urteil der Kunstgeschichte.” Jahrbuch der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Forderung der Wissenschaften (1963): 118–28. Mann, Judith W. “The Annunciation Chapel in the Quirinal Palace, Rome: Paul V, Guido Reni, and the Virgin Mary.” Art Bulletin 75 (1993): 113–35. Mesa, José de, and Teresa Gisbert. Historia de la pintura cuzqueña. 2 vols. 2nd ed. Lima: Fundación A.N. Wiese, 1982. Michelsen, Karen. “Syncretic Cloth, Virgins and Colonization in the Peruvian Andes.” Proceedings of the Fifth Biennial Symposium of the Textile Society of America (1997): 121–30.
The Elevation of the Genre of “Shrine Paintings” in Peru 75 Moreno Mendoza, Arsenio, ed. Actas del 711 Congreso Internacional del Barroco Iberoamericano. Territorio, Arte, Espacio y Sociedad. Seville: Universidad Pablo de Olavide, 2001. Mujica, Marisa. Perú: 10,000 años de pintura desde la época rupestre hasta nuestros días. Lima: Universidad de San Martín de Porres, 2006. Mujica Pinilla, Ramón, ed. El barroco peruano II. Lima: Banco de Crédito, 2003. Palmer Gabrielle, and Donna Pierce. Cambios: The Spirit of Transformation in Spanish Colonial Art. Exhibition catalogue, Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992. Phipps, Elena. “Garments and Identity.” In Elena Phipps, Johanna Hecht, and Cristina Esteras Martín, The Colonial Andes: Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530– 1830. Exhibition catalogue, Metropolitan Museum, New York. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. – “Man’s Tunic.” In Elena Phipps, Johanna Hecht, and Cristina Esteras Martín, The Colonial Andes: Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530–1830. Exhibition catalogue, Metropolitan Museum, New York. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. – Johanna Hecht, and Cristina Esteras Martín. The Colonial Andes: Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530–1830. Exhibition catalogue, Metropolitan Museum, New York. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Pupillo, Marco. “La Madonna di Loreto di Caravaggio: Gli scenari di una committenza.” In Caravaggio: Nel IV centenario della Cappella Contarelli, Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Roma 24–26 Maggio 2001, edited by Caterina Volpi, 105–21. Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza,” 2002. – “Lo schiamazzo e la preghiera: Nuove considerazioni sulla Madonna di Loreto e il pauperismo caravaggesco.” In Da Caravaggio ai Caravaggeschi, edited by Maurizio Calvesi and Alessandro Zuccari, Storia dell’Arte, Collana di Studi, 1:213–34. Rome: CAM Editrice, 2009. Rishel, Joseph J., and Suzanne Stratton-Pruitt, eds., The Arts in Latin America, 1492–1820. Exhibition catalogue, Philadelphia Museum of Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Rodríguez G. de Ceballos, Alfonso. “Trampantojos a lo divino: Íconos pintados de Cristo y de la Virgen a partir de imágenes de culto en América meridional.” In Actas del 711 Congreso Internacional del Barroco Iberoamericano. Territorio, Arte, Espacio y Sociedad, edited by Moreno Mendoza, Arsenio, 24–33. Seville: Universidad Pablo de Olavide, 2001. Stratton-Pruitt, Susan, ed., The Virgin, Saints and Angels: South American Paintings, 1600–1825, from the Thoma Collection. Milan: Skira, 2006. Stringer, John, Barbara Duncan, Teresa Gisbert, eds. Gloria in Excelsis: The Virgin and Angels in Viceregal Painting of Peru and Bolivia. New York: Center for Inter-American Relations, 1986.
76 Evonne Levy Thunø, Erik, and Gerhard Wolf, eds. The Miraculous Image in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance: Papers from a Conference Held at the Accademia di Danimarca in Collaboration with the Bibliotheca Hertziana. Rome: Bretschneider, 2003. Torres Della Pina, José, ed. Mestizo del renacimiento al barroco andino. Lima: Colección Barbosa-Stern, 2008. Valenzuela, Fernando A. “The Guild of Painters in the Evolution of Art in Colonial Cusco.” Working paper of the Soziologisches Seminar of the University of Luzern, 2006. http://www.unilu.ch/files/Fernando-A.-Valenzuela_The -guild-of-painters-in-the-evolution-of-art-in-colonial-Cusco.pdf. Verdi Webster, Susan. “Shameless Beauty and Worldly Splendor: On the Spanish Practice of Adorning the Virgin.” In The Miraculous Image in the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance: Papers from a Conference Held at the Accademia di Danimarca in Collaboration with the Biblioteca Hertziana, edited by Erik Thunø and Gerhard Wolf, 249–71. Rome: Bretschneider, 2003. Volpi, Caterina, ed. Caravaggio: Nel IV centenario della Cappella Contarelli, Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Roma 24–26 Maggio 2001. Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza,” 2002. Wuffarden, Luis Eduardo. “Virgin of the Rosary of Pomata.” In The Colonial Andes: Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530–1830, edited by Elena Phipps, Johanna Hecht, and Cristina Esteras Martín. Exhibition catalogue, Metropolitan Museum, New York. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.
3 Baroque Reliquaries and Automata as Representations of Eternal Life
enrique fernández
The sudden and uncontrollable transformation of some form of appearance from one plane of reality to another is a miracle of the same kind as that accomplished by the saint who animates his statue, which for that moment is certainly neither of wood nor of stone. Luigi Pirandello (commenting on his Six Characters in Search of an Author)1
The first automata capable of mechanical movement were built during the Baroque era, at the same time that the age-old cult of relics reached new heights. In reaction to the Protestant condemnation of the cult of relics, the Counter-Reformation issued strict guidelines for their conservation and display, which often resulted in the creation of new, elaborate reliquaries to house them. Except for their chronological coincidence, the assembly of the first automata and these developments in the cult of relics seem to be unrelated. Not only are automata and reliquaries two clearly distinct types of artefacts, but they also belong to opposite worlds. While the relics and their cult point to the past, to the world of religion and superstition, automata point to an incipient modernity of mechanization and science. I believe, however, that factors intrinsic to the period bridge the Baroque reliquaries and the first automata. Both are manifestations of a contemporary eagerness to represent the possibility of a plane of reality in which death was not a definitive state. Relics in their reliquaries and automata were made into heralds of this plane, one that superseded the tendency of matter – especially of the human body – to return to an inanimate, dead state, and to stubbornly remain so. Not surprisingly, as we will see, automata and reliquaries often coincided by adopting similar ways of instilling an appearance of movement and agency into dead matter.
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A tenet of Christianity since its inception has been that the relics of martyrs and saints retain some form of life. This living status could manifest itself in supernatural incorruptibility or through the ability to effect miracles. But the relics’ remnant life was important not only because of the occasional benefits it might bring to those miraculously healed or protected, but also because it was understood to confirm the truth of the resurrection of the flesh at Doomsday. Relics’ important role as guarantors of the resurrection of the faithful at the end of time is reflected in their common designation as pignora, the Latin word referring to the security deposited in a commercial transaction.2 Relics – from the verb relinquere or “leave behind”– had been left behind on earth by those already living in heaven, souls who would come to redeem them on Doomsday. Relics were then considered dual citizens of earth and heaven. As such, they could also act as windows into a divine dimension barely discernable from earth. Over the centuries, this special property of Christian relics resulted in beliefs and practices in which the dead matter of dry bones and flesh was treated as if it were somehow alive and capable of exercising agency. According to the scholastic tradition, the property of life could be extended to otherwise dead matter if it showed self-generated movement. The property of life could be extended, for instance, to windmills, as Juan de Pineda, a religious writer of the sixteenth century, noted: The inventors of these two machines [the windmill and the watermill] that grind the grain to make our bread deserve all our praises; the only things these machines require is wind and water to be moved, as if they were alive, and the same is the case with the clock because, according to the philosophers, the things that move by themselves can be called somehow alive, as the animals, whose life we can see through their movement.3
Because self-generated movement is so important for the acknowledgment of life, a constant feature in the history of the cult of relics has been to keep and display them in such a way as to suggest movement.4 The conditions of the cult of relics in the Hispanic world and other Catholic countries during the Baroque were not uniform but multifarious, the result of a rich inheritance from previous centuries of varied practices. Except during some early periods in the Byzantine era, relics were typically not displayed by themselves, but kept in elaborate containers called reliquaries. This served not only liturgical but also practical reasons, for the relics’ protection; it was not uncommon for fervent Christians to try to carve pieces of relics during the cult, sometimes by force, for their personal devotion. The fluid circulation of relics in the
Baroque Reliquaries and Automata as Representations of Eternal Life 79
Middle Ages through purchase and exchange resulted in a wide variety of reliquaries and relics scattered through Christendom, subjected to all kinds of local rites and traditions. Sometimes the original reliquaries in which the relics had reached their new home were preserved; sometimes they were modified. Often completely new ones were made, and the old ones were reused for other liturgical purposes, including the keeping of other relics. Multiply this by the varied styles of different regions and eras and it becomes apparent that there were many types of reliquaries in use during the Baroque period. Contributing to this variety was the increase in the number of relics in circulation after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks, an event which resulted in many relics, including frauds, finding their way to the West. The relics in circulation also increased due to other events, like the accidental discovery in 1578 of an ancient subterranean cemetery connected to the catacombs in Rome. The most important factor that shaped the cult of relics in the Baroque period was its dismissal by the Protestants. Martin Luther and other reformers mocked the Catholic cult of relics as simple superstition and as an instrument of the papacy for financial gain.5 While the fervid reformers destroyed the relics and melted the reliquaries for their gold, Catholics held on to their relics and those that came into their possession from Protestant countries. Eventually, relics became valuable assets in the propaganda of the Counter-Reformation; furthermore, the remains of Catholics executed by the Protestants became new relics.6 Not only did the collecting of relics become more prevalent in the Catholic countries of the period, but the practice was normalized. Within the spirit of centralized regularization of cult practices that characterized the Counter-Reformation, it was deemed necessary to curtail the oftenundignified ways in which relics were treated in local churches and parishes. The church issued recommendations on the need to keep relics in appropriate reliquaries not only to protect them and to solemnize their cult, but also to ensure their authenticity by documenting their origins. If, on the one hand, these measures impeded Christians from direct access to relics, on the other hand they encouraged their cult, even their exhibition – when done with respect and dignity. Staged exhibitions of relics are a well-known aspect of the theatricality that is often associated with Catholic rituals during the Counter-Reformation. Relics, together with religious statues, were important props in the processions of the period, especially around the celebration of Corpus Christi.7 While during the Counter-Reformation the church exercised control over the cult of relics, it did not impose uniformity in the size and shape of reliquaries. While many new reliquaries were produced, many of the old ones, dating from different periods, were preserved, which resulted
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in a rich assortment of reliquaries in use during the Baroque. In spite of their variety in form, some generalizations can be made regarding the different types, although exceptions abound. In most of them, the importance of and reverence towards their contents is clearly detectable. For instance, in the oldest type of reliquaries, which are boxes or chests made of or covered with precious materials, the relics were not visible to the faithful unless the lid was opened or removed, and the relic extracted. Nevertheless, many of these reliquaries hint at the vital significance of their contents, as with the many boxes and chests covered with images of the saint or martyr. These images represent important episodes of the life of the saint, her martyrdom, and so on. In many instances, they depict a glorious image of the saint as triumphant. The way these images suggest the vitality of the remains they contain can be easily understood by comparing them to the way in which early Christian sarcophagi and entombments often portray the deceased whose remains they contain. The portrait – often an idealized one of the person as a youth, even if she died in old age – was intended not as much as a memento of how she used to be but as a depiction of the form she will resume. The image is that of the glorified body of resurrection, the faultless eternal body promised by Christianity. Box reliquaries act as small sarcophagi for the bodies of those whose salvation was certain because of their virtuous lives. The images on them are representations of the resurrected bodies that the remains will eventually turn into, in spite of the extreme fragmentation to which death – often accompanied by gruesome torture and dismemberment – had reduced them. The bodily remains inside the reliquary were presented as having the potential of becoming the glorious resurrected body. They may appear to be dead but, in the metaphor common since the days of patristic theology, they are the dormant “seed” of the future immortal body.8 The precious materials with which box reliquaries were often made or decorated suggest the potential life of the remains inside. This is the case with the many reliquaries inlaid with precious and semi-precious stones. The function of these jewels was not only to indicate the value of the relics inside the reliquary but also to proclaim their extraordinary powers by association. In the lapidary books in circulation at the time, gems, in spite of being inorganic matter, were considered to have special powers, such as the capacity to heal. Displayed on the outside of the reliquaries, theses gems stood as pale reminders of the superior powers of the relics inside. Crystal and semi-transparent gems were also common in reliquaries. They served the functions mentioned above, but their use could also be considered the first step in a trend towards the construction of
Baroque Reliquaries and Automata as Representations of Eternal Life 81
reliquaries permitting more visibility of the contents. This change in the construction of reliquaries has been compared to the adoption of tintedglass windows in Gothic cathedrals. Several reasons have been attributed to the widespread change in the construction of reliquaries, such as the desire to be closer to the relic for a more personal experience.9 Regardless of the factors behind this tendency to make the relics visible through the reliquary, the practice became widespread. By the Baroque period, the majority of relics could be seen through the exteriors of their reliquaries. This visibility reached its peak in the reliquaries built in the form of monstrances made of crystal, which provide a translucent silhouette of a relic or the holy form. The vision of the inner space of the reliquary, seen through the prism of a precious stone, appears as a window into the timeless kingdom of heaven. An important consequence of this visibility of the relics through a window is the reinforcement of the opposition between outside and inside, between reliquary and relic. In this binary opposition, the reliquary acts as the body, while the relic inside becomes the homo interior of Saint Paul, the soul, which is the real, yet ungraspable, agent of life. But the reliquaries’ most powerful way to suggest the living status of the relics they contained was their anthropomorphism, often combined with the visibility of the relic. Although there are earlier examples, bodypart reliquaries began to be common in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, be it in the shape of limbs, heads, torsos, or even whole bodies. These reliquaries are called in English “speaking reliquaries.” What they are saying with their human forms is, however, not clear. Contrary to what some studies claim, the shapes do not necessarily correspond to their contents. For instance, reliquaries in the form of an arm, which were common, do not necessarily contain the saint’s arm bones (fig. 3.1). Moreover, many speaking reliquaries do not contain the remains of a single person but of several, or they contain brandea, objects that have been in touch with the body of the saint. Arm-shaped reliquaries act as metaphors for the capacity for action associated to this part of the human body. The arm-shaped reliquaries symbolize the agency of their contents. This metaphorical meaning is confirmed in the widespread liturgical use of arm-shaped reliquaries, which the priests held to bless the community or perform other rites.10 Other common types of reliquaries with anthropomorphic qualities are head, torso, and full-body reliquaries. Although some of these contain the skull of the saint – but not necessarily inside the head area of the statue – many enclose other body parts, such as small fragments, or brandea. In many torso and full-body reliquaries the relics are housed in the chest cavity where they can be viewed from the outside through
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Figure 3.1. Speaking reliquaries, mostly arms and torsos, of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, at the Church of Saint Roch (Igreja de São Roque) in Lisbon, which is the earliest Jesuit church in Portugal.11
a glass-covered window (fig. 3.1). By placing the relics in the general area of the heart, which is so strongly associated to the vital functions of the body, the dualism of inside/outside mentioned before is taken to its highest expression. The highly realistic detailed sculptural representations of the saints are also effective allusions, like those of the painted figures on box reliquaries, to the glorious body of resurrection. The anthropomorphic torsos or statues – especially those made from or covered with precious metals – are manifestations of the ancient Christian metaphor, common since the time of Saint Augustine, of resurrection as the recasting of a statue. According to this metaphor, the reconstitution of the dead bodies
Baroque Reliquaries and Automata as Representations of Eternal Life 83
on Doomsday will not be from the same matter from what they were made but as the recasting of a statue, for which new, and nobler, materials are to be used. Statue reliquaries made from expensive materials and in idealized forms become the perfect representation of the glorious resurrected body.12 The head and torso reliquaries of the Baroque are typically made from polychrome wood and plaster, the same material used for most contemporary religious statues and altars. The use of the same materials makes it often difficult to distinguish reliquaries from religious statues. There have been instances in which, in the process of removing damaged layers for restoration of what was believed to be a religious statue, inner compartments containing relics were discovered.13 As a matter of fact, any religious statue, whether or not it contains a relic, is symbolically connected to the body of the saint it represents. Protestants disapproved of the idea that statues could be endowed with supernatural powers and therefore included statues, together with relics, as superstitious elements to be eradicated. That pieces of wood and plaster could be considered carriers of (supernatural) life is easily explainable within the inner logic of Christianity. We referred before to how brandea were objects that gained the status of relics by their proximity to the body of a saint. Other objects – including water or soil – that were in contact with these primary objects could become relics. After all, the subtle changes that inanimate matter undergoes, be it a statue or brandea, are not that different from transubstantiation, in which a piece of bread becomes the body of Christ. The ceremonially consecrated religious statues of saints became, at least in popular belief, another instance of dead matter supernaturally infused with life. The quotation of Pirandello that opens this essay emphasizes this change in planes of reality that the statue of a saint undergoes when it demonstrates its miraculous powers. Statues actually compete with relics in the performance of miraculous healing; furthermore, historically they have had a stronger association to miraculous displays than have relics. Statues of Christ or the Virgin that were reported to cry, to have growing hair, to move their eyes, or to change the position of their limbs were – and are – fairly common. The belief that religious statues have special powers or agency, and therefore some form of life, was enhanced by their uncanny realism. Glass eyeballs, natural hair, and articulated limbs and necks were not uncommon. Statues with movable limbs existed in the Middle Ages, but this technique reached its highest point in the Baroque. Religious confraternities of the period ordered the construction of statues with articulated limbs. Some were even ordered with exchangeable limbs or heads to suit
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Figure 3.2. Typical estatuas de vestir of unidentified female figures in the museum of the Church of Saint Roch, Lisbon, Portugal. Photo courtesy of Lelio Padovani.
the processional or liturgical needs. For instance, statues of Christ were made with arms articulated at the shoulders so that they could be changed from the crucified to the lying position during the representations of the descent from the cross and the burial. Especially ubiquitous in the period are the so-called estatuas de vestir (statues to be dressed), which are articulated frames to be covered by clothes, to which fully finished heads and hands were attached. These statues – more commonly female figures, which were traditionally covered with long robes – had to be articulated because they required some movements of the limbs to facilitate their dressing and undressing. They are especially common in the Hispanic world, in both Spain and Portugal and their colonies.14 Figure 3.2 shows examples of the many undressed statues of this type that have survived.
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Figure 3.3. Mechanical monk (c. 1560) attributed to Juanelo Turriano. Courtesy of the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.
The articulated estatuas de vestir resemble what probably is the oldest surviving automaton in existence, the so-called mechanical monk (c. 1560), presently kept at the Smithsonian Institution (fig. 3.3). Although not much documentation exists about this fifteen-inch-tall automaton, it has been attributed to the Italian engineer Juanelo Turriano (aka Giovanni Torriani, c. 1500–1585), who worked for the emperor Charles V and later for his son Philip II.15 This automaton is a wooden frame to which fully carved, articulated arms and head had been added, as in the estatuas de vestir. The difference is that it has been furnished with a clockwork mechanism hidden inside the frame that allows arms, limbs, and head to move. When wound, the mechanism makes the monk move as if walking in a circular pattern while hitting his chest with its right hand as in a gesture of contrition. The other hand brandishes a cross that goes up and down, while his head and lips move as if the monk were praying. The automaton is commonly identified as San Diego de Alcalá (?–1463) because the strongly defined features of the face bear a curious resemblance to the saint’s. San Diego de Alcalá was popular in the period, so the automaton may very well have been modelled in his likeness. He was canonized in 1588, becoming the first Counter-Reformation saint.
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This attribution is interesting because San Diego de Alcalá’s relics – the whole body is kept in the city of Alcalá de Henares – have a long tradition of miraculous cures, beginning with that of Henry IV, king of Castile between 1454 and 1474, who visited San Diego’s relics after having seriously injured his arm in a horseback-riding accident. The arm healed when the hand of Saint Diego – his body was removed from the casket for the occasion – was placed on the king’s injured arm. But San Diego’s mummified body’s most famous cure is that of Prince Don Carlos, the son of Philip II. In 1562 young Don Carlos seriously injured his head in a fall from a staircase. The body of San Diego was brought to the room of the unconscious prince. The prince’s hand was positioned on top of the chest of the saint’s body and an instantaneous improvement of his general condition was observed.16 While many contemporary and older relics and reliquaries can be seen in museums and churches today, the mechanical monk is one of the very few automata of the period to have survived.17 Our lack of access to actual examples can be partially overcome by examining contemporary testimonies about other automata, many of which registered the viewers’ amazement. The admiration they caused is clearly stated in the following passage of Cristobal de Villalón’s Ingeniosa comparación entre lo antiguo y lo presente (1539): What can be more marvellous than how men have devised figurines and wooden statues that, thanks to clockwork mechanisms inside, walk by themselves on a table while holding and playing a kettledrum, a guitar, or another instrument, and wave a flag even better than a real human being?18
Their lifelike movement elicited a near-hypnotic impression in those who saw them, as indicated in Arce de Otálora’s Coloquios de Palatino y Pinciano (c. 1550): I swear that I would never leave this shop after seeing these magical wonders that astonish me as much as if I were a peasant who is visiting the court for the first time. If you do not mind, I would like to see every trinket there is here, especially these miniature fountains and dolls, which are so ingeniously and realistically made that they seem as if they were about to talk.19
Although an aura of admiration surrounded their human-like appearance and seemingly independent movement, in the Baroque automata were definitely understood as machines of the same nature as the by then common mechanical clocks. This may help to explain the absence
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of automata used as reliquaries. I have not been able to find a single clear case of an automaton used as a reliquary. The reason for the absence of a real hybrid, of a reliquary-automaton, can be attributed to the separate paths that relics and automata took. As machines, the automata became part of the spheres of reason, science, and empiricism, soon associated with agnostic, even atheistic, undertones. Relics remained as supernatural articles that rely only on the pure faith of the believers and must not be subject to experimental scrutiny. Some contemporary descriptions were clearly exaggerated, attributing to the automata capabilities absent in even much more recent automata. But even if these fulsome testimonies are not accurate, they testify to the deep imprint that automata left on the collective imagination. As Jonathan Sawday states, “Renaissance interest in the machine was not just for what it does, but, rather, for what it might do[;] Renaissance machinery had come to inhabit fantasy as much as reality.”20 A typical fictitious automaton is the Hombre de Palo (Wooden Man), whose construction was attributed to the above-mentioned Turriano. According to popular legend, Turriano constructed a wooden automaton that walked a fixed route every day through the streets of Toledo to collect alms for the poor. The origin of the legend seems to have originated with a wooden statue that held a box to collect alms in a street of Toledo called today the Calle del Hombre de Palo.21 What interests us about this legendary automaton is its religious function. This piece of moving wood gave people the opportunity to practise charity. Although not built as an effigy of the saint, it used its near-magical capability of movement to help Christians reach eternal life. Connections to an otherworldly order, although not necessarily the divine one, are also present in other reported automata of the period. Although they were understood to be merely mechanical, automata had inherited an aura of black magic and were associated with the medieval homunculi and the moving statues that guarded bridges that knights had to cross in medieval legends.22 A good example of the magical abilities attributed to automata in the period is the famous passage of the Enchanted Head in part 2 of Don Quixote (2:62). Cervantes describes a speaking head of bronze standing on a pedestal or table of jasper with legs that imitated the talons of an eagle. This disposition clearly evokes the mythological sphinx and its oracular overtones. The supposedly mechanically animated head was kept in a private room into which only the most intimate acquaintances were allowed to enter to ask questions about the future or certain delicate matters, which the head promptly answered. In the end, the readers are told that a pipe ran through the head down the room underneath, where the owner’s nephew answered
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the posited questions with worn-out truisms. Although this automaton was a fraud, the audience had no problems in attributing it with the capacity to connect with a superior realm of truth and wisdom. Some of the famous automata of the eighteenth century were also supposed to have a direct connection with some superior realm of intellect. This is the case of the famous chess player or mechanical Turk that, beginning in 1770, circulated through the European courts; defeating the best chess players, it was a fraudulent machine in whose interior a chess master hid. Even today, a connection between machine and the otherworldly is manifested in the few true descendants of the early automata: the fortune-telling automata that can still be found in some amusement parks. These automata take the form of male or female figures, often dressed as colourful Turks or Roma women. Exhibited inside a glass box, for a coin they move their hands or heads, as if they were reading a glass ball or the cards, and hand out a printed piece of paper with one’s fortune or horoscope. Other Baroque automata functioned in ways that, although still anchored in earthly reality, had an otherworldly aspect. This is the case with two other automata Turriano is said to have built for Charles V: a bird that could fly around the room and a lute-playing doll.23 The flight of birds implies the capacity to escape terrestrial gravity and move towards the higher spheres inhabited by angels. The lute player had the ability to reproduce the harmony of the spheres through the music it played. Equally unearthly characteristics are present in a mechanical planetary clock that Turriano that reproduced the turning of the planets and the stars.24 The otherworldly dimension of this planetarium, and of other automata of the period, was enhanced by their frequent placement in gardens, often as part of complex fountains whose water pressure helped to move their machinery. Gardens and their accompanying artificial grottoes are typically Baroque as they are liminal spaces in which nature is tamed and improved through human artifice.25 In this ersatz world, the automaton becomes an animated statue, the perfect man-made inhabitant of this artificially recreated Eden. As well as in gardens, automata were displayed in another emblematic space of the period: the Wunderkammern, studioli, or cabinets of curiosities. These cabinets are often referred to as the ancestors of modern museums, but they differ in one important aspect: the cabinets specialized in displaying exceptional objects, the odd and monstrous, while later museums tend to display items that stand for the normal state of affairs in the world.26 Modern museums have expelled the anomalous from their sanitized displays because an important part of their function is to show coherent narratives of a scientifically explainable reality, especially for
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pedagogical purposes.27 Today an interest in anomalies is considered morbid curiosity; they are relegated to the dubious display cases and exhibits of carnivals and tourist resorts. In the Baroque cabinets of curiosities, strangely shaped shells, malformed fetuses, and other oddities could surround the automata and relics.28 These miscellaneous objects had in common their role as messengers from another realm, a mysterious one in which the ordinary laws of physics did not seem to apply. They were driftwood of a terra incognita that could not be observed directly, only envisioned. When Charles V abandoned his position at the head of the empire, he retreated to the secluded monastery of Yuste, bringing Turriano along as imperial clockmaker. Many testimonies survive of how the most powerful man on earth passed his time tinkering with automata, clocks, and other machines. Given the religious overtones of preparation for death that are also part of his retreat in Yuste, Charles V’s interest in automata and clocks can easily be seen as contemplation of the eternal life he expected after death. Similarly, we can understand his son Philip II’s related decision to gather an enormous collection of relics in the monastery of El Escorial, where he governed the world in partial retreat. Anecdotes abound about his interest in keeping and expanding this collection, to which he dedicated vast sums of money and effort. Twelve complete skeletons, one hundred and forty-four full heads, and over four thousand other fragments are part of years of acquisitions, presents, and exchanges. Political motivations can be seen behind his interest in gathering the biggest collection of relics in Christendom, allowing him to secure his position as the defender of the Catholic order.29 But his collection had also a personal intimate aspect that was closely associated to his deep religious beliefs. Both father and son, without having explicitly created cabinets of curiosities, used automata and relics to surround themselves with exceptional objects that confirmed the possibility of another plane of existence. While the relic is a fragment of a body in which the tendency to bodily disintegration has been arrested, the automaton is the construction of an apparently live body out of dead matter. Through opposite means, the manufacture and display of automata and relics proclaimed the possibility of undoing the fragmentation and limitations that time imposes on all bodies and entities. Although to the modern eye relics in their reliquaries and automata are two very separate entities, in the Baroque both were enlisted to represent, or at least to hint at, the existence of an otherworldly plane of reality. Relics and their marvellous properties of resisting death, destruction, and decay, as advertised by the reliquaries, were timid earthly representations of the resurrection of the flesh that
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would open the door to the immortal realm on Doomsday. Automata were awe-inspiring yet limited representations of how dead matter might be reanimated at the end of time. In this sense, automata acted as relics of the future. NOTES 1 Pirandello, “Pirandello Confesses,” 49–50. Italian original: “Il mutarsi improvviso e incontrollabile di una apparenza da un piano di realtà a un altro è un miracolo della specie di quelli compiuto dal Santo che fa muovere la sua statua, che in quel momento non è più certamente né di legno né di pietra.” 2 Geary, “Sacred Commodities,” 176. 3 Pineda, Diálogos familiares, 336. My translation. (“Ansí que tornando a lo que comenzamos a considerar de estos dos ingenios para molernos el pan, digno es de estima el ingenio que los inventó; y digno de precio saberles dar, ansí el agua como el viento para que gocen de movimiento con que cuasi merezcan el nombre de vida, también como el reloj; porque la filosofía por el movimiento de la cosa la considera con alguna manera de vida, tomándolo del movimiento de los animales que muestran su vivir moviéndose.”) 4 A gentle and up-to-date introduction to the cult of relics in the Christian world with special emphasis on the Middle Ages is Angenendt, “Relics and Their Veneration.” 5 A summary of some of the Protestant arguments against the cult of relics, as well as a summary of the conclusion of the Council of Trent reaffirming their cult but advising against excesses can be seen in Dudley, “Conferring with the Dead,” 282. 6 The use of martyrs as part of the fight between Protestants and Catholics in the early modern period has many implications for the value of relics. A good introduction is Gregory, Salvation at Stake. For the Protestant use of texts in lieu of bodies, see Coats, “Reconstituting the Textual Body.” 7 Although extending only until the fourteenth century, the best studies examining the influence of the idea of resurrection of the flesh in Western Christianity are those of Caroline Walker Bynum. See Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, and “Material Continuity.” On the theatricality of religious ceremonies in the period, especially Corpus Christi, see Rubin, Corpus Christi. On the role of monstrances in particular, see Snoek, Medieval Piety. 8 The idea of the dead body as seed has survived in present-day English in the reference to the cemetery as “God’s acre” (from the German Gottesacker, i.e., field of God). The origin of this image, as well as that of the resurrected body as a statue, can be seen in Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 63–70.
Baroque Reliquaries and Automata as Representations of Eternal Life 91 9 Diedrich, Vom Glauben zum Sehen. 10 I follow in this description of speaking reliquaries the article by Cynthia Hahn in “The Voices of the Saints.” The use of the expression “speaking reliquaries” seems to be a direct translation from the German Sprechende Reliquiare, originally used by Joseph Braun in Die Reliquiare. 11 Most reliquaries on this altar are gifts of D. João de Borja (1533–1606), son of Saint Francis Borgia, Castilian ambassador of Philip II to the imperial court in Prague. His collection came from Rome, Hungary, Bohemia, and Cologne, and he brought it to the Escorial. In 1587 he donated it to the Igreja de São Roque; see Avellar, “Espólio epigráfico.” A description of the reliquaries is in Silva, Esplendor e devoção. 12 The metaphor of the resurrection of the flesh through reconstitution of the form, not of the original matter, solved many logical problems, such as the problem of reconstituting the flesh in cases of bodies consumed by cannibalism. See Bynum, Resurrection of the Body, 70, 96. Hahn, “Spectacle of the Charismatic Body,” 166, sees the human-shaped reliquaries as exemplary bodies for the religious elites, who aspired to perfection in their manners and bodies. 13 Nagel, “The Afterlife of the Reliquary,” 214. 14 Webster, Art and Ritual in Golden-Age Spain, 61–73. 15 The best extended biography on the life of Turriano is García-Diego, Los relojes y autómatas. 16 The most extended studies of this automaton, as well as the connection between the figurine and San Diego, is King, “Perpetual Devotion”, and “Clockwork Prayer.” Also García-Diego, Los relojes y autómatas, 105, mentions this possibility. 17 A detailed enumeration of automata in Spain of the period can be seen in Herrero García, El reloj en la vida española, 21–4. 18 Villalón, Ingeniosa comparación, my translation. (“¿Qué cosa puede haber de más admiración que haber hallado los hombres industria como por vía unos relojes que unas imágenes y estatuas de madera anden por una mesa sin que ninguno los mueva, y juntamente, andando, tañan con las manos una vihuela o atabal y otro instrumento, y vuelva una bandera con tanto orden y compás que un hombre vivo no lo pueda hacer con más perfección?”) The spelling has been modernized. 19 Arce de Otálora, Coloquios de Palatino y Pinciano, 2:1113, my translation. (“Por mi fe que no tengo pies para salir de esta tienda, mirando estas bujerías, que me hacen estar embelesado, como labrador en palacio. Si no fuera pesadumbre, no dejara de ver particularmente cuantos dijes y menudencias hay aquí, y estas fuentecillas y muñecas que están tan ingeniosas y vivas que parece que quieren andar y hablar.”) 20 Sawday, Engines of the Imagination, 97.
92 Enrique Fernández 21 Porres Martín-Cleto, Historia de las calles de Toledo, 465; and García-Diego, Los relojes y autómatas, 101. 22 An extended commentary about the intermediate position between science and magic (often referred to as “natural magic”) that automata hold in the period is Marr, “Understanding Automata in the Late Renaissance.” On the presence of animated statues in the legends of knights, see Ogle, “The Perilous Bridge and Human Automata,” and Alvar, “De autómatas y otras maravillas.” 23 García-Diego, Los relojes y autómatas, 99, 102–3. 24 Santa Cruz, Crónica del emperador Carlos V, 5:433. A similar astronomical clock has survived in the Royal Palace in Madrid. 25 Aracil, Juego y artificio, 15. 26 A survey of the cabinets of curiosities is Impey, MacGregor, and Ess, The Origins of Museums. 27 Bennett, The Birth of the Museum, 39. 28 Nagel, “The Afterlife of the Reliquary,” 213. 29 An enumeration of the relics Philip II collected in El Escorial can be seen in Estal, “Felipe II y su archivo hagiográfico.” WORKS CITED Alvar, Carlos. “De autómatas y otras maravillas.” In Fantasía y literatura en la Edad Media y los Siglos de Oro, edited by Nicasio Salvadror Miguel, Santiago López-Ríos, and Esther Borrego Gutiérrez, 29–54. Madrid: Universidad de Navarra, Iberoamericana, Vervuert, 2004. Angenendt, Arnold. “Relics and their Veneration.” In Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe, edited by Martina Bagnoli, Holger A. Klein, Griffith Mann, and James Robinson, 9–28. London: British Museum Press, 2011. Aracil, Alfredo. Juego y artificio: Autómatas y otras ficciones en la cultura del Renacimiento a la Ilustración. Madrid: Cátedra, 1998. Arce de Otálora, Juan de. Coloquios de Palatino u Pinciano. Edited by José Luis Ocasar Ariza. 2 vols. Madrid: Turner, 1995. Avellar, Filipa G. “Espólio epigráfico do património arquitectónico religioso da Misericórdia de Lisboa.” In Património arquitectónico Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa, vol. 1, 204–12. Lisbon: Santa Casa da Misericórdia/ Museu de São Roque, 2006. Bagnoli, Martina, Holger A. Klein, Griffith Mann, and James Robinson, eds. Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe. London: British Museum Press, 2011. Bennett, Tony. The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics. London: Routledge, 1995.
Baroque Reliquaries and Automata as Representations of Eternal Life 93 Braun, Joseph. Die Reliquiare des Christlichen Kultes und ihre Entwicklung. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1940. Bynum, Caroline Walker. “Material Continuity, Personal Survival and the Resurrection of the Body: A Scholastic Discussion in Its Medieval and Modern Contexts.” In Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion, edited by Caroline Walker Bynum, 239– 98. New York: Zone Books, 1992. – The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. Coats, Catherine Randall. “Reconstituting the Textual Body in Jean Crespin’s Histoire des martyrs.” Renaissance Quarterly 44, no. 1 (1991): 62–85. Diedrich, Christof. Vom Glauben zum Sehen: Die Sichtbarkeit der Reliquie im Reliquiar, ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Sehens. Berlin: Weissensee, 2001. Dudley, Scott. “Conferring with the Dead: Necrophilia and Nostalgia in the Seventeenth Century.” ELH 66 (1999): 277–94. Estal, Juan Manuel del. “Felipe II y su archivo hagiográfico del Escorial.” Hispania Sacra 23 (1970): 193–333. García-Diego, José A. Los relojes y autómatas de Juanelo Turriano. Madrid: Albatros, 1982. Geary, Patrick. “Sacred Commodities: The Circulation of Medieval Relics.” In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, edited by Arjun Appadurai, 169–91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Gregory, Brad S. Salvation at Stake. Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Hahn, Cynthia. “The Voices of the Saints: Speaking Reliquaries.” Gesta 36, no. 1 (1997): 20–31. – “The Spectacle of the Charismatic Body: Patrons, Artists, and Body-Part Reliquaries.” In Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe, edited by Martina Bagnoli, Holger A. Klein, Griffith Mann, and James Robinson, 163–72. London: British Museum Press, 2011. Herrero García, Miguel. El reloj en la vida española. Madrid: Roberto Carbonell Blasco, 1955. Impey, O.R., Arthur MacGregor, and Henry N. Ess. The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. King, Elizabeth. “Clockwork Prayer: A Sixteenth-Century Mechanical Monk.” Blackbird 1, no. 1 (2002): n.p. – “Perpetual Devotion: A Sixteenth-Century Machine That Prays.” In Genesis Redux: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Artificial Life, 263–92. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Marr, A. Alexander. “Understanding Automata in the Late Renaissance.” Journal de la Renaissance 2 (2004): 205–22.
94 Enrique Fernández Nagel, Alexander. “The Afterlife of the Reliquary.” In Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics and Devotion in Medieval Europe, edited by Martina Bagnoli, Holger A. Klein, Griffith Mann, and James Robinson, 211–22. London: British Museum Press, 2011. Ogle, M.B. “The Perilous Bridge and Human Automata.” Modern Language Notes 35, no. 3 (1920): 129–36. Pineda, Juan de. Diálogos familiares de la agricultura cristiana. Vols. 161–4. Madrid: BAE, 1963. Pirandello, Luigi. “Pirandello Confesses: Why and How He Wrote Six Characters in Search of an Author.” Translated by Leo Ongley. Virginia Quarterly no. 1 (1925): 36–52. – “Prefazione.” In Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore; Enrico IV, 5–20. Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori, 1990. Porres Martín-Cleto, Julio. Historia de las calles de Toledo. Toledo: Diputación Provincial, 1971. Rubin, Miri. Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Santa Cruz, Alonso de. Crónica del emperador Carlos V. Edited by Ricardo Beltrán, Antonio Blázquez, and Ricardo Beltrán y Róspide. 5 vols. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1920. Sawday, Jonathan. Engines of the Imagination: Renaissance Culture and the Rise of the Machine. London: Routledge, 2007. Silva, Nuno Vassallo, ed. Esplendor e devoção: Os relicários de S. Roque. Lisbon: Santa Casa da Misericórdia/Museu de São Roque, 1998. Snoek, G.J.C. Medieval Piety from Relics to the Eucharist. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995. Villalón, Cristóbal de. Ingeniosa comparación entre lo antiguo y lo presente. Edited by M. Serrano Sanz. Madrid: Sociedad de Bibliófilos Españoles, 1908. Webster, Susan Verdi. Art and Ritual in Golden-Age Spain: Sevillian Confraternities and the Processional Sculptures of Holy Week. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998.
4 Marian Sculpture in Baroque Portuguese America
maria beatriz de mello e souza
When God’s Body was elevated and we knelt, they all knelt and lifted their hands as we did and were so silent that I assure your Majesty it much increased our devotion … At the end of the sermon, Nicolau Coelho brought a number of tin crucifixes … It was thought well that those people should each have one hung round their necks. Friar Henrique stood beside the cross for this purpose. There he hung a crucifix round each of their necks, first making him kiss it and raise his hands. Letter from Pero Vaz de Caminha to King Manuel I, Porto Seguro (Bahia), 15001
From 1503 to 1822, 502 parishes were founded in Brazil, occupying a vast territory in all regions of Portuguese America.2 Among these, over 288 (57 per cent of colonial parishes) honoured the Virgin Mary through 70 names. These statistics indicate the importance of the Virgin’s patronage in all periods of Brazil’s evangelization. Each parish owned at least one sculpture of its patron saint; less is known about the presence of paintings. Much of this data can be verified by analysing inventories of hundreds of colonial churches (parish churches, chapels, cathedrals, and so on) in Brazil, as registered by the Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional (IPHAN, National Historic and Artistic Heritage Institute). The data on colonial parishes indicate that not only was there a preference for sculpture over paintings on altars, but also that the Virgin Mary was the favourite patron. This evidence begs an explanation. After all, if the central figure in Christianity is Jesus Christ, why did Catholic piety seem to turn from the imitation of Christ to idealizing his mother?
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The Virgin Mary The cult of the Virgin Mary has been documented from an early stage of the Portuguese colonization of Brazil, not only in association with images but also in terms of controversies over devotional practices. The earliest parish established in Brazil in 1503 was dedicated to Our Lady of the Assumption. The Virgin would remain the favourite patron for the next three centuries; male saints ranked a close second. Female saints and the persons of the Trinity seldom were chosen as figures of community worship. The earliest Inquisitorial case regarding Marian devotion was related to the cult of her image. In 1574, an Italian farmer in Ilhéus (Bahia) was accused of blasphemy, including his comment that the Portuguese were excessive in their veneration of images of the Virgin.3 The Portuguese preference for Marian images was documented in the First Ecclesiastical Constitutions (Salvador, 1707), which recommend more attention and ornament for her images than for others, for “after God, there is no sanctity and holiness like hers.”4 There are no equivalent decrees from the Council of Trent (1545–63), which mention images of the Virgin only once,5 or from the Second Council of Nicaea (787).6 However, the decrees of the Council of Évora (Portugal), published five years after the Council of Trent, mentioned the cult of Our Lady and of her images in its first session.7 Indeed, the Council of Trent had granted bishops the power to solve conflicts regarding images and to also propose distinctions between Catholic images. In any event, the Second Council of Nicaea documented the attribution of special powers to the images of the Virgin Mary, as promoted by clergy during the Middle Ages. These images were in themselves considered repositories of the powers of the Virgin Mary. Marian sculptures were thought to be responsible for miracles in Europe as well as in Portuguese America. With the aid of images of the Virgin, Jesuits tried to convert the Indigenous peoples; their conversions were not unlike those of the Muslims depicted in the Cantigas de Santa María, the masterpiece of Alfonso el Sabio of Castile, dated before 1284. The Jesuit Antonio Vieira (1608–1697) – a famous Portuguese preacher who had a most extraordinary life – is said to have experienced, as a youth, divine illumination before an image of the Virgin. The story echoes the legend of Saint John Chrysostom (349–407), who also received such grace while praying before a statue of Mary,8 as well as the story of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153). Researchers have found that in the Iberian peninsula the image of the Virgin was more venerated than images of other holy figures, including that of Jesus
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Christ. Why would the image of the Virgin be worthy of more veneration than other images? The importance of the image both reflected and stimulated the Marian cult that developed throughout Europe since at least the fifth century, promoting her as the supreme mediator between the faithful and the Trinity. Throughout the liturgical year, images of the Virgin received more attention than others; there were many mandatory feast days that honoured her with elaborate services, processions, vigils, cycles of prayers called novenas, and pilgrimages to her sanctuaries (romarias). The Cistercian consecration of Saturdays as her cult day stipulated recitation of the litanies, the prayers Ave Maria and Salve Regina, and probably the rosary, all of which took place before an altar with a Marian sculpture. Many names were attributed to the Virgin in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, thus leading to a large number and variety of invocations to her. These could refer to moments of her life, her capacity to protect the faithful, a location where she appeared, or her maternal, royal, or spiritual qualities. The Virgin had over four hundred names in the Portuguese empire, and my research registered 164 in Brazil.9 Some of these names corresponded to new iconographic types. Moreover, rivalry grew among followers of a specific invocation of the Virgin; often a specific name was chosen as a sign of social identification pertaining to occupation, race, city, affiliation to a regular order, lay order, or brotherhood. Rivalry also reflected the long-term dispute between Portugal and Castile. Lusophone authors wrote about the Marian images’ alleged privileging of the Portuguese over the Spaniards. According to one story, this is the reason why an image of the Virgin, from a Castilian vessel that shipwrecked, appeared on a beach in Bahia.10 Such rivalry that centred on the images of Mary was more common than that among devotees of Christ figures and saints. According to Agostinho de Santa Maria – the author of the most influential publication about Marian images in the Portuguese empire – they were more miraculous, more numerous, and more visited than those of Christ, by permission of Christ himself.11 Meanwhile in Spain, they seem to have lost their importance as compared with images of Christ and those of his Passion.12 Rather than concluding that there was a great difference in Catholic practices in Portugal and Spain, the aim of Santa Maria’s Santuário Mariano was to place Portugal in the same class as Spain, France, Italy, and Flanders.13 Bibliographies cataloguing Portuguese imprints confirm that images of the Virgin were much more important than Christological images. The favourite subjects of these publications were the stories of images, their miracles, and, if possible, their miraculous origin.14 Numerous invocations of Mary feature in this vast bibliography. Images of Our Lady of
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the Immaculate Conception are present in many of these books, for she was the most important patron of churches in Brazil: she was the patron of 94 parishes, 19 per cent of the total of 502. The pre-eminence of sculptures of the Immaculate Conception has been explained by other factors beyond the realm of miraculous or political issues.15 It was by far the most popular Marian representation throughout the era of Portuguese colonization, even before Mary was elected as the patron of the Portuguese empire in 1646: John IV chose the Imaculada to protect the Portuguese monarchy, the kingdom, and its colonies shortly after restoring Portuguese independence from the Habsburg’s domain. Sculptures Sculpture was the major artistic achievement of the Portuguese during the sixteenth century as they endeavoured to Christianize Brazil, their colony in America. The most sophisticated sculptures were made of wood, polychromed and gilded with gold leaf. On many altars, they stood smaller than life-size, typically framed by a retable or chiselled altarpiece (figs. 4.1–4.2). The Portuguese were outstanding carvers and sculptors and were familiar with many sophisticated techniques for enhancing the surface of the wooden sculpture and for lending it a lifelike appearance. Sculptures of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were expressive, as observed in the skilful representation of facial features and gestures, and in the dynamic movement of the drapery. They were adorned with silver and gold accessories such as crowns or halos (resplandores), adding brilliance to the gold surface of the carved retable that served as a frame for the sculpture. Besides altar images, many churches possessed sets of sculptures intended to be mobile. Lighter sculptures dressed in cloth, with only faces and hands carved in wood, circulated in processions. Small sculptures could also be carried around the neck in an esmoleira, an object used to collect alms. Sculptures intended for private devotion were also numerous (fig. 4.4). Kept within small portable retables (oratórios), the images (costly or inexpensive) could be kept at home. In addition, public spaces – such as crossroads and bridges – also included an upper niche for a sculpted image that was always to be lit with candles. Other varieties of sculpture have survived, filling sacred art museums in Brazil; these include sculptures made of wood, ivory, clay, or stone, and minuscule gold pieces used as neck pendants. Catholic sculpture in Portuguese America is a complex topic but it can be described by means of three examples: two polychromed wooden sculptures of the Immaculate Conception that stand in the centre of
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Figure 4.1. Retable of the Imaculada. Church of Our Lady of Bonsucesso, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Photo by Alex Salim.
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Figures 4.2. Retable of the Imaculada. Church of Our Lady of Bonsucesso, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Photo by Alex Salim.
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their altar retables (figs. 4.1–4.2), and a small ivory Christ Child seated on a heart (fig. 4.4). The earlier Imaculada sculptures came from the Jesuit church in Rio de Janeiro; after its destruction these two altars were placed in the Church of Our Lady of Bonsucesso. They do not exhibit the dynamic drapery, opulent accessories, and rhetorical gestures that characterize Baroque sculpture of later generations, as seen, for instance, in the Imaculada made for the Benedictine church in Rio de Janeiro (fig. 4.3). Rather, they present some features of both Hispanic and German sculpture, as can be seen in the arrangement of the Virgin’s hair over her dress. The small ivory sculpture of the sleeping Christ Child was, in all likelihood, an object of private devotion belonging to monks, since there were few nuns in Brazil. The originality of this image is found in Christ’s seated position on the heart. A clay sculpture attributed to Agostinho da Piedade also placed the Christ Child seated on a heart. It carries an inscription at the base of the sculpture, which explains that even during sleep, Jesus – or rather, his heart – is still vigilant, evoking the imagery of the Old Testament in the Song of Songs. Even though the inscription in Latin could be understood only by a few worshippers, the composition of the sculpted heart, which elegantly echoes the crossed legs of the Christ Child, could evoke feelings of empathy in any beholder. Indeed, another Benedictine, Agostinho de Jesus, created another version of Piedade’s sculpture. Images made of ivory were thought to be made in Goa, a Portuguese colony. Although hundreds of them have survived – the National History Museum in Rio de Janeiro alone owns over five hundred – these objects have not been studied in depth.16 While scholars assume that images made of clay, a fragile material for transportation, were most likely produced in Brazil, the importation of sculpted ivory to Brazil has no equivalent in the Asian-American cultural route. Most likely, Piedade had visual knowledge of images similar to the one in the Rio de Janeiro museum. That he lived in Salvador, the main Brazilian port in the seventeenth century, points to this possibility. Furthermore, in both Europe and America during this period, the iconography of the seated sleeping Jesus can be seen as a prelude of his Passion.17 Most ivory sculptures represent the sleeping Christ Child as the Good Shepherd. Dozens of ivory sculptures resemble the Immaculate Conception as sculpted for the Jesuit altar (fig. 4.1). Some were painted and embellished with silver or gold head ornaments. However, they did not have the lifelike quality of the larger altar images. These wooden sculptures often exhibited a skin tone typical of Baroque polychromy known as encarnação in Portuguese, which was not only a technical term but also a theological one, referring to the Incarnation
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Figure 4.3. Imaculada. Church of Our Lady of Montserrat, Monastery of São Bento, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Photo by Alex Salim.
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Figure 4.4. Sleeping Christ Child on a Heart. Ivory, 145 mm. Museu Histórico Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Photo by Antonio Caetano.
of Christ. They typically utilize glass eyes to look more human, a crucial detail enabling the beholder to establish empathy while gazing at the Virgin’s face.18 Originals and Copies Important studies on Marian images have focused on the role of reproduction in the promotion of the cult. Though prints circulated in Brazil, they are not the most relevant form of “reproduction.” The need to duplicate the miraculous image involved the attribution to each “copy” of the qualities and powers of the “original.” The transatlantic journey that brought images to Brazil represented much more than a
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mere importation. At stake were issues of introducing Catholic culture to neophytes, as well as impressing upon them the prestige of sacred images. Hans Belting and David Freedberg have clarified the “status of the religious image in European culture” in “relatively advanced studies.”19 These works are fundamental to understanding the status of the Christian image in Portuguese America. Freedberg as well as Belting have explained how copies ultimately came to share the qualities granted to the original extraordinary image. The concept of “empathy of the beholder” is crucial to analysing issues of reception and feasibility of religious practices concerning images.20 In 1972, Michael Baxandall asked, “What, first of all, was devotion? … How does the devoto particularly show itself in artistic productions?”21 These questions are also relevant to postmedieval societies, for no clear boundary distinguishes larger sculptures in churches from smaller images that would not be present on an altar. Two examples from the Jesuit missionary conquest, in which paintings and sculptures were transported to Brazil, may offer further insight on these questions. The martyrdom of the Blessed Inácio de Azevedo (1527–1570) is associated with the painting he held when thrown into the sea by pirates. Azevedo had previously received the pope’s permission to obtain a copy of the painting of Our Lady do Popolo in Rome.22 Earlier, “in 1478, Pope Sixtus IV confirmed the Virgin’s image in Santa Maria del Popolo as an authentic image by Saint Luke and encouraged gifts for the rebuilding [of the church] by offering indulgences.”23 Azevedo intended to introduce the cult of this image in Brazil. This explains his portrait on the ceiling of the sacristy of the Jesuit church in Salvador. The interest of this story lies not only in the perception of a need for pictorial models in the New World but, overall, in the widespread belief that this was a legitimate copy of the painting by the evangelist, the purported eyewitness, that portrayed the Virgin and Child. One of the principal patron saints of Brazil is depicted in a sculpture called Nossa Senhora da Conceição Aparecida. It is a clay version of a statue of the Immaculate Conception that was miraculously fished from the Paraíba River in 1717, leading to the construction of the sanctuary of the Aparecida, in the state of São Paulo. To date it has been the predominant cult image, copied endlessly, and is present in every Catholic church in the nation. The copies of Aparecida have not overshadowed the sanctuary that attracts millions of pilgrims, mostly on its feast day of 12 October. Maria Aparecida and Maria da Conceição are very common names in Brazil. The 1717 apparition took place shortly after a similar episode in Portugal; even the names of the fishermen were the same.
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Sculptures could perform many functions, depending on their size, location, and mise en scène. However, studies of images that emphasize stylistic discussions neglect the crucial relationship between form and function. Despite its historic and artistic importance, colonial sculpture has not been assigned much significance in the historiography of Brazilian art. Moreover, the specificity of these sculptures has not been scrutinized – aside from their links to the mainstream Counter-Reformation pictorial eloquence developed in Italy, Spain, and Hispanic America. The issue of copying Catholic prototypes from Europe, and probably from Goa, is central to the study of public and private images in Brazil, mainly because of the power attributed to miraculous sculptures and the propagation of specific iconographic types. Church images were reflected in images venerated elsewhere, not only through material copies and appropriations, but also through mental images that encompassed the imagination and, at times, dreams or the visionary experience. For example, ex-voto panel paintings interchanged the sculpted image and the cloudy setting of the Baroque visionary experience. Likewise, the nominal reference to the image and the saint both as santo or santa is ambivalent in Portuguese. One must also consider the social context in order to gain some understanding of the cultural functions attributed to Catholic images and their uses. The medieval tradition of honouring a patron saint by commissioning a polychrome sculpture for his or her altar reminds us of the importance of the visualization of the three-dimensional body.24 Jean-Claude Schmitt’s concept of image-corps (image-body) is helpful for understanding a long-standing tradition that encompasses not only the medieval imago but also the baroque imagem, since the faithful in some instances considered cult images to be the saints themselves, and not mere representations.25 For the purpose of this study, altar sculptures are considered as cult images. The Portuguese preferred the presence of the sculpted body (as in the medieval imago) to the painted narrative (as in historia).26 Unlike El Greco’s Inmaculada in Toledo, which became a prototype for Spanish painters,27 and unlike the Mexican Guadalupe purportedly painted miraculously on maguey fibre, in the lifelike sculpture of the Portuguese tradition the body of the Virgin came to represent her Immaculate Conception, without necessarily representing traditional biblical attributes. Visionary experience, dreams, and imagination could merge around the sculpted body, more than they could be aroused by corporal relics within an anthropomorphic reliquary or by a poem. At issue, then, is the immaculate corporality intrinsic to the lifelike sculpture of Mary; here it is necessary to recall the concept of image-corps. All substances that could issue from her miraculous images mesmerized the viewers: tears,
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pearls, and even milk. Surprisingly, a clergyman was arrested for selling “powdered milk” of the Virgin in Minas Gerais.28 The legend of the twelfth-century Saint Bernard is paradigmatic to understanding the power of Marian sculpture. “Bernard was reciting the Ave Maris Stella before the effigy of Mary. When, with unusual fervor, he uttered the words ‘mostra te esse matrem,’ the statue moved, allowing three drops of milk (in later versions, a stream) to fall onto Bernard’s lips.”29 The Cistercian saint thus acquired “divine knowledge.” Victor Stoichita observes that “tasting/ knowing are in fact notions expressed in Latin by one and the same word: sapere.”30 The lay beholder in Brazil probably never read the Song of Songs, the most poetic book of the Holy Scripture, inspiring the mystic preacher Saint Bernard in the twelfth century and the sculptor Agostinho da Piedade four centuries later. One may suppose that stories of twelfth-century saints would have little resonance in Brazil outside Benedictine cloisters, which housed paintings and sculptures of Saint Bernard. Lay worshippers were not acquainted with contemplative practices that were a deep-rooted tradition for Benedictines. They did not possess a “previous visualizing activity” capable of relating liturgy, hagiography, or poetic mysticism to painting.31 Yet most beholders of sculptures could understand, with empathy, the depth of Jesus’ heart, the Christ Child nourished by his mother’s breast. NOTES 1 Quoted in Schwartz, Early Brazil, 7–8. “Thirteen ships set sail from Lisbon in March 1500, commanded by Pedro Alvares Cabral, to follow the same route [of Vasco da Gama to India]. In late April of that year, it made a landfall on the Brazilian coast … The letter of Pero Vaz de Caminha is often described as the foundational document of Brazilian history … In many ways, his report paralleled the first letters of Columbus from the Caribbean.” Schwartz. Early Brazil, 1. 2 Mello e Souza, “Les Images de l’Immaculée Conception.” 3 Rafael Olivi was imprisoned for two years in Salvador and his possessions were confiscated by the Inquisition. Mott, “Maria, virgem ou não?” 4 “Muito mais cuidado se guardam às imagens da Virgem Nossa Senhora, porque assim como depois de Deus não tem igual santidade e honestidade, assim convem que sua imagem sobre todas seja mais santamente vestida e ornada.” (Much more care must be taken with the images of the Virgin Our Lady, because after God there is no sanctity and honesty like hers, her image must be more saintly, ornate and dressed than that of others.” Constituições. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are mine.
Marian Sculpture in Baroque Portuguese America 107 5 The text on images produced by the Council of Trent refers to Session XXV, 3–4 December 1563. See Holt, A Documentary History of Art, 2: 62–5. 6 Bœspflug and Lossky, Nicée II, 787–1987. 7 Decretos do Concilio Provincial Eborense. The National Library in Lisbon owns a copy of this edition. 8 Obeying the statue of Mary, he kissed her lips and then an extraordinary transformation occurred. The formerly mediocre student was granted “une immense sagesse et de la connaissance de tous les arts” (an immense wisdom and the knowledge of all arts). Lederer, Gynophobia, 94. 9 Santa Maria, Santuário Mariano; and Mello e Souza, “Les Images de l’Immaculée Conception.” 10 See Santa Maria, Santuário Mariano, vol. 9, title 1, for the legend of the vision of the Indigenous convert, Paraguaçu, and the subsequent construction of an ermida (chapel) for the image of Nossa Senhora da Graça found on the beach. 11 Santa Maria, Santuário Mariano, 1: 4–5. 12 Christian, Local Religion, 76–7, 192–3, 198. 13 Santa Maria, Santuário Mariano, 1: iii. 14 These books also addressed rituals of image veneration, including the placement of the image (colocações, translados), liturgical feasts and processions, and stories of abuse and sacrilege. Pericão, “Bibliografia Mariana Portuguesa.” 15 Mello e Souza, “Les Images de l’Immaculée Conception.” 16 “After Vasco da Gama reached India and returned to Portugal in 1498, the way had been opened for trade with Asia … Despite this growth (10,000 metric tons a year from 192 sugar mills by 1612) Brazil still only represented a small fraction of the income of the Portuguese Crown, far behind the percentage generated by India.” Schwartz, Early Brazil, ix, xiii. See also the bilingual book by Fernando Antonio Baptista Pereira, Arte portuguesa da época dos Descobrimentos, 251–69. 17 Moreno Villa, La escultura colonial Mexicana, fig. 67, presents a black and white photo of a sleeping Jesus seated on an armchair. The author does not know its whereabouts (some “private collection” in the United States). Examples can be found in the Museu Abelardo Rodrigues of Salvador and other private as well as public collections in Brazil. 18 Baxandall, Painting and Experience, reminds us that since at least 1490, eyes were considered windows to the soul (58, 166). Freedberg points to the importance of eyes also in Asian rituals concerning images of the Buddha. 19 Stoichita, Visionary Experience, 9, 200. 20 Ringbom, Icon to Narrative, 11–39, and Belting, Das Bild und sein Publikum, ch. 3, offer “the medieval background of image theory.” Cf. Baxandall, Painting and Experience, 163. Ringbom discusses “the empathy of the
108 Maria Beatriz de Mello e Souza beholder” in the first part of his first chapter. The concept also appears in chapter 1 of Belting’s The Image and Its Public in the Middle Ages. 21 Baxandall, Painting and Experience, 149. See also Kasperen, Images of Cult and Devotion. 22 Rubert, A Igreja no Brasil, 1: 320, and 2: 74, 267. 23 Belting, Likeness and Presence, 342. See fig. 208 for the thirteenth-century painting of the Madonna and Child in Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome and figs. 20–1 for the “sixth century” icon Salus Populi Romani in Santa Maria Maggiore, also in Rome. The author discusses at length this image in chapter 4, “Heavenly Images and Earthly Portraits: St. Luke’s Picture and ‘Unpainted’ Originals in Rome and the Eastern Empire,” as well as part D of chapter 16, “Icons by St. Luke in the Historical Legends of the Renaissance.” 24 “North of the Alps … up to the early fifteenth century sculpture seems to have been the most common medium for devotional art.” Ringbom, Icon to Narrative, 36. For a related view see the article by Fernández in this volume. 25 “Certaines images étaient considérées comme des ‘personnes,’ non comme l’image de saint Jacques, mais comme saint Jacques lui-même. De telles images ne passaient pas pour inertes, mais semblaient répondre aux fidèles qui s’adressaient à elles par quelque signe des yeux ou de la tête, en pleurant, en saignant, parfois même en parlant. Je propose de les appeler des ‘images-corps.’” (Certain images were considered as “persons,” not as the image of Saint James, but as Saint James himself. Such images were not seen as inert, but seemed to respond to the faithful that addressed them by a wink or nod, by crying, bleeding, and at times by speaking. I propose to call them “body-images.”) Schmitt and Le Goff, Dictionnaire raisonné de L’Occident Médiéval, 505. 26 “This distinction was made early both in the East … and in the West (historiae and imagines, see Pope Adrian I’s reply to Charlemagne).” Ringbom, Icon to Narrative, 11. 27 Stratton, The Immaculate Conception. 28 Twenty-one-year-old João Rois de Morais, a tailor’s son from Miranda (Portugal) and inhabitant of Vila Rica do Ouro Preto, in Minas Gerais, confessed before the Tribunal of the Holy Office in 1734. Mott, Rosa Egipcíaca, 138. 29 Stoichita, Visionary Experience, 149, my emphasis. Stoichita brilliantly analyses the painting Lactatio Bernardi by Alonso Cano (1601–1667). However, he does not develop the issue of the sculpture on the altar in the painting by Cano. In Cano’s work, the Cistercian abbot is receiving milk from a three-dimensional image on the altar. This association is crucial to the
Marian Sculpture in Baroque Portuguese America 109 relationship of Catholic art and liturgy. Alonso Cano, Lactation of St. Bernard, c. 1658–60, oil on canvas, 267 x 185 cm. Museo del Prado, Madrid. 30 Stoichita, Visionary Experience, 135. 31 Baxandall, Painting and Experience, 45. WORKS CITED Baptista Pereira, Fernando Antonio. Arte portuguesa da época dos Descobrimentos/ Portuguese Art at the Time of the Discoveries. Lisbon: CTT–Correios de Portugal, 1996. Baxandall, Michael. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Belting, Hans. Das Bild und sein Publikum im Mittelalter. Berlin: Mann, 1981. – The Image and Its Public in the Middle Ages: Form and Function of Early Paintings of the Passion. Translated by Mark Bartusis and Raymond Meyer. New Rochelle: A.D. Caratzas, 1990. – Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art. Translated by Edmund Jephcot. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Bœspflug, F., and N. Lossky, eds. Nicée II, 787–1987. Douze siècles d’Images Religieuses. Paris: Cerf, 1987. Brown, Jonathan. The Golden Age of Painting in Spain. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. – Pintura na Espanha 1500–1700. São Paulo: Cosac & Naify, 2000. Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent. Translated by H.J. Schroeder. London: Herder, 1941. Christian, William, Jr. Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. – Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. Constituições primeiras do Arcebispado da Bahia, feitas e ordenadas pelo Ilustríssimo e Reverendíssimo Senhor dom Sebastião Monteiro da Vide, arcebispo do dito arcebispado e do Conselho de Sua Magestade: propostas e aceitas em o sínodo diocesano que o dito senhor celebrou em 12 de junho do ano de 1707. Coimbra: Real Colégio das Artes da Companhia de Jesus, 1720. Decretos do Concilio Provincial Eborense. Evora: André de Burgos, 1568. Freedberg, David. The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. Gruzinski, Serge. La guerre des images de Christophe Colomb a “Blade Runner” (1492–2019). Paris: Fayard, 1990. Holt, Elizabeth, ed. A Documentary History of Art. Vol. 2. New York: Doubleday, 1958.
110 Maria Beatriz de Mello e Souza Kasperen, Søren, ed. Images of Cult and Devotion: Function and Reception in Medieval and Post-medieval Europe. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2004. Lederer, W. Gynophobia ou la peur des femmes. Paris: Payot, 1970. Mello e Souza, Maria Beatriz de. “Les Images de l’Immaculée Conception dans le monde Luso-Brésilien: Leur culte et leur signification (XVIe–XVIIIe siècles).” PhD diss., Université de Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, 1996. Moreno Villa, José. La escultura colonial Mexicana. México: El Colegio de Mexico, 1942. Mott, Luiz. “Maria, virgem ou não? Quatro séculos de contestação no Brasil.” Lecture, XV Reunion of the Brazilian Association of Anthropology, Curitiba, Paraná, 1986. – Rosa Egipcíaca: Uma santa africana no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand do Brasil, 1993. – “Cotidiano e vivência religiosa: Entre a capela e o calundu.” In História da Vida Privada no Brasil, vol. 1, edited by Fernando Novais and Laura de Mello e Souza, 155–220. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1997. Novais, Fernando, and Laura de Mello e Souza, eds. História da Vida Privada no Brasil. Vol. 1. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1997. Pericão, Maria da Graça. “Bibliografia Mariana Portuguesa dos séculos XVII e XVIII.” Didaskalia 20, no. 2 (1990): 249–462. Reinhard, T.W. The Evangelization of Brazil under the Jesuits (1549–1569): An Evaluation. Rome: Pontifical Gregorian University, 1969. Ringbom, Sixten. “Maria in Sole and the Virgin of the Rosary.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 25 (1962): 326–30. – Icon to Narrative: The Rise of the Dramatic Close-up in Fifteenth-Century Devotional Painting. Abo: Abo Akademy, 1965. Rubert, Arlindo. A Igreja no Brasil. 3 vols. Santa Maria: Pallotti, 1981–8. Santa Maria, Agostinho de. Santuário Mariano, e História das Imagens milagrosas de Nossa Senhora e das milagrosamente apparecidas (…). 10 vols. Lisbon: Galram, 1707–23. Schmitt, Jean-Claude, and Jacques Le Goff. Dictionnaire raisonné de L’Occident Médiéval. Paris: Fayard, 1999. Schwartz, Stuart B. “Luso-Spanish Relations in Hapsburg Brazil, 1580–1640.” The Americas 25 (July 1968): 33–48. –, ed. Early Brazil: A Documentary Collection to 1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Stoichita, Victor. Visionary Experience in the Golden Age of Spanish Art. London: Reaktion Books, 1995. Stratton, Suzanne. The Immaculate Conception in Spanish Renaissance and Baroque Art. New York: New York University, 1983. Zanini, Walter, ed. História Geral da Arte no Brasil. Vol. 1. São Paulo: Instituto W. Moreira Salles, 1983.
5 Presence and Absence: The Holy House of Loreto in Ibero-America
clara bargellini
He went to Our Lady of Loreto in whose holy temple he saw no walls nor enclosures, because all of them are covered by crutches, by shrouds, by chains, by shackles, by handcuffs, by heads of hair, wax busts, and paintings, and exvotos, which were manifest evidence of the innumerable favours that many had received from God’s hand through the intercession of his holy mother … He saw the very same place and room where was delivered the highest and most important message that the heavens and all the angels and all those who dwell in eternal dwellings saw and did not understand.1
This text, from one of the stories in Miguel de Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares, describes a visit to the shrine at Loreto, where pilgrims venerate Mary’s house, preserved within a large church. The visitor is one of Cervantes’ most memorable characters, Tomás Rodaja, a young man who later in the tale imagines that he is made of glass, and becomes “el Licenciado Vidriera” (the glass licentiate). The fragment of the story just cited details the variety and quantities of ex-votos that covered the Holy House. They were so numerous that the object of devotion, the unique relic that is the reason for the existence of the shrine, could not be seen. Cervantes can only describe the ex-votos that covered the House, and marvel at the mystery of the message of the angel Gabriel to Mary that took place there, which no one, he says, not even the angels and saints understand. Thus, the pilgrimages and the pilgrims’ gifts are presented as material ends in themselves, while the relic and its profound significance remain unknown and in the realm of the imagination. I shall not dwell on this fascinating literary passage, or on the rest of the story of Tomás Rodaja, but in substance it focuses on the paradoxes of the intersections of the real, the seen, the imagined, and the incomprehensible.2 I have cited it here, because it serves to introduce this text,
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which discusses some of the most important reproductions of the Holy House of Loreto that were built in Spanish America during the colonial period, but also because it presents accounts of how they were seen, used, and understood. In most of the cases that I shall examine, the walls are not hidden by offerings, though they used to be, and may as well be still, because the memory and awareness of the meaning of the Holy House are vague at best, and often simply forgotten. Though many of the buildings are standing, the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spanish America in 1767 eventually resulted in the waning of devotion to the Virgin of Loreto, which today is relatively rare. Thus, even though they are present and visible, the numerous Holy Houses scattered throughout Latin America are often no longer recognized as copies of the house of Nazareth where Mary received and accepted the message of the angel announcing the mystery of the birth of Jesus, and where she lived with Jesus and Joseph. This essay is about discovering some of these Houses and examining their significance and some of their functions over time.3 First, a few words about the House and shrine at Loreto which is the most important Marian pilgrimage site in Italy.4 The sanctuary has been especially favoured by the papacy since the fourteenth century and, definitively, by Pope Julius II beginning in 1507.5 Its site near the Adriatic Sea, whose waters were the theatre of conflicts between European crusaders and Islamic forces for centuries, turned Loreto into a reference point for Catholic Europe. From afar, from both land and sea, pilgrims would have seen its walls and ramparts as a materialization of the idea of the Roman church as an unconquerable fortress. At the same time, the sanctuary attracts pilgrims who venerate there a piece of the Holy Land: the room where Mary received the message of the future birth of Jesus. This small construction, which measures approximately 9 by 4 metres, is said to have been carried by angels to Croatia and then to Loreto at the end of the thirteenth century. The miracles reported there, and the difficulties of travel to Palestine transformed Loreto into a substitute for pilgrimages to the Holy Land.6 By the end of the fifteenth century, reproductions of the Holy House began to be built throughout Europe, and these acquired functions similar to those of the original at Loreto.7 The same could not fail to happen in the newly Christianized Americas. New Spain It seems that the first building dedicated to the Virgin of Loreto in New Spain was in the port city of Veracruz, where a hospital with a chapel dedicated to her was founded in 1616 by a certain Pedro Ronzón, who
The Holy House of Loreto in Ibero-America 115
was from Zara in Dalmatia (Croatia), on the opposite side of the Adriatic from Loreto. Ronzón’s origins, his own travels, and the need for protection during dangerous journeys go far to explain his devotion to the travelling Virgin of Loreto, as well as the acceptance and reception of the image in the principal port of mainland New Spain. Ronzón’s original chapel is said to have been reconstructed about a century later, and is partially known through a few nineteenth-century photographs.8 This early Loreto chapel had its origins in the personal efforts of a layperson who would have associated the devotion with his own homeland in Europe, as well as with Mary’s intercession on behalf of travellers. However, we cannot be sure that it was a reproduction of the Holy House or only a simple chapel, probably with an image of the Virgin and her House. The more familiar and extensive history of the Loreto devotion in New Spain has centred on the Jesuit contribution, and is based largely on Jesuit sources. Francisco de Florencia describes what may well have been the first appearance of the Virgin of Loreto in Mexico City: a painting of Mary and her House being carried by angels on an arch erected in 1578 for the celebration of the arrival of a shipment of relics sent from the pope.9 We know, too, that there was an altar dedicated to the Virgin of Loreto at the Jesuit Church of La Profesa in Mexico City in 1615.10 In 1671, the Jesuit Juan de Burgos reports the existence of two Loreto chapels in Puebla: in the Jesuit church and in the college.11 He also cites a chapel at La Profesa, and at San Pedro y San Pablo in Mexico City, where there was a chapel both in the church and in the residence.12 These and others that he says existed in Antigua Guatemala, Pátzcuaro, and in the convents of the Encarnación and Santo Domingo in Mexico City, were all richly adorned,13 but they are, unfortunately, no longer extant. Nevertheless, there exists another Loreto chapel in Puebla reportedly first erected in 1655, which, like Ronzón’s chapel in Veracruz, was commissioned by a layman, José de la Cruz Sarmiento, in gratitude to the Virgin for having saved him from being struck by lightning. It is said to have been rebuilt around the middle of the eighteenth century with a Holy House inside.14 Since the early nineteenth century, the chapel and House are within Fort Loreto on the outskirts of the old city. The chapel at Puebla seems to have been originally a free-standing building, and possibly that of Veracruz was also. They could have been replicas of the Loreto Holy House, at least in terms of basic dimensions and simple rectangular plan, but we do not have sufficient information about them to be sure. Enough was known about the original Holy House in the seventeenth century to make such reproductions possible. As already mentioned, copies of the original Loreto House were numerous by then in Europe, and Burgos’s 1671 book includes a rough plan
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and measurements.15 Yet another extant building in Mexico may be of the type built by Sarmiento in Puebla: an isolated Holy House built as an expression of personal devotion. At the outskirts of San Luis de la Paz, in the present-day state of Guanajuato, which is the site of the earliest Jesuit presence among the “Chichimecas” (the generic name of nonChristian peoples in northern New Spain), there is a simple vaulted chapel, approximately the size of the Holy House, which is known locally by the name of “Loretito.” Unfortunately, its history is unknown, though some inhabitants of the town remember that processions to it were a common tradition.16 The best known extant Loreto chapels and Houses of New Spain are in and near Mexico City: one first dedicated in 1679 at the Jesuit novitiate and church of San Francisco Xavier in Tepotzotlán (fig. 5.1), and another at their college of San Gregorio in Mexico City, dedicated a year later.17 Neither of these exists in its initial form today, but they were built largely through the efforts of the Italian Jesuits, Juan Bautista Zappa and Juan María Salvatierra, which is why the strong relationship between the Jesuits and devotion to Loreto was firmly fixed in all later accounts of the Mexican history of the image. The chapel and House at San Gregorio were rebuilt in 1686, while the camarín there was added in 1715,18 and a small dome was raised over the House in 1738. This complex no longer exists. Meanwhile, the reconstruction of the House of Loreto at Tepotzotlán, which is still extant, was completed in 1733, as can be read in the inscription on one of its walls. A copy of it can also be seen in the painting of the Holy Family returning to Nazareth, in the chapel dedicated to Saint Joseph, adjacent to the House (fig. 5.2). The dates and the presence of a dome at Tepotzotlán suggest that the House at the novitiate church may have been a model for San Gregorio. The Tepotzotlán House was built according to the measurements of the original Loreto relic, which was the case at San Gregorio as well. As already mentioned, these had been known in New Spain at least since the publication of Burgos’ book in 1671, but Zappa and Salvatierra, who had arrived from Italy in 1675, brought more precise information. Insistence on measurements occurs frequently since medieval times in “copies” of buildings that are also relics. Mary’s room, transformed into a “house,” certainly would have merited the same attention. Thus, the initial Houses at Tepotzotlán and San Gregorio would probably have been simple copies with the basic dimensions of the original House at Loreto. As the devotion grew, reconstructions began and elements, such as camarines,19 domes, and corridors around the Houses were added. This is the combination still to be seen at Tepotzotlán, but the same was the case at San Gregorio, since a 1774 inventory mentions “the corridors or passages at the sides of the chapel that lead into the camarín.”20
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Figure 5.1. Entrance to the Holy House of Loreto from the nave of the Jesuit church at Tepotzotlán. Museo Nacional del Virreinato, Tepotzotlán, Edo. de México. Photograph IIE/UNAM.
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Figure 5.2. José de Ibarra, The Return of the Holy Family to Nazareth from Egypt, c. 1738. Relicario de San José, next to the Holy House of Loreto. Museo Nacional del Virreinato, Tepotzotlán, Edo. de México. Photograph IIE/UNAM.
In contrast, the final versions of these two Jesuit Holy Houses had an earlier counterpart in Guadalajara, which is much less known. Juan María Salvatierra, after his initial few years in New Spain, which were spent in Puebla and in Mexico City, was for ten years, between 1680 and 1690, a missionary in Chínipas, the mountainous region between the modern states of Sinaloa and Chihuahua.21 He afterwards served as rector of the Jesuit College in Guadalajara, between 1693 and 1696.22 There he built a chapel dedicated to the Virgin of Loreto next to the Jesuit Church of Santo Tomás de Aquino (fig. 5.3).23 This chapel survives to this day as part of the Biblioteca Iberoamericana. It thus probably would be the oldest chapel that is still in existence in Mexico that sheltered a Holy House, since the reconstructions at San Gregorio and Tepotzotlán were not completed until the 1730s, and we do not know the architectural details of the first Holy Houses there. Whatever the case, what we see today at Guadalajara is a three-bay structure that is parallel to and shares a wall with the church. The central bay of the chapel is higher than the other two, and has a small lantern at its crown. The
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Figure 5.3. Former Loreto Chapel, Biblioteca Iberoamericana, Guadalajara, Mexico. Photograph Clara Bargellini.
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size of the chapel, approximately 28 metres long by 8.5 metres wide, permitted the presence of a House in its interior: “not only did he [Salvatierra] build the Holy House, but he sheltered it within a very ample and beautiful vault, within which, as in its shell, was placed that precious pearl.”24 In fact, according to an inscription on what must have been the cornerstone of the Guadalajara House, now set into a wall of the courtyard of the city’s Regional Museum, the construction of the House within the chapel was begun in 1699: “During the reign of don Carlos II King of Spain and New Spain and being President of the royal Audiencia of Nueva Galicia don Alonso de Villagutiérre, this first stone was placed for the Holy House of Our Lady of Loreto on 30 April of 1699.”25 In other words, the House was built after Salvatierra had gone on to Baja California, but he certainly must have planned that the chapel he had erected would contain it. Furthermore, the figure of the Loreto Virgin that was venerated in the Guadalajara House is also preserved in the same Regional Museum. It consists of the carved head of the Virgin set on a wooden armature; the figure of the Christ Child is lost, but the silver embroidery of Mary’s original robe, unfortunately cut from the now discarded original silk fabric, is also in the museum.26 Though totally repainted, the head with its large glass eyes, straight nose, small smiling mouth, and rounded cheeks, recalls other images of the Virgin of Loreto in New Spain. The last news we have of the Guadalajara Loreto chapel, functioning as such, is from 1792, when a mass was celebrated there, “in front of the altar of Our Lady of Loreto,” for the inauguration of the Real y Literaria Universidad de Guadalajara, which occupied the former Jesuit college after the expulsion of the order in 1767.27 Cristóbal Cordero, a Jesuit from Guadalajara, built another Loreto chapel between 1711 and 1719, next to the Society’s church in San Luis Potosí (fig. 5.4).28 Very possibly in imitation of Salvatierra’s arrangement in Guadalajara, the chapel at San Luis is parallel to the church, and has its own entrance from the exterior, as well as a door that opens onto the church nave.29 The Holy House within has disappeared; it was a small structure, “low and ugly,” “like a shack with a roof in the middle of the chapel,” according to Francisco Peña who saw it in 1838–40.30 Its principal ornament was a gilded altarpiece with a statue of the Virgin of Loreto. A painting of the Annunciation was on the front wall of the House, so that it could be seen from the nave of the chapel.31 The Guadalajara chapel is very probably the antecedent for one more Loreto shrine: the chapel and Holy House built between 1709 and 1715 at the Jesuit mission of San Luis Gonzaga at Bacadéhuachi, Sonora, by Nicolás de Oro, who was yet another Jesuit from the capital of Nueva Galicia.32 This chapel, too, was next to the church; it no longer exists. The Franciscans, who after the 1767 expulsion of the Jesuits took over
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Figure 5.4. Façade of Loreto Church, San Luis Potosí, Mexico. Photograph IIE/UNAM.
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many of their missions in northwestern New Spain, incorporated its altarpiece into a striking late eighteenth-century reconstruction of the mission church and its Loreto chapel.33 One element of the first chapel and House survives, however. At first glance, the unique profile of the altarpiece, which is now in the apse area of the Franciscan church, clearly recalls the shape of a small house, as the Loreto relic is generally represented.34 The iconography of the altarpiece confirms the first impression. In the central niche is a sculpture of the Virgin of Loreto, wearing the usual “dalmatic” robe which has characterized the image since the end of the fifteenth century,35 and which facilitated frequent changes in order to make it possible to display the many donations of clothing to the image. The Annunciation is represented in two canvasses on either side of Mary: the archangel Gabriel at the right and the kneeling Virgin at the left. At the top of the altarpiece are Mary’s parents, Joachim and Ann, and Saint Joseph at the centre, completing the Holy Family with the figures of the Virgin and Child in the niche below. Since Francisco Martínez’ signature is on one of the canvasses, these had to have been painted between 1717 and 1758, the first and last known dates of this painter’s activity. This means, of course, that the altarpiece is from the original Jesuit Loreto House in Bacadéhuachi. There was yet another Jesuit Holy House in Sonora, no longer extant, at the mission of San José Mátape. Cayetano Guerrero built it between 1717 and 1746. An inventory of that year describes the House “with an image of the Virgin, richly dressed, within a niche of mirrors in a gilded altarpiece,”36 while another, in 1763, says it was “made according to the model of the original … it is attached to the mission church.”37 Finally, since it was the work of the Jesuit province of New Spain, it is appropriate to remember here the Loreto chapel of Havana, Cuba, dedicated in 1755,38 whose portal still exists. Two inscriptions clearly identify it: Deiparae Domus and Mariae over the door.39 The other known Houses of Loreto in New Spain were not directly built by the Jesuits, but by some of their important patrons. The earliest seems to have been the vaulted, domed chapel with a Holy House within, which was erected in 1694 in the atrium of the Church of San Francisco in Querétaro by Juan Caballero y Ocio.40 It is no longer extant, but Caballero was a great benefactor of the Jesuits in New Spain, especially of the California missions and of their founder Juan María Salvatierra, who built the Guadalajara Loreto chapel and House. A second example is that of the chapel and House in the oratory complex of San Miguel Allende. Manuel Tomás de la Canal, who also paid for the final chapel and House at the Tepotzotlán novitiate and whose portrait is included in the painting of the Holy Family in the chapel dedicated to Saint Joseph
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there (fig. 5.2), financed it in 1735.41 Still another House was built before 1766 by Luis Felipe Neri de Alfaro, a priest of the Oratory, at the sanctuary of Atotonilco, not far from San Miguel.42 Both of the oratory houses are still extant. South America Given the number of Houses of Loreto in New Spain, their apparent scarcity in South America is surprising. However, the oldest Latin American Loreto dedication seems to have been a mission established in 1610 in the northern part of the present state of Paraná, Brazil. The founders of Nuestra Señora de Loreto del Pirapó, as it was called, were the Italian Jesuits Giuseppe Cataldino and Simone Mascetta; one might think that the founders, especially Cataldino, who was from Fabriano, a town near Loreto, had made the decision to name the mission for the Italian sanctuary. However, the provincial, Diego de Torres, under whose authority the two missionaries laboured, had himself made a pilgrimage to Loreto and was devoted to the Virgin. He had given instructions in 1609 that “in all the churches that you build, you should procure to erect a chapel of Our Lady of Loreto, 40 feet long, 20 wide, and 25 high [11 x 5.5 x 6.9 metres], with an altar and all the rest as it exists in the original.”43 These measurements are greater than those of the original Holy House, but the very mention of them, along with the reference to “the original,” indicates that Torres was thinking of precise reproductions; perhaps he meant the measurements for the chapels to encase replicas of the House. About twenty years later, pressured by the incursions of slave traders, the Jesuits and mission peoples fled south in search of safer territories. After at least two moves, the mission of Loreto was fixed in 1686 in the modern province of Misiones in Argentina. Despite nineteenth-century destruction and damages, its ruins and general layout are still visible, including those of the Loreto chapel. Another chapel was at the mission of Saint Ignatius Guazú of 1694: it was “a chapel of Our Lady of Loreto, much painted and full of ornaments.”44 The only extant House of Loreto of the South American missions is at Santa Rosa, Paraguay, which was established in 1698.45 It is a free-standing building, like that of San Luis de la Paz in New Spain, and its measurements are roughly those of the original Holy House. Its most outstanding features are the mural paintings and sculptures in its interior (fig. 5.5), which are said to date between 1713 and 1732, when Francisco Robles was a missionary there.46 The House/chapel has a modern portico, and is located to the left of the main church, which was rebuilt after a fire in 1883. To finalize
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Figure 5.5. The Annunciation, Loreto Chapel, Santa Rosa, Paraguay. Photograph Sergio Gabriel Raczko.
this account of Loreto in South American missions, it is important to recall that in Moxos, Bolivia, the first Jesuit foundation in 1682 was dedicated to Loreto,47 just as had happened in the Paraguay province at the beginning of the seventeenth century. However, there do not seem to have been any Houses of Loreto in Moxos and Chiquitos. I have not found Holy Houses in Brazil, or in the cities of the rest of the continent, although there are Loreto images as well as chapels, particularly in many Jesuit churches. I have, however, come across a 1625 mention of a Jesuit construction of “Our Lady inside a curious small house, adorned in wax and with the mysteries of the Holy Rosary,” which was carried in processions in Quito.48 Furthermore, despite the apparent absence of Houses in their interiors, it is necessary to recall that there are Loreto chapels next to several Jesuit churches, as at Cusco, dedicated in 1654;49 San Miguel in Sucre, built after 1640;50 the chapel “de indios” at Ayacucho, whose façade is at right angles with respect to that of the church;51 and at Arequipa.52 Several of these chapels are situated parallel to the nave of the main church, as at Guadalajara and San Luis Potosí in
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Mexico. Finally, there is the Loreto chapel of the former Jesuit novitiate of San Antonio Abad in Lima, inaugurated in 1766.53 Before the 1746 earthquake, there was another, though smaller, Loreto chapel on the site. An old drawing published in a restoration report seems to indicate that in its interior there was an enclosed space, which may have been a Holy House.54 Functions and Interpretations of the Holy House The Holy Houses in the cities and the missions of New Spain were mostly, though not only, in Jesuit establishments. In South America, Holy Houses seem to have been concentrated at the Jesuit missions, though only one of these survives: the House at Santa Rosa, with its profusely decorated interior. The missionary role that the Jesuits attributed to the Virgin of Loreto is also evident in the South American cities, where her chapels next to the Jesuit churches are often known as “capillas de indios” (chapels for Indians). The absence of Houses within these chapels contrasts with their presence both in the cities and at the missions in New Spain. To better understand all of these buildings, it is useful to look more closely at these absences and presences, their locations and functions. The history of the Holy House of Loreto is a paradoxical account of a building, which by definition should be fixed in place, but which, nevertheless, travelled from Palestine to Italy. Jesuit historiography since the seventeenth century has insisted on the central role of the Society of Jesus in the diffusion of devotion to the Holy House. This process was closely related to the fact that Jesuits identified themselves as pilgrims, famously in the case of Saint Francis Xavier, but also more generally. Thus, they found identity and solace in the Holy House, as witnessed by the diffusion of images of Loreto and the building of copies of the small House in many places. The case of Juan María Salvatierra, one of the principal promoters of the Holy House in New Spain, can help us understand some of the subtleties of the perceptions and roles of the flying building. We have already seen that his devotion was expressed more than once in the construction of Holy Houses. Indeed, the idea of the House within a chapel seems to have been particularly promoted by him. His chapel in Guadalajara, though the House itself is now gone, may be the oldest surviving evidence of the combination of the House within a chapel in New Spain. It was probably the inspiration for the version at San Luis Potosí, and may well have been in the mind of Caballero y Ocio when he built the chapel with a House at Querétaro. There can be little doubt that it also inspired the now lost chapel at the mission of Bacadéhuachi and possibly
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the one at Mátape, both in Sonora. A very particular example of Salvatierra’s interest in the building of Loreto replicas is to be found in the correspondence with his friend, Juan Bautista Zappa. The two had been together as novices at Chieri, near Turin in Italy. They brought this up in discussing how the Tepotzotlán house was “like the one at Chieri, near the entrance of the church.”55 One can only conclude, therefore, that Salvatierra was deeply committed to the building of chapels with Holy Houses, and was sensitive to their appearance and characteristics. Nevertheless, a curious fact about Salvatierra presents another fundamental facet of his Loreto devotion. To begin with, although he was a missionary in Chínipas for ten years, we have no information about his having built anything there. He must have put up modest chapels of one kind or another, but they seem not to have been recorded, or the information has yet to be located. Furthermore, although he established the first mission in Baja California, which he dedicated to the Virgin of Loreto in 1697,56 there is no evidence that he ever erected anything other than a simple church, despite frequent affirmations in modern historical writings that he had built a Holy House there. This absence at Salvatierra’s missions, of an activity that had occupied him in Mexico City and Guadalajara, seems surprising and problematic. There can be no doubt that Salvatierra was very devoted to Mary of Loreto. We even know that he had a painting made for the Jesuit college of San Gregorio in which the Virgin and her House were flying towards California where the Indigenous people “with their hands outstretched were waiting and calling out to her.”57 The painting, which is lost, was clearly an allegory about how much these people needed and wanted the Christian religion and the presence of the Church among them, and also about how much he himself wanted to go to California. One can understand Salvatierra’s accounts and actions at the missions in the same way. In a letter from Loreto, he tells Juan de Ugarte, the procurador (administrator) of the Jesuit missions, that he is able to write thanks to “the mercy of God and intercession of Most Holy Mary and the defence of the walls of her Holy House of Loreto, which we have come to establish.”58 He is alluding to the idea of the protection provided by the House, which is a symbol of the church, not to an actual construction. In other words, the Holy House is the church in which he finds protection, and which he is seeking to establish in the new mission territory of California. Further on in the text, he refers precisely to the “establishment of the Holy House of Loreto in California.”59 Further still, he expresses the desire that “Mary, the great Settler (gran Pobladora), will fix the roots of her Holy House in her chosen ones”;60 that is, the Virgin will establish the church, in other
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words, the Catholic faith, among the Indigenous peoples that she wants to save. None of this is about a concrete, material building. That the Holy House is the church, meaning the community of the faithful and the guarantee of salvation, was an old and established idea in writings about Loreto, as Burgos, following Orazio Tursellino, explains throughout his book.61 That Mary herself is a symbol of the church also corresponds to an ancient and dense tradition.62 Salvatierra surely knew all of this, and it was no doubt familiar to his fellow Jesuit, Ugarte, to whom the letter was written. This combination of ideas, which identified Mary and her House with the church, was at the centre of Jesuit decisions to promote devotion to the Virgin of Loreto, along with the building of replicas of the House, but also without them. Their physical presence, though important, was not essential. In New Spain, in addition to the examples with the Holy Houses already cited, there were other missions dedicated to Loreto, where no Houses or chapels existed: one at Nátora, Sonora, and two in the region of Chínipas, where Salvatierra himself had worked, as noted above. The Jesuit church in Chihuahua, which served as a base for the missionaries who worked in the Tarahumara (Rarámuri) region, was also dedicated to the Virgin of Loreto, who was present there in a sculpture at the main altar.63 The same seems to have been the case at the Moxos and Chiquitos missions, as already mentioned. There, in fact, not even images of the Virgin of Loreto seem to have been preserved, if they ever existed. Although we have just seen how the absence of a material Holy House could be as meaningful as its presence, what can be said about the Holy Houses that do exist? The same literature that celebrates the spiritual value of the Loreto House also declares that the actual building was the first church structure in which Saint Peter celebrated mass.64 In New Spain, including at the Jesuit missions, the Holy Houses of the eighteenth century and their chapels presented fairly complex architectural programs. At Loreto, as at many of its European replicas, pilgrims culminate their travels by moving around the House, often on their knees, thus insisting on the value of pilgrimage as such,65 as well as on the importance of honouring the building itself. Going around the House would have been possible certainly in Guadalajara and probably at San Luis Potosí, where the Houses are recorded as having been in the centres of their chapels. Possibly the same was true at Bacadéhuachi and Mátape. The addition of the camarín, however, as at Tepotzotlán and San Gregorio, though it did not altogether impede going around the House, did complicate matters, by multiplying the ways one could see it as well as move around it. There were more choices while visiting the House: circling around it was still possible, but with the interruption of the
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camarín; and the House could be entered, of course, but so could the camarín as well. The figure of the Virgin, furthermore, was visible both from front and back, either from within the House or from the camarín. Certainly, the combination of corridors and a camarín affords more varied and exciting visual and physical experiences, much in the spirit of Baroque art that involves the spectator. However, all of the Loreto spaces are quite small, so that access to any of them would have been limited. This necessarily led to the stratification of these experiences through the participation of special groups, such as the congregaciones, in which members met regularly and received special privileges. There was one congregación of the Virgin of Loreto at San Gregorio from which “Indians” were excluded, though they were to be assisted in their needs by the members, which was a point that occasioned discussion.66 Cristóbal Cordero, the Jesuit who built the San Luis Potosí chapel, was prefect of the Marian sodalities there. In fact, the entire subject of women and gender in the devotion to Loreto is an obvious avenue of research that has been little explored. Finally, of course, we must remember that pilgrimages continued to be activities especially associated with the Loreto devotion. People would come to seek favours and would leave offerings, as certainly happened at Bacadéhuachi, where one painted ex-voto is still preserved, and pilgrims still visit the site. At Tepotzotlán, what must have been individual exvotos, with stories of miracles, are seen in paintings on the walls at the entrance of the chapel. Another aspect that demands attention with respect to the extant Holy Houses, in both New Spain and in South America, is the contrast between their exteriors and interiors. Except for the Holy House at San Miguel Allende, decorated with late eighteenth-century paintings of classicizing and ornamented architecture, reminiscent of the style of Francisco Eduardo Tresguerras, the other Houses have bare exteriors. In other words, there seems to have been little desire to imitate the elaborate external appearance given to the original Loreto House in Italy by the Renaissance marble sculptures that encased it in the sixteenth century. This was despite the fact that the Italian missionaries who knew Loreto – and Francisco de Florencia himself who had been there – certainly had seen the sixteenth century external decoration of the original House.67 Burgos, in fact, describes it.68 The simple imitation brick exterior of the House at Tepotzotlán seems to have had particular appeal. It made Francisco de Florencia think with sympathy of the “small houses of the Indians of this New Spain.”69 In contrast to Florencia’s positive understanding and appreciation of this exterior poverty in opposition to interior richness, Francisco Peña’s nineteenth-century neoclassical taste,
The Holy House of Loreto in Ibero-America 129
cited above, could not see beyond the “low and ugly” aspect of the Holy House within the chapel of San Luis Potosí.70 The striking example of the contrast between the outside and inside at the Loreto House at Santa Rosa, in Paraguay, will close this essay on the Holy Houses of Ibero-America. Like at most of the Houses in New Spain, the exterior of the structure is without ornament. However, the wall paintings and sculptures inside this small building constitute one of the most important Loreto chapel interiors in the world. On one of its walls, the paintings show the victory and glory of the moment of the Incarnation of God in Jesus: a group of angels witness how God the Father sends his son into the world within a ray of light, while Michael with other angels are defeating the devil. Mary’s acceptance, that made the Incarnation possible, took place in the original Holy House. It is rendered at Santa Rosa in three sculptures (fig. 5.5): Mary, the angel Gabriel, and the Holy Spirit in the usual form of a dove, which is attached to the wall, thus embodying the connection between God’s decision to send his son into the world and the moment of the Incarnation. The scene on the other wall contrasts with the heavenly drama just described. There we see represented the activity of Joseph’s carpentry shop. A curious detail is that in the shop some ornaments in the shape of stars are being made. It turns out, in fact, that the original Holy House once had star-shaped decorations on its ceiling. Muzio Vitelleschi, father general of the Society of Jesus between 1615 and 1645, sent one of these stars to the Jesuits in Mexico.71 There are also paintings at Santa Rosa of several episodes of the travels of the Holy House, carried by angels, from Palestine to Loreto. A beautiful sculpture of the Virgin of Loreto, with her mantle in movement to dissimulate the absence of hands in the traditional figure, presides over the chapel. The richness of this iconography can be understood within the long tradition of devotion to Loreto in South America. Besides that, however, the narration of biblical stories through painting and sculpture within a small building recalls the north Italian pilgrimage sanctuaries such as the Sacro Monte in Varallo. There, like at Santa Rosa, inside the replica of the Holy House the visitor can observe the scene of the Annunciation in sculpture and painting.72 The function of the Holy House as a scenario at both Varallo and Santa Rosa leads one to wonder if the Santa Rosa house may not have been part of a more extensive narrative program, as it is at Varallo. A tentative reply can be found at the site of Loreto II in Argentina, named thus to distinguish it from the first foundation with the same name. The ruins of the Loreto House there are at one extreme of the original town, and a Calvary chapel is on a hill at the other. The idea that these two chapels would have served to recall
130 Clara Bargellini
and celebrate the two main events and cycles of the liturgical year seems very plausible.73 These would have been, of course, Christ’s birth, and death and resurrection, as commemorated in the Christmas and Easter seasons. Unlike at Varallo, where there are multiple chapels, here only the two most important ones were built. We must also remember that the Jesuit artist José Brassanelli (1659–1728) was at Santa Rosa in the early eighteenth century, and would have been involved in the Loreto House project. He was from Milan and no doubt knew Varallo or other similar sites in Lombardy. The emphasis in all the Ibero-American Holy Houses examined here was not everywhere the same, nor was it centred exclusively on the ideal of pilgrimage, nor only on the miracle working power of the Virgin who healed and helped those in need. As always in the transferal of images, what begins with a copy or version after a model is transformed into an active presence in its new context. Whether as a modest relic and reminder of the humility of life in Nazareth, or as a space in which to meditate on the mystery of the Incarnation represented in painting and sculpture, or as an idea about the essence of Catholic worship, the House of Loreto had a remarkable history in Ibero-America that merits more attention in both specific and comparative studies. Aside from the problems of identifying and explaining the different sites and forms of the devotion, much remains to be learned about the uses of the Virgin’s House, as well as about the ideas and sentiments of the complex and heterogeneous individuals and populations who were its users in Spanish America. The material remains of the Holy Houses, with their characteristics and specific histories are a valuable resource in the search for understanding. NOTES 1 Cervantes, “El licenciado Vidriera,” fol. 144v., my translation. (“Fue a Nuestra Señora de Loreto en cuyo santo templo no vio paredes ni murallas, porque todas están cubiertas de muletas, de mortajas, de cadenas, de grillos, de esposas, de cabelleras, de medios bultos de cera y de pinturas y retablos que daban manifiesto indicio de las innumerables mercedes que muchos habían recibido de la mano de Dios por intercesión de su divina madre … Vio el mismo aposento y estancia donde se relató la más alta embajada y de más importancia que vieron y no entendieron todos los cielos y todos los ángeles y todos los moradores de las moradas sempiternas.”) 2 Sampayo Rodríguez, Rasgos erasmistas, 89–90. 3 I wish to thank the following: Luisa Elena Alcalá, Enrique Camacho, Patricia Díaz Cayeros, Marta Fajardo, Adilson Figueiredo, Ricardo González and
The Holy House of Loreto in Ibero-America 131 Luis Eduardo Wuffarden for their help; I also thank my students Linda Fajardo, Erika González and Eder Arreola, and José de Jesús Hernández of the Library of the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas. 4 Among recent publications on Loreto, one stands out for the variety of its contributions: Citterio and Vaccaro, Loreto. However, the Hispanic world does not figure in the volume, although Loreto had a notable presence in Latin America if not in Spain. Alcalá, “Acomodación, control y esplendor.” 5 Masetti Zannini, “I papi e Loreto,” 245–7. 6 Grimaldi, Pellegrini, 9–25. 7 Bulgarelli, “La Santa Casa di Loreto.” Ranucci and Tenenti, Sei riproduzioni della Santa Casa. Spinelli, “Dedicazioni alla Madonna di Loreto”; Stannek, “Diffusione e sviluppi”; Langé, Iconografía della Santa Casa”; Rinaldi, “La devozione lauretana.” The periodical publication of the Loreto Sanctuary, Il Messaggio della Santa Casa – Loreto, regularly publishes brief notices of Holy Houses throughout the world, although Italian examples predominate, and many are modern. 8 I am grateful to Carmen Boone for the information on the Veracruz chapel which she presented in an unpublished paper: “Introducción de Nuestra Señora de Loreto.” For an old photograph (though the chronology cited there is erroneous), see fig. 15 at http://aguapasada.wordpress .com/2014/02/02/2o-recorrido-por- veracruz-en-los-anos-1860s-1870s/ (consulted 30 June 2013). William B. Taylor, Theater of a Thousand Wonders: A History of Miraculous Images and Shrines in New Spain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), is an important contribution: it should be consulted for additional information on some of the sites mentioned here. 9 Florencia, Casa peregrina, 344. For relics in Baroque culture, see the article by Enrique Fernández in this volume. 10 Carta annua in Ayer manuscript 1036, fol. 45, Newberry Library, Chicago. 11 Burgos, Discursos historiales, prologue, 249, 378. 12 Ibid., 248–9. 13 Ibid., 249. 14 Leicht, Las calles de Puebla, 218–21. 15 Burgos, Discursos historiales, 146–9, 249. 16 I visited the chapel at San Luis de la Paz in 2012. 17 For Tepotzotlán see the article by Ricardo Castro in this volume. 18 For San Gregorio, see Alcalá et al., “Solemne Procesión,” 24–8, an important contribution to the complicated intertwined history of the chapels and Holy Houses at San Gregorio and Tepotzotlán. 19 The camarín is a chapel behind an altar of a venerated figure, usually of the Virgin Mary, where the gifts and vestments offered to her are kept. It generally can be accessed from within the church. Kubler and Soria, Art and Architecture of Spain and Portugal, assert that the first example of a camarín
132 Clara Bargellini was one built in the middle of the seventeenth century at the Church of the Desamparados in Valencia. 20 “Los callejones o tránsito de los lados de la capilla que dan entrada al camarín.” Alcalá et al., “Solemne Procesión,” 47. 21 Gutiérrez, Edición crítica, 173–81. 22 Zambrano and Gutiérrez Casillas, Diccionario bio-bibliográfico, 16: 499. 23 Gutiérrez, Edición crítica, 190–1. 24 “no sólo hizo la Santa Casa, sino que la ciñó con una muy capaz y primorosa bóveda, en la cual, como en su concha, estaba metida aquella preciosa margarita.” Quoted in Gutiérrez, Edición crítica, 191n43. Decorme, La obra de los jesuitas mexicanos, 1:100, records the cost of 7,000 pesos for the construction. 25 “Reinando don Carlos II rey de las Españas y siendo Presidente de la Real Audiencia de la Nueva Galicia don Alonso de Villagutiérre, se puso esta primera piedra en la santa Casa de Nuestra Señora de Loreto en 30 de Abril de 1699.” My thanks to Father Tomás de Híjar Ornelas of Guadalajara for the transcription, and to Lic. José Antonio Rosales Cortés for sending it to me. 26 The figure (inventory number INAH 10-298155) is 1.37 metres high and 0.48 metres wide. My thanks to Adriana Cruz Lara for this information, and to Lorena Roman for information on the unfortunate “restoration” of the robe. 27 “frente al altar de N. Sra. de Loreto.” Ruiz Moreno, Apuntes para la historia, 23; Enciso Durán, Extemplo de Santo Tomás, 31, 83–4, 88–9, 96, and illustrations. 28 Hernández Soubervielle, Nuestra Señora de Loreto de San Luis Potosí, 60–3. 29 Ibid., 71. 30 Peña, Estudio histórico, 104, quoted in Hernández Soubervielle, Nuestra Señora, 156. The expressions are “pesada y fea” and “en forma de un jacal de tejado levantado en medio de la capilla.” 31 Peña, Estudio histórico, 156–62 and 191–3. 32 Zambrano and Gutiérrez Casillas, Diccionario bio-bibliográfico, 233–4, for Nicolás de Oro. 33 Fray Juan Felipe Martínez to Comandante General Don Pedro de Nava, 8 June 1797. I am grateful to José Refugio de la Torre Curiel for this information. Also see Torre Curiel, Vicarios en entredicho, 339. In previous publications I had incorrectly assumed that the building that survives today was of the Jesuit period. 34 Bargellini, El arte de las misiones, 60–1. 35 In the fourteenth century, the Virgin of Loreto was a painted icon. The custom of clothing the image began when the painting was replaced by a sculpture. Floriano Grimaldi, La Historia della chiesa, 287–302.
The Holy House of Loreto in Ibero-America 133 36 “… con una imagen de la Virgen lujosamente vestida en un nicho de espejos en un retablo dorado.” Zambrano and Gutiérrez Casillas, Diccionario bio-bibliográfico, 15: 728. 37 Archivo General de la Nación, Indiferente Virreinal, Caja 1105, exp. 1. Pradeau, La expulsión de los Jesuitas, 233. 38 Decorme, La obra de los jesuitas mexicanos 1:93. According to Weiss, La arquitectura colonial cubana, 252, the author of the portal was Lorenzo Camacho, a native of Havana. 39 Photograph: http://remains.se/pictured.php?PictureID=5259&Browse=AREA. Consulted June 2014. 40 Montoya Rivero, “Juan Caballero y Ocio,” 45–6. 41 Aguilera and Monterrosa, Oratorios de San Felipe, 61–5. 42 Silva, Atotonilco, 96, 122, 225–30, 362–90. 43 Hernández, Organización social, 580, quoted in Levinton, “Un pueblo missional.” 44 Plá, El Barroco Hispano Guaraní, 109, 261. 45 Trento, Reducciones jesuíticas, 138–49 46 Frings and Übelmesser, Paracuaria, 102. 47 Gutiérrez Da Costa and Gutiérrez Viñuales, “Territorio, urbanismo y arquitectura,” 353–4. 48 “Nuestra Señora dentro de una casa pequeña, curiosa y adornada de cera y misterios del Santo Rosario.” Moreno Egas, Radiografía de la piedra, 183. 49 There was a Loreto chapel in Cusco also before the 1650 earthquake. Nawrot, “La vida litúrgico-musical,” 233. 50 Mesa and Gisbert, Monumentos de Bolivia, 196–7. 51 The name “de indios” is given in a seventeenth-century ground plan. Vallery-Radot, Le Recueil de plans d’édifices, 135, nos. 483–4. 52 Bailey, The Andean Hybrid Baroque, 62, 66, 71, 238. 53 Wuffarden, “Noviciado e iglesia de San Antonio,” 108–15. 54 Borneo, Orígenes y evolución del conjunto, 60, 68–9. Burgos, Discursos historiales, 248, records a Holy House in Lima and another, founded by “a noble Italian” in Cavite in the Philippines, which was then governed from New Spain. 55 “… como la de Chieri al fin de la iglesia.” Gutiérrez, Edición crítica, 151–2. For Chieri, see the plan in Vallery-Radot, Le Recueil de plans d’édifices, 100, no. 385, plate 11, where the number “3” would be the chapel of Loreto, to the left of the entrance to the church. 56 Crosby, Antigua California, 10–20, for the history of the establishment of Loreto Conchó. 57 “Tendidas las manos la esperaban e invocaban.” Alegre, Memorias para la historia, 73–4.
134 Clara Bargellini 58 Letter to Father Juan de Ugarte: “La misericordia de Dios e intercesión de María Santísima y defensa de las paredes de su Santa Casa de Loreto que venimos a fundar.” León Portilla, Loreto capital de las Californias, 93. It is unlikely that Salvatierra would have had a “small replica” of the House of Loreto, as suggested in note 15 to León Portilla’s text, although he could have had a print, a medal, or a small relic showing the House carried by angels, with the Virgin shown seated or standing on its roof. 59 León Portilla, Loreto capital de las Californias, 98. 60 “La gran Pobladora María pondrá las raíces de su Santa Casa en sus escogidos.” León Portilla, Loreto capital de las Californias, 121. 61 Burgos, Discursos historiales, especially book 1. 62 On this topic see Sensi, “Vescovi di Recanati,” 211–43. 63 Bargellini, El arte de las misiones, 234. 64 Burgos, Discursos historiales, book 1, chap. 8. See also Florencia, Sermón en la solemne dedicación, part 1, 7–11, which is an allegorical description of the House at Tepotzotlán. 65 Ranucci and Tenenti, Sei riproduzioni della Santa Casa, 299. 66 Bazarte Martínez, “Las Congregaciones jesuitas,” 119–20. 67 Florencia, Sermón en la solemne dedicación, 10, relates that he had twice celebrated mass in the Loreto Holy House. 68 Burgos, Discursos historiales. 69 “Las casitas de los indios de esta Nueva España.” Florencia, Casa peregrina, 64. 70 See note 30. 71 Vélez, “Resolved to Fly,” 230. Burgos, Discursos historiales, 248, also mentions this star. The star, and another which Burgos says was present in Puebla, would probably have been relics, or imitations, of the stars that reportedly decorated the vault of the original house, and which can be seen at other Holy Houses, such as the relatively well-known Holy House at San Clemente in Venice. Ranucci and Tenenti, Sei riproduzioni della Santa Casa, 148–9, 170–1. For the record, I discussed the Profesa star at length with the former custodian at La Profesa, Father Luis Ávila Blancas, but he had no knowledge of it. 72 The House at Varallo, of the late fifteenth century, is a very early, if not the first, replica of the Holy House. Its sculptures are dated 1572. Bulgarelli, “La Santa Casa di Loreto,” 84, and Langé, “Iconografía della Santa Casa,” 365–6. 73 See note 38. This combination may also have been present at San Luis de la Paz in Mexico, as mentioned above. WORKS CITED Aguilera, Francisco, and Mariano Monterrosa. Oratorios de San Felipe Neri en México. Mexico City: Centro de Asistencia y Promoción, 1992.
The Holy House of Loreto in Ibero-America 135 Alcalá, Luisa Elena. Fundaciones jesuíticas en Iberoamérica. Madrid: Ediciones El Viso, 2002. – “Acomodación, control y esplendor de la imagen en las fundaciones jesuíticas.” In Barroco Andino: Memoria del I Encuentro Internacional, 259–66. La Paz: Viceministerio de Cultura de Bolivia, 2003. – “Blanqueando la Loreto mexicana: Prejuicios sociales y condicionantes materiales en la representación de vírgenes negras.” In La imagen religiosa en la monarquía hispánica. Usos y espacios, ed. Maria Cruz de Carlos, Felipe Pereda, Cecile Vincent-Cassy, and Pierre Civil, 171–93. Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2008. Alcalá Luisa Elena, Patricia Díaz Cayeros, and Gabriela Sánchez Reyes. “Solemne Procesión a la imagen de Nuestra Señora de Loreto: La epidemia de sarampión en 1727.” Encrucijada 2, no. 1, 2009: 20–50. https://www.academia.edu/5287834/_Solemne _Procesi%C3%B3n_a_la_imagen_de_Nue stra_Se%C3%B1ora_de _Loreto_con_Patricia_D%C3%ADaz_Cayeros_y_Gabriela_S%C 3 %A1nchez_Reyes_en_la_revista_digital_Encrucijada.Bolet %C3%ADn_del_Seminario_de_Escultura_Instituto_de _Investigaciones_Est%C3%A9ticas_Universidad_Nacional_ Aut %C3%B3noma_de_Madrid_no_1_2009 Alegre, Javier. Memorias para la historia de la Provincia que tuvo la Compañía de Jesús en Nueva España. Vol. 1. Mexico City: J. Jijón y Caamaño, 1940. Bailey, Gauvin Alexander. The Andean Hybrid Baroque. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2010. Bargellini, Clara. El arte de las misiones del norte de la Nueva España. Mexico City: Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, 2009. – “Lugares de reliquias: La Capilla de Loreto y el Relicario de San José.” In Jesuitas. Su expresión mística y profana en la Nueva España, 198–214. Mexico City: Gobierno del Estado de México, 2011. Bazarte Martínez, Alicia. “Las Congregaciones jesuitas en la ciudad de México durante la época virreinal.” In Jesuitas: Su expresión mística y profana en la Nueva España, 113–30. Mexico City: Gobierno del Estado de México, 2011. Boone, Carmen. “Introducción de Nuestra Señora de Loreto en la Nueva Veracruz y Puebla de los Ángeles.” Paper presented at the Colloquium “Tota Pulchra”: Advocaciones marianas e identidades novohispanas, Colegio de San Ignacio Vizcaínas, Mexico City, 24–5 April 2013. Borneo, Reinhart Augustín. Orígenes y evolución del conjunto arquitectónico de la Casona de San Marcos. Lima: Programa de Patrimonio Cultural de la Cooperación Española en Perú, 2005. Bulgarelli, Massimo. “La Santa Casa di Loreto: L’edificio sacro e le sue copie.” Lotus International 65 (1990): 78–89. Burgos, Juan de. Discursos historiales panegyricos. Madrid: Joseph Fernández de Buendía, 1671.
136 Clara Bargellini Carta annua. Ayer manuscript 1036, ff. 45. Newberry Library, Chicago. Cervantes, Miguel de. “El licenciado Vidriera.” In Novelas ejemplares (1613). http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor-din/el-licenciado-vidriera—0 /html/ff31463c- 82b1–11df-acc7–002185ce6064_15.html#I_0_ (consulted 5 January 2014) Citterio, Ferdinando, and Luciano Vaccaro, eds. Loreto: Crocevia religioso tra l’Italia, Europa e Oriente. Brescia: Morcelliana, 1997. Crosby, Harry W. Antigua California. Mission and Colony on the Peninsular Frontier, 1697–1768. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994. Decorme, Gerard. La obra de los jesuitas mexicanos durante la época colonial. Vol. 1. Mexico City: Antigua Librería Robredo, 1941. Enciso Durán, Guillermo R., ed. Extemplo de Santo Tomás de Aquino: Biblioteca Iberoamericana Octavio Paz. Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 1992. Florencia, Francisco de. Sermón en la solemne dedicación del templo … en el colegio y casa de Tepotzotlán. Mexico City: Francisco Rodríguez Lupercio, 1682. http://www.lafragua.buap.mx:8180/dig/browse/book_cover .jsp?key=book_367057.xml&i d=libro_antiguo – Casa peregrina, solar ilustre en que nació la Reyna de los ángeles. Mexico City: Herederos de la viuda de Calderón, 1694. Fray Juan Felipe Martínez to Comandante General Don Pedro de Nava, 8 June 1797. Biblioteca Nacional de México, Fondo Franciscano, 36/806. Frings, Paul, and Josef Übelmesser. Paracuaria. Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald Verlag, 1982. Grimaldi, Floriano. La historia della chiesa di Santa Maria de Loreto. Loreto: Cassa di Risparmio di Loreto, 1993. – Pellegrini e pellegrinaggi a Loreto nei secoli XIV–XVIII. Loreto: Tecnostampa, 2001. Gutiérrez, Alfonso René. Edición crítica de la Vida del V.P. Juan María de Salvatierra, S.J., escrita por el V. P. César Felipe Doria, S.J. Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico: Conaculta del Noroeste, 1997. Gutiérrez Da Costa, Ramón, and Rodrigo Gutiérrez Viñuales. “Territorio, urbanismo y arquitectura en Moxos y Chiquitos.” In Querejazu, Las misiones, 305–94. Hernández, Pablo. Organización social de las doctrinas guaraníes de la Compañía de Jesús. 2 vols. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 1913. Hernández Soubervielle, José Armando. Nuestra Señora de Loreto de San Luis Potosí. Mexico City: Universidad Iberoamericana, 2009. Kubler, George, and Martin Soria. Art and Architecture of Spain and Portugal and Their American Dominions, 1500–1800. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1959. Langé, Santino. “Iconografía della Santa Casa di Loreto nell’area alpina.” In Citterio and Vaccaro, Loreto, 363–86.
The Holy House of Loreto in Ibero-America 137 Leicht, Hugo. Las calles de Puebla. Puebla: Comisión de Promoción Cultural del Gobierno del Estado de Puebla, 1967. León Portilla, Miguel. Loreto capital de las Californias: Las cartas fundacionales de Juan María Salvatierra. Mexico City: Fonatur, 1997. Levinton, Norberto. “Un pueblo misional con un importante patrimonio religioso: Algunas problemáticas en torno a la investigación de la arquitectura de Nuestra Señora de Loreto (Provincia Jesuítica del Paraguay).” Arquitectura de las misiones jesuíticas (blog), 8 March 2008. http://arquitecturamisionera .blogspot.com/2008/03/misin-de-nuestra-seora-del- loreto.html. Masetti Zannini, Gian Ludovico. “I papi e Loreto.” In Citterio and Vaccaro, Loreto, 245–62. Mesa, José de, and Teresa Gisbert. Monumentos de Bolivia, La Paz: La Papelera, 1992. Montoya Rivero, María Cristina. “Juan Caballero y Ocio, patrono y benefactor de obras religiosas.” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 32, no. 97 (2010): 29–70. Moreno Egas, José, ed. Radiografía de la piedra: Los jesuitas y su templo en Quito. Quito: Fonsal, 2008. Nawrot, Piotr. “La vida litúrgico-musical en el colegio jesuítico en Cuzco (siglos XVI a XVIII).” In Barroco y fuentes de la diversidad cultural: Memoria del II Encuentro Internacional, 229–36. La Paz: Viceministerio de Cultura de Bolivia, 2004; Navarra: Universidad de Navarra, 2011. Peña, Francisco. Estudio histórico sobre San Luis Potosí. San Luis Potosí: Biblioteca de Historia Potosina, 1979. Plá, Josefina. El Barroco Hispano Guaraní. Asunción: Editorial del Centenario, 1975. Pradeau, Alberto Francisco. La expulsión de los Jesuitas de las Provincias de Sonora, Ostimuri y Sinaloa en 1767. Mexico City: Porrúa, 1959. Querejazu, Pedro, ed. Las misiones jesuíticas de Chiquitos. La Paz: Fundación BHN, 1995. Ranucci, Mara, and Massimo Tenenti. Sei riproduzioni della Santa Casa di Loreto in Italia. Loreto: Congregazione Universale della Santa Casa, 2003. Rinaldi, Luca. “La devozione lauretana in Valtellina e Valchiavenna. Chiese e Santuari (sec. XVII).” In Citterio and Vaccaro, Loreto, 387–408. Ruiz Moreno, Carlos Ramiro. Apuntes para la historia de la Universidad de Guadalajara. Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara, 2001. Sampayo Rodríguez, José Ramón. Rasgos erasmistas de la locura del Licenciado Vidriera de Miguel de Cervantes. Kassel: Reichenberger, 1986. Sensi, Mario. “Vescovi di Recanati e rettori della Santa Casa: Conflitti giurisdizionali per un santuario polivalente.” In Citterio and Vaccaro, Loreto, 211–43.
138 Clara Bargellini Silva, José de Santiago. Atotonilco. Guanajuato: Ediciones La Rana, 2004. Spinelli, Giovanni. “Dedicazioni alla Madonna di Loreto dell’Italia Nordorientale.” In Citterio and Vaccaro, Loreto, 191–210. Stannek, Antje. “Diffusione e sviluppi della devozione lauretana in Europa (’600–’700).” In Citterio and Vaccaro, Loreto, 291–327. Torre Curiel, José Refugio de la. Vicarios en entredicho, Crisis y desestructuración de la Provincia Franciscana de Santiago de Xalisco, 1749–1860. Zamora: Colegio de Michoacán, 2001. Trento, Aldo. Reducciones jesuíticas: El Paraíso en el Paraguay. Asunción: Editorial Parroquia San Rafael, 2003. Vallery-Radot, Jean. Le Recueil de plans d’édifices de la Compagnie de Jésus conservé a la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris. Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1960. Vélez, Karin Annelise. “Resolved to Fly: The Virgin of Loreto, the Jesuits and the Miracle of Portable Catholicism in the Seventeenth Century Atlantic World.” PhD diss., Princeton University, 2008. Weiss, Joaquín E. La arquitectura colonial cubana. Havana: Instituto Cubano del Libro, 1996. Wuffarden, Luis Eduardo. “Noviciado e iglesia de San Antonio Abad” in Alcalá, Fundaciones jesuíticas, 108–15. Zambrano, Francisco, and José Gutiérrez Casillas. Diccionario bio-bibliográfico de la Compañía de Jesús en México. Vol. 16. Mexico City: Tradición, 1977.
6 From Intimate to Infinite Presence: The Camarín at Tepotzotlán ricardo l . castro
In physical terms we inhabit space, but in emotional terms we are inhabited by memory. A memory composed of a space and a time, a memory inside which we live, like an island between two oceans – one the past, the other the future. We can navigate the ocean of the recent past thanks to personal memory, which retains the recollection of the routes it has travelled, but to navigate the distant past we have to use memories that time has accumulated, memories of a space that is continually changing, as fleeting as time itself. Jose Saramago1
Presence and Scale2 Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht has defined the idea of “presence” as a relationship between the atmosphere or mood of a place or situation and our bodies. He points out that “atmospheres and moods include the physical dimension of phenomena; unmistakably, their forms of articulation belong to the sphere of aesthetic experience. They undoubtedly belong to the presence-related part of existence, and their articulations count as forms of an aesthetic experience. (Of course, this does not mean that every articulation of presence that qualifies as ‘aesthetic’ also counts as an atmosphere or mood.)”3 This idea of presence, borrowed from the literary critic, circulates throughout this essay.4 I contend that intimate “presences” should be considered as a contribution to the Baroque m obilization of spatial and representational strategies in the New World. One of the most eloquent examples of the intimate “presence” is the camarín of the Virgin of Loreto in the former Jesuit college in Tepotzotlán.5 The chapel of the Virgin of Loreto and its adjoining camarín are part of the church dedicated to Saint Francis Xavier, the most important Jesuit figure after Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of
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Figure 6.1. Layout of conventual complex at Tepotzotlán, Mexico. The camarín is in ochre. Drawing by Ricardo L. Castro. Adapted from Castorena and Figueroa, “Respuesta bioclimática de la arquitectura colonial religiosa en México.”
Jesus.6 Both the Loreto chapel and the camarín were built in the mideighteenth century. The latter, a small domed octagonal room located behind the altar of the chapel dedicated to the Virgin of Loreto, is one of the smallest rooms of the whole religious architectural complex at Tepotzotlán. Like its precedents in Europe, the convent included the traditional monastic configurations of rooms around courtyards, as well as gardens and agricultural land (fig. 6.1). The camarín appears behind the peripheral wall of the convent to the west. It discretely extends from the interior of the Loreto Chapel into one of the courtyards, its presence clearly announced to the exterior world by its dome and lantern, which are visible from the plaza immediately outside the conventual complex (fig. 6.2). The bare exterior treatment of the camarín clearly contrasts with the exuberant ornamentation of its interior, which has been considered as one of the best examples of Mexican High Baroque art (figs. 6.3–6.4). In the religious context, a camarín is both a spatial concept and a construct destined to serve as a changing room for a statue; it is usually located behind the altar of a chapel.
The Camarín at Tepotzotlán 141
Figure 6.2. Loreto Chapel and Church of Saint Francis Xavier, Tepotzotlán, Mexico. Photo by author.
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Figure 6.3. Exterior of the camarín, Tepotzotlán, Mexico. Photo by author.
The Camarín at Tepotzotlán 143
Figure 6.4. Interior of the camarín, Tepotzotlán, Mexico. Photo by author.
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Camarines often served as intimate and ideal cult places for the faithful who would visit a specific sanctuary.7 George Kubler and Martin Soria, in their Art and Architecture in Spain and Portugal and Their American Dominions, 1500–1800, underscore the significance of the Spanish contribution to spatial practices by the invention of the camarín. They point to a series of spatial experiments which took place in central Spain during the seventeenth century: An important implication of these Castilian experiments is the church of the Desamparados in Valencia. Oval within and double-cube outside, the design by Diego Martínez Ponce de Urrana (between 1647 and 1652; built 1652–67) is the earliest example of the fully developed camarín … No form of the period is more novel or more Spanish. This type is unknown elsewhere in Europe. The camarín probably originated in the viril, or closet window high in an altar for the display of the Sacrament. The oldest examples are Aragonese of the mid fifteenth century.8
Camarines subsequently appeared in the Spanish colonies in America. Their typology and characteristics continue to be analysed, although to my knowledge a comprehensive study has not yet become available.9 The Loreto Chapel and Its Camarín The Virgin of Loreto Chapel in Tepotzotlán, like its precedent, the Santa Casa (Holy House) of Loreto in Ancona, Italy, is a purported reproduction of the house of the Virgin Mary near Ephesus.10 According to legend, in 1295, when the Ottoman forces were about to invade the area, angels transported the house to Loreto, Ancona, after having it flown first to Tersatto in Croatia and subsequently across the Adriatic to a place near Recanati, Italy. This chapel has been a pilgrimage centre since late medieval times, and is the precedent for replicas in other parts of Europe and particularly in the New World. The camarín at Tepotzotlán is tucked behind the retable (altarpiece) of the chapel. Access is through two parallel corridors, which flank the nave of the chapel. Their opposite walls, although not reaching the ceiling, serve to determine the lateral limits of the chapel, which is supposed to have the same dimensions as the Virgin Mary’s original house (fig. 6.5). This arrangement, as can be seen in figure 1, emphasizes the spatial feeling of a room within a room (a chapel within a larger precinct) and serves undoubtedly to emphasize the feeling of an independent building tucked with the body of the conventual church.
The Camarín at Tepotzotlán 145
Figure 6.5. Holy House and corridor leading to the camarín, Tepotzotlán, Mexico. Photo by author.
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Figure 6.6. Retable of Our Lady of Loreto, Tepotzotlán, Mexico. Photo by author.
The camarín sits along the longitudinal axis of the chapel, serving as the dressing room for the statue of the Virgin of Loreto, whose clothes and jewels were changed according to liturgical seasons and for processions through the town. The statue is encased high in the parting wall that serves as a boundary between the chapel and the camarín and supports elaborate retables in both spaces. The statue is visible through a glass pane both from the chapel and the camarín on the other side of the wall (fig. 6.6). The hand of Indigenous Mexican artists can be detected in the shapes and composition of the various retables and of the ceiling. Their craft tradition, characterized by stuccoed polychrome high reliefs, blends with the Spanish tradition of carved and gilded wood. The result is a truly extraordinary, resplendent interior. The chapel’s walls seem dematerialized, thanks to the natural diffused light that comes through six translucent onyx panes (the seventh has been covered), encased in the windows at the base of the dome, as well as from smaller openings in the other two upper sections of the lantern (fig. 6.7). This beautifully diaphanous
The Camarín at Tepotzotlán 147
Figure 6.7. Lantern of camarín, Tepotzotlán, Mexico. Photo by author.
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light bathes the interior in a dramatic and spectacular fashion, common in many Baroque interiors, which here, however, owing to the strategic placement of the high windows and openings combined with the small size of the room and the glitter of its gilded retables, accentuates the sense of intimacy and uniqueness. Limits In terms of design, the strategy that leads to the creation of the sense of intimacy and immediacy is directly dependent on the designer’s understanding of the idea of limit. Until the beginning of the modern period, with the development of new mathematical concepts, such understanding was intuitive. There were, thus, many types of limits. In classical Greece, the horoi marked virtual limits of sacred and public spaces such as sanctuaries and agoras. Acoustic limits existed, for instance, in ancient Japan, where the limits of a town were marked by the extent to which the sound of the taiko (drums) could be heard. Furthermore, the idea of borrowed views, known in Japanese as shakkei, is a strategy in the design of some gardens, which exemplifies yet another instance where the limit acquires a new dimension, extending beyond the domain of the tangible. This is a beautiful design concept that, with some exceptions, seems to have been forgotten in contemporary architectural practice.11 Enclosure is a word that refers to intimacy and immediacy. Think of a room: The walls, ceiling, and floor become its immediate limits. Further away, whether above, below, in front, in back, or on the viewer’s sides, the room may extend beyond its walls, through different kinds of openings, to other rooms and spaces, which in turn may be contained by other limits. The architectural treatment of the immediate limits of the room will definitely contribute to augment or diminish the sense of intimacy, as is evident in the camarín at Tepotzotlán. Upon entering this small room, the visitor’s gaze scrutinizes the various shapes that inhabit the space. They slowly emerge from the darkness as the eyes adapt to the ambient chiaroscuro, beginning to appreciate their characteristics. Saints and apostles depicted and sculpted in dynamic poses alternate with those of polychrome images of exotic Indigenous figures.12 This type of predicative reading of the retables leads the gaze to the upper registry of the room; there the octagonal geometry leaves space for the clerestory openings and transforms itself in the lantern’s structure, which appears supported by four archangels.13 Of particular interest here is the extensive use of cherubs, angels, and archangels as part of an iconographic program that has literary and expressive connections with the building and missionary agenda of the Jesuits, and particularly with the cult of the Virgin of Loreto.14 Thus the vault and lantern of the camarín become a
The Camarín at Tepotzotlán 149
layered tribune where statues of various members of the celestial court, moving from the lower register, culminate in the zenith of the oculus. An ethereal image of the Holy Ghost as a dove, positioned hierarchically in the zenith, has been depicted on the pane that covers the opening. The statues of the celestial court all seem to observe the “world below,” their gazes directed, in a detached manner, to the viewer. The effect is truly dramatic, similar to that of the ceilings by the multitalented Jesuit painter, architect, and theoretician Andrea Pozzo (1642– 1709), which were painted to create a sense of true atmosphere, a vacuum as it were. However, here in Tepotzotlán, the ceiling, is sculpted rather than painted, reflecting an intuitive knowledge of perspectival foreshortening; its composition echoes the recommendations about the viewing of statuaries placed in high places made by another seventeenth-century multi-talented ecclesiastic, Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz (1606–1682). In his treatise Arquitectura Recta y Obliqua he explicitly explains the problematic of placing statues in high places. This situation requires correcting them proportionally so they may be seen undistorted from below.15 The Infinite and Presence The tradition of an illusory painted ceiling has a long history in Western architecture, which may well go back to Egyptian times. However, it was during the Italian Renaissance, and particularly during the Baroque period, that the practice became generalized. Andrea Pozzo’s extraordinary frescoes became paradigmatic. They exemplified his theory of perspective, contained in his Perspectiva pictorum et architectorum (2 vols., 1693, 1698). This treatise contains useful instructions on how to construct illusionistic perspectives and stage sets; from the time of its publication to the late nineteenth century, stage designers and architects put it to practical use. It became very popular, as demonstrated by the numerous editions and translations into other languages. Pozzo’s connections through the Society of Jesus undoubtedly helped in the diffusion of the treatise. Pozzo put his theories into practice, particularly the illusionistic techniques, which were part of the quadratura, as it became known, in several Jesuit Baroque churches for which he received commissions. Particularly relevant are Sant’Ignazio and Il Gesù in Rome as well as San Francesco in Arezzo. There is no doubt that the frescoes for Sant’Ignazio, the church dedicated to the founder of the Society, and Il Gesù, considered perhaps the most representative church of the Society, became powerful precedents for other works in Europe and in the colonies in the New World. Evonne Levy has eloquently argued that Pozzo’s spatial works were part of the Jesuit propagandistic strategy.16
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I would like to suggest that the concept of the infinite is a common denominator of the representational intentions, which appear in Tepotzotlán or in Pozzo’s depictions, as well in other Baroque ceilings. The infinite is a fundamental element of the mathematical theories developed by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz during the seventeenth century. During the Baroque, I would suggest, it acquired a significant “presence.” For instance, infinity becomes a spatial presence, tangible in the French Baroque garden. Consider for instance Versailles, one of the most significant complexes from the period. Its extraordinary garden includes conceptually the three natures defined by theoretician John Dixon Hunt.17 In the Baroque garden these three natures acquire presence along the axis that, departing from the palace, extends into the infinite, which disappears or vanishes in the horizon.18 The architect, architectural historian, and theoretician Christian Norberg-Schulz, referring to some of the new spatial practices introduced during the Baroque period, states: The ideas behind these innovations stem from garden architecture. Here the great innovator was André Le Notre (1612–1700). In spite of their infinite variety, his gardens are based on a few principles. The main element, naturally, is the longitudinal axis. It forms the path which leads the observer toward his goal: the experience of infinite space. All the other elements are related to this axis: a palace which divides the path into two different halves; arrival from man’s urban world through an open courtyard; and departure into infinity defined as a gradual passage through the still “civilized” world of parterres; the “tamed” nature of a bosquet; and the “natural” nature of a selvatico.19
I would argue that Pozzo’s ceilings, like the French Baroque garden, move along an axis, this time a vertical one, which is inhabited by the figures of missionaries, saints, angels, archangels, and Christ – in other words, those involved with Jesuit ideals, some of them becoming dematerialized in the ether. There exists here as well, as in the French garden, a hierarchy of spaces. This time, they occur along the vertical axis. The first realm is that of the architectural space of the building whose roof does not exist. This interior continues into the open atmosphere, which becomes the equivalent of the bosquet. The last dimension is, again, like in the garden’s selvatico, infinite space dominated in this case by light. Thus, this ascending movement departing from the ground, from this world, vanishes into an infinity, which we associate with light. And it is in the Church of Sant’Ignazio in Rome, where Pozzo arrives at creating a work in which the real and the illusory fuse magnificently, architecture and sculpture become painting and vice versa (fig. 6.8). Oddly, thousands of miles away, on the other side of
Figure 6.8. Andrea Pozzo, ceiling of Sant’Ignazio in Rome. Photo by author.
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the ocean, this also happens, on a much smaller scale, in the intimate camarín at Tepotzotlán. Here, unlike Pozzo’s ceiling in Sant’Ignazio, the ceiling is not painted but sculpted. However, common to both is the respective intentions of the authors, namely, the creation of a “presence” of infinity. And this is the creator’s domain par excellence. It is also an important sacred element. Gumbrecht clearly explains the spatiality of “presence”: “The word ‘presence’ does not refer (at least does not mainly refer) to a temporal but to a spatial relationship to the world and its objects … Something that is ‘present’ is supposed to be tangible for human hands, which implies that, conversely, it can have an immediate impact on human bodies.”20 It is not surprising that he also relates the concept to another of the spatial arts: music. For instance, music has, through vibrations, a direct impact on our bodies, as demonstrated by deaf individuals who can feel it. This idea of responding or feeling the apparently intangible, evident in music, has its counterpart in the realm of architectural representational situations such as the ones just discussed. And it is this presence, “spatial tangibility” I would call it, apparently intangible, that I argue travelled across the Atlantic, like the famous Santa Casa. It is undoubtedly one of the sacred elements contributing to spatial saturation. As Norberg-Schulz points out, “The sacred landscape of the Baroque epoch is not organized in any integrated geometrical system, but rather consists of a saturation of the environment with sacred elements.”21 This sense of the infinite appears to be another expressive element of the Jesuit spatial repertoire.22 Corollaries Space and matter are the essential inextricable elements that acquire “presence” in the examples just discussed.23 It should not come as a surprise the repeated appearance in the New World of the Santa Casa as a motive dear to the Society of Jesus.24 Could it not be argued that the explanation of the angelical intervention for the transportation of the Santa Casa refers ultimately to the transportation of the corporeal space contained in the house? It is an intimate yet infinite space, airspace as it were; a space that seemed appropriate for such deeds as Mary’s Assumption.25 Returning to intimacy, this notion evokes awareness of limits and, as a corollary, it educes the sense of physical and conceptual immediacy. Gumbrecht refers to the notion of immediacy when discussing the idea of moods and atmosphere in literary works:
The Camarín at Tepotzotlán 153 In different dimensions and by means of different textual elements, these works make readers encounter past realities. One tends to overlook the effects of immediacy they create; indeed, it is almost a professional obligation for scholars and critics today to overlook them. This immediacy in the experience of past presents occurs without it being necessary to understand what the atmospheres and moods mean; we do not have to know what motivations and circumstances occasioned them. For what affects us in the act of reading involves the present of the past in substance – not a sign of the past or its representation.26
These phenomena also occur when experiencing architecture, if we accept the idea that architecture has to be experienced in a synesthetic manner, as has been brilliantly demonstrated by the architects and theoreticians Steen Eiler Rasmussen and Juhani Pallasmaa.27 Experiencing architecture, like experiencing music or gardens, is an extremely complex process that requires concentration and a special “tuning.” It is not surprising to find here that Gumbrecht associates the idea of presence with atmosphere, mood, and ultimately Stimmung, the German word that expresses atmosphere but it is also related to the tuning of an instrument. The spatial expressive repertoire of the Hispanic Baroque reflects a unique spatial dimension, a situation that seems to be disappearing, only to be practised by a few.28 In an excellent book about the human condition, Robert Pogue Harrison has cunningly commented on our current condition in which we seem to be losing our sense of seeing: I remarked that a garden is a place where appearances draw attention to themselves, but that doesn’t mean they necessarily get noticed, no matter how much they may radiate or beckon the eye. Where appearances recede into the depths of space and time even as they come forward to stake their claim in the phenomenal realm, they make special demands on our powers of observation. That is bad news for gardens, for nothing is less cultivated these days in Western societies than the art of seeing. It is fair to say that there exists in our era a tragic discrepancy between the staggering richness of the visible world and the extreme poverty of our capacity to perceive it. Thus even though there are plenty of gardens in the world, we live in an essentially gardenless era.29
This may well apply to the other senses, leaving us in a difficult situation to understand what has been “present” before. We have to resort, then, to the difficult task of investigating Saramagian space memories
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that change as elusively and fast as time itself. The expressive spaces of the Hispanic Baroque definitely hide in this realm. NOTES 1 Saramago, The Notebook, 3. 2 The essay unfolds in an unorthodox manner, coloured in part by syndesis, a writing and designing strategy guided by the making of connections. This critical strategy took a firm hold in my mind around the late 1990s, when reading the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze on his ideas of rhizomes, and, subsequently, John Rajchman, one of his interpreters. The latter commented in his The Deleuze Connections: “We must always make connections, since they are not already given … In other words, to make connections one needs not knowledge, certainty, or even ontology, but rather a trust that something may come out, though one is not yet completely sure what” (6). The information-graphics developed by Charles Joseph Minard (1781– 1870) effectively illustrate the concept of Deleuzian connections. Minard was superintendent of the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris from 1830 to 1836. He was also inspector of the Corps des Ponts et Chaussées until 1851. One of his most famous graphics, Carte figurative des pertes successives en hommes de l’Armée Française dans la campagne de Russie 1812–1813 (Figurative Chart of Successive Losses of Troops from the French Army during the Russian Campaign of 1812–1813), illustrates in one sheet Napoleon’s Russian campaign from beginning to end, and connects all the factors that led to its demise. Conceptually, this single piece was without doubt one of the first graphic epitomes of a syndesis. The strategy appeared prominently in a recent publication entitled Syndetic Modernisms (2013), in which my colleagues Professor Robert Mellin from McGill University, Professor Carlos Rueda-Plata from the Universidad Piloto in Bogotá, and I summarized and exemplified our study of modern architecture from an unconventional perspective. Some years later, as I was trying to define the process of making connections, Mellin suggested the word syndesis (σΰνδεσις). The concept is different from synthesis (σΰνθεσις). It is a more appropriate and powerful way of thinking about the tangible and conceptual connections we may discover in architecture and other fields. Fascinated with Greek etymologies and concepts, I began to use this term since it succinctly captured an idea that I always had to explain in many words. The classical Greek roots of syndesis go back to its construction from the adverb συν, which signifies simultaneity, togetherness, and the noun δεις, which means union. In my most recent work on Rogelio Salmona (1929–2007), which attempts to demonstrate
The Camarín at Tepotzotlán 155 through images and words the Baroqueness of Salmona’s later architectural production, the concept of syndesis became extremely useful. 3 Gumbrecht, Atmosphere, Mood, Stimmung, 6–7. 4 This borrowing is not arbitrary. I have found that literature serves as a special tool to understand and to analyse architecture. A good example is the work of the late American architect John Hedjuck (1929–2000). I have used the approach as part of my exegesis on the work of the late Colombian architect Rogelio Salmona (1928–2008). See Castro, Salmona. 5 There, five years ago, several concepts from authors dear to me seemed to have coalesced to give meaning to the spatial experience, becoming the basis for this exegesis. 6 Today, the former Jesuit convent houses Mexico’s Museo Nacional del Virreinato (National Museum of the Viceroyalty). Since its initial construction in the early 1600s, the convent was one of the most important Jesuit headquarters in New Spain, which served as a school for the local Indigenous population as well as an educational institution for Jesuit novices. The first building of the convent is the exceptional Baroque church dedicated to Saint Francis Xavier. 7 The Royal Academy of the Spanish Language defines the word clearly and succinctly. This is my summary of the academy’s explanation: Camarín is the diminutive of cámara or chamber. In a church, it is a small independent chapel, which serves as the place of cult for a revered image. It can also be a room where the robes and jewels of an image are kept. The word also has meaning in a secular context. The equivalent word is camerino, which again indicates a small room where things are kept, or also the equivalent of a restroom or a small business room. Diccionario de la lengua española online, s.v. “Camarín,” accessed 23 December 2012, http://lema.rae.es/drae /?val=Camarin. 8 Kubler and Soria, Art and Architecture in Spain and Portugal, 25–6. More specifically see Kubler, Arquitectura and “El camarín.” 9 As early as 2001, numerous essays presented during the 3rd International Congress on the American Baroque, which took place at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, in October 2001, insinuated it. The theme of this event was “Territorio, arte, espacio y sociedad.” Relevant essays of the proceedings include José María Prados García, “Camarines barrocos mexicanos”; Ricardo González, “Los retablos barrocos y la retórica cristiana”; Juan Jesús López and Guadalupe Muñoz, “Retórica y color: Sobre la policromía en los retablos barrocos.” 10 The site and remnants of what was believed to be the house of the Virgin Mary were discovered near Ephesus in the late 1900s. The Catholic church has not certified the authenticity of the findings for lack of scientific
156 Ricardo L. Castro evidence. Despite this, several popes have visited the site, which has become a pilgrimage destination. For Houses of Loreto in Ibero-America see the article by Clara Bargellini in this volume. 11 There are nonetheless exceptions. Think of the work of contemporary masters such as the late Salmona and Peter Zumthor, as well as several key figures of the modern movement such as Le Corbusier, Richard Neutra, Alvar Aalto, and Antonin Raymond. 12 Along several of the wall’s eight angles are figures of men holding baskets of pomegranates, symbols of the blood of Christ and of divine love. These men seem to have very dark skin, and this fact has led some observers to believe that the Indian artisans were portraying themselves bearing gifts to the Virgin. Some now think that the figures originally were covered with gold leaf, however, and that the skin colour is accidental. Linda B. Hall, “A Mexican Shrine Where Angels Soar,” New York Times, 25 February 1990, Travel Section. 13 For the idea of a predicative reading of retables in Baroque architecture see note 10 above: Ricardo González “Los retablos barrocos y la retórica cristiana.” 14 For more information on the role of the Virgin of Loreto and the Jesuits see Karin Annelise Vélez, “Resolved to Fly.” As stated by the author “This dissertation chronicles how the Madonna of Loreto jumped the Atlantic in the late 1600s. My central question is: How was the Lauretan devotion transformed during the course of local encounters on both sides of ocean? I consider how an Italian devotion came to transcend not only continental and oceanic boundaries, but also national, imperial, and Jesuit networks. I focus on three portable components of the devotion that traveled and changed: the Holy House, the name “Loreto,” and the Madonna statue. In tracking these, I reveal how Loreto was moving via pilgrimage, architectural replication, the litany, mission nomenclature, processions, invocations, and refugee displacement.” (https://search.proquest.com /docview/304498408. 15 See Castro, “Caramuel’s Architectura civil, recta y obliqua.” 16 Levy, Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque. 17 John Dixon Hunt discussed the issues extensively in a series of lectures organized at the Université de Montréal in the fall of 1993. On these occasions he presented for the first time the concept of the three natures, inspired by Cicero’s De Natura Deorum. 18 See Castro, Salmona, and Castro, Rogelio Salmona. 19 Norberg-Schulz, Meaning in Western Architecture, 290. 20 Grumbecht, Atmosphere, Mood, Stimmung, 13–14. 21 Norberg-Schulz, Meaning in Western Architecture, 290. 22 Here, I would like to point out that the missionary work of the Jesuits included music, one of the spatial arts. It was used during the evangelization
The Camarín at Tepotzotlán 157 of Japan and is still evident in the former missions of Bolivia. See the article in this volume by Piotr Nawrot. 23 The famous architect and theoretician Bruno Zevi introduced the notion of architecture as space in his work, reflected in the title of one of his books, Architecture as Space: How to Look at Architecture. It is an English translation from the Italian, Saper vedere l’architettura. 24 See note 14 above. 25 According to the legend, one of the places where the event is supposed to have taken place was Ephesus. The other was Jerusalem. 26 Grumbrecht, Atmosphere, Mood, Stimmung, 14. For many years now, I have believed that a sense of the historical is of utmost importance as a design and analytical strategy, one that facilitates the production of more responsive and supportive environments and would facilitate, in turn, their apprehension on the part of critics. 27 Rasmussen, Experiencing Architecture, and Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin. 28 I speculate that Hispanic Baroque manifestations, for example choral spatial music and atmospheres, play a significant role in some contemporary expressive creations such as in Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Raum-Musik (spatial music) and Stimmung’s compositions, which incidentally seem to have been inspired by and produced after a visit by the latter to Mexico. In architecture, some projects by Latin American architects such as Rogelio Salmona and Luis Barragán come to mind. The idea of “painting space,” evident in such projects as Barragán’s Church of the Capuchine Convent in Mexico City, echoes the practice of saturating space with light and colour, thus making it “tangible,” as evident in colonial Baroque interiors such as the camarín in Tepotzotlán. 29 Harrison, Gardens, 114–15. WORKS CITED Castorena, Gloria María, and Aníbal Figueroa. “Respuesta bioclimática de la arquitectura colonial religiosa en México.” http://www.ometeca.org /HTML/conf2005/Castorena.htm (accessed 2 April 2013). Castro, Ricardo León. “Caramuel’s Architectura civil, recta y obliqua: Or the Relativization of Time and Space.” Dieciocho Anejo 1 (1997): 53–78. – Salmona. Bogotá: Villegas, 1998. – Rogelio Salmona: Tributo. Bogotá: Villegas, 2008. Castro, Ricardo León, Robert Mellín, and Carlos Ivan Rueda-Plata. Syndetic Modernisms. Bogotá: Universidad Piloto, 2013. Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich. Atmosphere, Mood, Stimmung: On a Hidden Potential of Literature. Translated by Erik Butler. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012.
158 Ricardo L. Castro Gutierrez, Ramón. Fortificaciones en Iberoamérica. Madrid: El Viso, 2005. Harrison, Robert Pogue. Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. Heiddeger, Martin. “The Thing.” In Poetry, Language, Thought, translated by Albert Hofstadler. New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1975. Kubler, George. Arquitectura de los siglos XVII y XVIII. Madrid: Plus-Ultra, 1957. – “El camarín del Siglo de Oro.” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 140–1 (1961): 239–45. Kubler, George, and Martin Soria. Art and Architecture in Spain and Portugal and Their American Dominions, 1500–1800. Hammondsworth, Middlesex, UK: Penguin, 1959. Lejeune, Jean-Francois. The New City: Foundations. Miami: University of Miami, 1991. Levy, Evonne. 2004. Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Norberg-Schulz, Christian. Meaning in Western Architecture. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1975. Pallasma, Juhani. The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. New York: John Wiley, 2005. Rajchman, John. The Deleuze Connections. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000. Rasmussen, Steen Eiler. Experiencing Architecture. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1962. Real Academia Española. Diccionario de la lengua española. http://www.rae.es /recursos/diccionarios/drae Saramago, José. The Notebook. Translated by Amanda Hopkinson and Daniel Hahn. London: Verso, 2001. Vélez, Karin Annelise. “Resolved to Fly: The Virgin of Loreto, the Jesuits and the Miracle of Portable Catholicism in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World.” PhD diss., Princeton University, 2008. Zapatero, Juan. Historia de las fortificaciones de Cartagena de Indias. Madrid: Ediciones Culturas Hispánicas, 1979. Zevi, Bruno. Architecture as Space: How to Look at Architecture. Edited by Joseph A. Barry. Translated by Milton Gendel. New York: Horizon Press, 1957.
7 Passion in Motion: The Way of the Cross as Performance in New Spain
alena robin
The Way of the Cross is a major devotion in the Catholic world, a pious exercise intended to evoke the key moments of the Passion of Jesus Christ, beginning with his sentencing by Pontius Pilate and ending with his being laid in his tomb. For believers, the Passion of Christ established the possibility of salvation for the first time.1 As an instrument of salvation, the Way of the Cross allows the believer to meditate on and relive Christ’s Passion, performing the drama of the Crucifixion anew. Traditionally the fourteen stations of the Way of the Cross are distributed in regular intervals around the nave of a church and use a cross, paintings, reliefs, and other architectural elements to mark each moment of Christ’s Passion. The stations can also be found in open air, in the atrium of a church, or on the path to various chapels or sanctuaries.2 Devotional sites imitating the originals in Jerusalem arose because reaching the Holy Land and its sacred sites was difficult, expensive, and dangerous to most Christians. Thus, substitute pilgrimages such as the Way of the Cross emerged.3 The Way of the Cross helps the faithful recreate mentally the most important moments of the suffering and death of Christ. The underlying idea is that in any part of the world the devout can acquire the same indulgences as if they had performed the pious exercise in its original settings. This is the situation that this essay discusses: how believers of New Spain participated in the active recreation of the last moments of the Passion of Christ. One facet of the Way of the Cross that has not been explored fully is its performative aspect, that is, how practitioners of this devotional exercise activate the elements associated with each station: how architecture, painting, sculpture, music, and oral and written texts are intertwined in the commemoration of the Passion of Christ.4 The Way of the Cross, thus, is more than an artistic expression. It fits perfectly under the umbrella of the total work of art, the bel composto, the artistic concept
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exploited by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in Rome during the Baroque era, according to which different artistic expressions unify under an underlying theme creating complex environments.5 Through this fusion of media, the expectation was that the viewer would respond emotionally and intellectually to the sacred, prompting prayers and deep reflection, but also action.6 Hence, the Way of the Cross was and is a decidedly Baroque technology. The purpose of this contribution, then, is to discuss the practice of the Way of the Cross from the perspective of performance studies by looking at relevant printed and visual materials, focusing particularly on their use in the viceroyalty of New Spain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Way of the Cross, in its architectural expression, was important for the urbanism of novohispano cities and was a pivotal expression of the Baroque festivities of the era. As the devotion gained more popularity and series of canvasses illustrating the topic ornamented the walls of literally all churches of the viceroyalty, it lost its visual connection to the Holy Land, but became more accessible to the mass of devotees wanting to commemorate Christ’s Passion. Artists and theorists have constantly revised their understanding of performance; dynamism and flexibility are a particularity of performance studies. However, scholars agree to define a performance as a tangible, bounded event that involves the representation of repeated actions, for example a sequence of words or pre-established actions,7 which is the case in the practice of the Way of the Cross. Rituals are a type of performance that gives structure and continuity to our lives.8 They are a category of actions composed of patterned behaviours that are culturally charged, performed in public at meaningful moments, and according to acknowledged criteria.9 The relationship between art and rituals is, however, not unidirectional. Rather, the relationship is reciprocal: ritual creates its artwork as art and architecture also enables ritual activity through the use of image and space.10 As is common with other Catholic rituals, the celebration of the Way of the Cross directs the gaze of its participants towards a focal point, in this case each of the stations. These artworks are constituted for ritual performance through specific action in a particular context. This study concentrates on spatial aspects of the devotion of the Way of the Cross, and the activation of the works of art through their use, involving investigation of physical and ephemeral aspects of the devotion. As the Franciscan order was granted custody of the Holy Places in Jerusalem in the early fourteenth century, the Way of the Cross is seen as a typical Franciscan devotion.11 The foundation of a Way of the Cross was under their authority, and it was compulsory to obtain their permission to create one, although such authorization could later be the
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responsibility of another religious order, the clergy, or a layman. This issue is addressed in many papal decrees, from the early seventeenth century forward, and will be reiteratively revisited throughout the eighteenth century. The practice of the Way of the Cross also evolved over a prolonged period and several papal decrees. Its definitive structure was established by Clement XII on 3 April 1731 and ratified by Benedict XIV on 10 May 1742. Artistic elements such as paintings, sculptures, engravings, or architecture were not mandatory parts of a Way of the Cross. Only a wooden cross for each station was necessary, alluding to the one Christ carried on his way to Calvary. These artistic manifestations were nevertheless allowed because they helped the faithful in their meditation. As the Way of the Cross consists of a series of elements, its narrative aspect is inherent, as the devout would need to mentally and physically make a connection between each focus point. Two modes of celebrating the Way of the Cross were officially recognized by the papal decrees: the public or processional approach, with the participants following the directions of a priest, and the private approach, performed on an individual basis, with “each one on his or her own.”12 The Way of the Cross was a much-attended celebration on Good Friday, since the commemorated events were believed to have occurred on this day. However, the devotion was established in such a fashion that it could be practised throughout the year. Saint Leonard of Port Maurice (1676–1751), an Italian Franciscan monk whose work was important for the expansion of the pious exercise in the eighteenth century, established the frequency of the ritual: it should be practised as a procession under a priest’s direction at least once a month, yet it should be performed individually on a daily basis.13 The origins of the celebration of the Way of the Cross in New Spain are not well known. Early written accounts of missionaries mention commemoration of the Passion celebration in the atrium of the church in areas of evangelization, using the capillas posas and the atrium cross as the foci.14 Some remaining wall paintings in sixteenth-century monasteries illustrate Passion narratives, such as the cloister of Epazoyucan, in the present state of Hidalgo, or the nave of the church of Huejotzingo in Puebla.15 Penitential processions were also performed in moments of crisis, such as epidemics and droughts; images of Christ and the Virgin were the focus of these rituals. Many reputedly miraculous sculptures of Christ that survive today are believed to be from this early period of contact and evangelization. Commemorations of the Passion of Christ were not new when the devotion of the Way of the Cross was instituted in New Spain. However, only from the beginning of the seventeenth century
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can historical evidence on the performance of the Way of the Cross be found, evidence which is intimately linked to the establishment of the Franciscan Third Order in New Spain.16 Devotional books printed in New Spain also invited the faithful to practise the exercise on a regular basis: some stressed the importance of practising it during Lent, others on a weekly basis, and some daily. Some methods were so short that they could be performed in a quarter of hour; they could, therefore, be easily adopted as a daily exercise.17 Most devotional texts found in novohispano repositories are brief; sometimes they are part of a manual containing a variety of pious exercises. Many of them are reprints of previously published texts. They present a similar structure, beginning with a brief introduction in which the method of practising the stations is explained. Then follows an introductory act of contrition, through which the devout consider their motivation to perform the exercise. Finally, each station is described in vivid terms, with an oration related to the events that occurred in each instance. The exercise ends with a range of offerings. Novohispano devotional books do not have illustrations for each of the stations. In some cases, a general allusion is made to “images,” but no reference is made to a specific work of art. The practice of the Way of the Cross involves transiting from one station to the next, reciting a series of prayers, and engaging in pious meditations regarding the events of the Passion. Papal decrees did not specify how to perform the Way of the Cross, although the necessity to demonstrate piety and devotion in extreme modesty, silence, and recollection was noted. Devotional books, however, were more explicit regarding the movement and positions the faithful should adopt while praying, although they were not mandatory. The most common recommended gestures were kneeling, kissing the earth, and praying prostrated as if on a cross. In some books, at the station representing the flagellation, practitioners were invited to scourge themselves, to accompany Jesus in his suffering.18 Devotional books for the Way of the Cross provide the prayers that constitute the core of this pious exercise such as the Creed, the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Hail Holy Queen, as well as acts of contrition and offerings for each station. The prayers were not to be declaimed “from memory, as a chorus, but with intention, and affection.”19 These texts, however, were only recommendations and participants could include other prayers. Devotions were meant to foster a continuous meditation on the Passion of Christ. For this reason, if the distance between two stations was considerable, “or the one walking so short in discourse,” the participant was asked to persevere in his or her meditation on the painful
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path that led to Calvary.20 These aspects were important in the performative celebration of the Way of the Cross, although general guidelines for practising the Way of the Cross had been established, each devotee had some freedom of action, and each celebration was in that sense unique. A characteristic aspect of the practice of the Way of the Cross is its use of space and processional form. In devotional books, the devout are invited to move throughout the exercise. When the practice was directed specifically at nuns, the spatial distribution of the convent was taken into consideration: the exercise began in the choir Thursday night, it continued in the dormitory, and Friday morning the practitioners were invited to assemble at the place where they began.21 But the designation of the space to perform the Way of the Cross is not always explicit in devotional books: for example, one merely stated, “then they will get up, and undertake their stations.”22 Nonetheless, the most obvious and clear way to establish the processional sense of the Way of the Cross is found in the printed works that explicitly indicate the number of footsteps that should be walked from one station to the next, varying between 12 and 348 paces.23 One painted series of the Way of the Cross from Lima includes this information in written form, below each illustration (fig. 7.1).24 Counting distances in footsteps was a widely accepted system in biblical geography in order to give an idea of the space and size of the places where events happened originally.25 Works of art constituted sacred itineraries that invited the devout to follow the pre- established sequence of the Way of the Cross. Stand-alone chapels were built for each station in a number of urban centres of New Spain. In Mexico City, starting in 1684, chapels of the Way of the Cross were built on the south side of the Alameda, an important public park in the capital of the viceroyalty (fig. 7.2). The elite of the era were involved in the construction and ornamentation of the chapels. A procession was performed through the chapels every Friday during Lent.26 The chapels were destroyed over the course of the nineteenth century in an attempt to modernize the city. Their physical aspects are known only through documentary evidence such as that seen in figure 7.2. Besides Mexico, other cities also built chapels such as Puebla (figs. 7.3–7.5), the second most important urban centre of the viceroyalty, and Santiago de los Caballeros (fig. 7.6), known today as Antigua, the main city of the Captaincy General of Guatemala, which was also part of New Spain.27 Each chapel had a designation related to the topic of a specific station, for example the Chapel of Simon of Cyrene of the fifth station, which commemorates when a man called Simon, coming from Cyrene, was compelled by the Romans to help Jesus carry the cross, or the Chapel
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Figure 7.1. Anonymous, Sentence and Flagellation, 1776, oil on canvas, 43 x 61 cm, Museo de los Descalzos, Lima, Peru. Photograph Alena Robin. Reproduction authorized by Museo de los Descalzos, Rímac, Lima, Peru.
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Figure 7.2. Anonymous, Paseo de la Alameda de México, c. 1720, oil on canvas, 206 x 227 cm, Colección de Isabel de Farnesio, Palacio de la Almudaina. Copyright © Patrimonio Nacional, Spain.
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Figure 7.3. Fifth station, Way of the Cross, Puebla, Mexico. Photograph Alena Robin.
of Veronica of the sixth station, which commemorates when a pious woman, known as Veronica, gave her veil to Jesus so he could wipe his forehead (the image of his face was then miraculously imprinted on the cloth) (figs. 7.3–7.4). The sequence began in the church of the Franciscan convent of the locality and finished at the Calvary Chapel, a distinctive structure on the outskirts of the city (figs. 7.5–7.6). Historical accounts explain the establishment of these devotional complexes: the urban disposition and the sacred itineraries created through the constructions sought to copy the prototype of Jerusalem.28 Although adapting the original settings to the topography of the new locality was essential, certain elements of the landscape could refer to the Holy City: a brook could symbolize the Kidron River, and a mountain could represent Mount Calvary. The sequence was established in order to retrace Christ’s footsteps along the path of his Passion. By strongly associating the topic of the station and the place in which the station was located, the novohispano devout were walking in Jesus’ footsteps.
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Figure 7.4. Sixth station, Way of the Cross, Puebla, Mexico. Photograph Alena Robin.
Series of paintings of the Way of the Cross were usually found in places that would allow for a processional practice such as the nave of a church, the cloister of a convent, or a churchyard. The series of paintings in situ, as the examples of the chapels just mentioned, also direct the movement of the practitioners to complete the exercise. However, when analysed, the paintings do not offer an explicit referent to the topography of Jerusalem: there is no visual reference or allusion to the landscape of the Holy City. A spatial constant was not established in regard to paintings of the Way of the Cross; the narrative sequence does not always begin on the same side or a similar place in the nave. For example, in the series of large canvasses in the Church of El Encino in Aguascalientes, signed and dated in Mexico City between 1798 and 1800 by the late eighteenth century painter Andrés López, the stations begin on the back wall of the transept, on the Epistle side, and follow a clockwise progression (fig. 7.7).29 In the Church of San Francisco in San Luis Potosi, the narration of the Way of the Cross of the obscure painter Francisco Paula Herrera begins
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Figure 7.5. Calvary Chapel, Puebla, Mexico. Photograph Eduardo Limón Rodríguez.
in the transept, on the Gospel side and next to the presbytery, and follows a counter-clockwise order (fig. 7.8).30 These are just two examples, but they offer a completely different spatial solution: although both mark the transept as the beginning of the devotional journey, they do not follow the same path. One offers a clockwise solution, the other the complete opposite. The stations inside the church had to be symmetric and equidistant.31 Ecclesiastical authorities did not, however, specify on which side of the church the Way of the Cross should begin. Only in 1837 did the Sacred Congregation of Indulgences address this issue, acknowledging that it was more appropriate to begin on the Gospel side, although the structure and arrangement of the church or the positions of the figures in the visual representations might determine the other direction as more suitable, “for it seems more in accordance with the spirit of the devotion that the procession, in passing from station to station, should follow Christ rather than meet Him.”32 Hence, the church confirmed that works of art embodied a visual code: the figures’ dispositions in a painting incite
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Figure 7.6. Calvary Chapel, Antigua, Guatemala. Photograph Alena Robin.
practitioners to follow a specific narration and spatial practice. This point could be also expressed another way: as the devotees are meditating and transiting from one station to the next, they should visually follow Christ in his footsteps, watching his back, and not meet him face to face (fig. 7.9). This would mean sometimes reading the painting, as in figure 7.9, from right to left. The visual reading of the painting has its own restriction; it might depend on the painter, his understanding of the devotion, and his ability to recreate it. Furthermore, the perspective on Christ’s position could also change according to the trajectory, which was not necessarily lineal.33 The original itinerary could explain why in some series Christ’s figure is not always walking in the same direction from one station to the next, although this discontinuity could also serve to underline the importance of a specific event. It is worth inquiring how the counting of footsteps would apply to the painted series. It is also important to question if the configuration of the paintings in space in some places would hold a specific symbolism
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Figure 7.7. Interior of the Church of El Encino, showing Andrés López, Way of the Cross, oil on canvas, 1798–1800, Aguascalientes, Mexico. Photograph Alena Robin. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.
related to the Passion, although no information has yet been found on that issue in religious chronicles and devotional works of the era. Paintings are moveable objects, and it is therefore important to consider the possible relocation of works of art that could disrupt the intended relationship between topic and space.34 The devotees to the Way of the Cross in New Spain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries adopted different roles in the processional celebration: those of actors, directors, and spectators.35 Here a clarification must be made: in the Way of the Cross characters are not played as in some Holy Week celebrations, where individuals perform as Mary, Jesus, or Roman soldiers. As the purpose of the Way of the Cross is to retrace the steps that Jesus walked carrying his cross, his role is not enacted by a specific individual: all the practitioners must recreate, physically and mentally, his road to Calvary.
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Figure 7.8. Interior of the Church of San Francisco, showing Francisco Paula Herrera, Way of the Cross, eighteenth century, San Luis Potosí, Mexico. Photograph Alena Robin. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.
The devout were the actors that walked from station to station, recited prayers, and adopted the recommended positions, at times carrying a sculpted image of the Nazarene, the emblematic figure of this practice. The musicians and fireworks technicians who accompanied the procession were also actors who participated integrally in the ceremony. The directors guided the practitioners, for example, by reading aloud the meditations at each station. The priest celebrating mass at the end could also be considered a director. Anyone who would, according to the chronicles of the era,36 accompany at a distance the celebrants’ cortège would be a spectator, given that they were not directly involved in the celebration. However, if those roles are considered closely, the distinctions arguably dissolve. A distinctive feature of the rituals commemorating the Passion of Christ is that the participant is at the same time the public and an actor
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Figure 7.9. Anonymous, Fifth Station, end of seventeenth century to beginning of eighteenth century, oil on canvas, 62 x 83 cm, Museo Nacional del Virreinato, Tepotzotlán, Mexico. Photograph Alena Robin. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.
on the path to Calvary. The directors of the Way of the Cross are also converted into actors since they are the ones who elicit the reaction of the spectators: by reading aloud the meditation for each station, they intend to motivate the participants to react empathetically to Christ’s suffering. Priests are also actors in the celebration of mass, a commemorative ritual of the death and resurrection of Christ. In the chronicles of the era, the sermons preached on these occasions were powerful tools in the Passion re-enactment.37 Preachers would also deliver their sermons dramatically, stimulating response by the public, who in turn were also actors through their affective response towards Christ, who appears in front of the devotees. The spectators of the Way of the Cross, who maintained a spatial and emotional distance from the events commemorated, were also actors: their distancing reflects what also occurred among the witnesses of the Passion of Christ. Their potential indifference towards these events is inherent to the drama of the Passion and death of Christ.38 Also, the type of spectator could vary depending if the Way of the Cross was performed in the streets of a city, the nave of a church, or in the cloister of a convent. A passerby in the Alameda might be enjoying the
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park while the procession is under way (fig. 7.2), with no intention of being part of it. A devout person might be praying in the church while the Way of the Cross is being enacted, without taking part in its performance. A nun in a convent might follow the procession, without being fully involved in the exercise. Conversely, in Christ’s Passion, the director and spectators are converted into actors, since their presence was fundamental to its portrayal. In the performance of the Way of the Cross, those directors-spectators-actors in the original Passion of Christ were represented in the artworks and were a focus of the spiritual exercise throughout the different stations (figs. 7.1, 7.9). The performativity of the processional ceremony of the Way of the Cross is designed to stimulate all the senses: this is accomplished through the use of music, flowers, fireworks, candles, incense, ephemeral constructions, and sermons. Those sensorial stimuli can be seen as indicators of the divine presence, but they also are the beginning and end of the representation. When the candles are extinguished, the smell of incense has scattered, the music and the voice of the narrators is quieted, the ephemeral constructions are removed, and the priests wave goodbye, the devotees understand that the commemoration of the Passion of Christ has finished. However, if the procession of the Way of the Cross has ended, its performance has not concluded. The structure of the Way of the Cross is such that it could be practised regularly, in a formal procession or private devotion, all year long. Practised privately, it might not have the same splendour as a procession, but the underlying purpose is the same: to trace the painful footsteps of Christ carrying his cross, imitating the gestures and postures he assumed in his Passion. The Way of the Cross is hence a continuous representation of his Passion. The processional format is therefore a model for the private practice. The intentions of the people of the viceroyalty participating in the Passion commemoration are not always clear. One of the main factors explaining the popularity of the devotion was the possibility of gaining indulgences, as one would from performing the practice in Jerusalem.39 The spiritual exercise was a way to promote one’s salvation and avoid time in Purgatory.40 The expectation was that the Way of the Cross could reform behaviour and remedy dishonest practices, as the faithful would occupy their time in pious activities.41 These objectives were not exclusive to novohispano devotees of the Way of the Cross. This performance has to be understood in a global context: for the Catholic church of the Counter-Reformation, complex devotional practices such as the Way of the Cross were a very powerful instrument since they made Christ’s teaching easily available to all.
174 Alena Robin
The Way of the Cross, a performative re-enactment of the Passion, as practised in New Spain and other parts of the Catholic world, was a complex phenomenon, where architecture, painting, sculpture, music, and oral and written texts were intertwined to commemorate the Passion of Christ. Through the complexity of interaction of its multiple variants and levels of performance, the Way of the Cross was an effective instrument and expression of the Baroque. It was ephemeral in its processional celebration, but continuous in the transfer of knowledge regarding a personal yet communal connection to the Passion of Christ. NOTES 1 Eliade, Symbolism, 36. 2 Although the subject of each station has not been decreed officially, there is a long-standing tradition for the first twelve stations dating from the fifteenth century, identifying the theme of each one. These stations are 1) Jesus is condemned to death, 2) Jesus is burdened with the cross, 3) Jesus falls for the first time, 4) Jesus meets his mother, 5) Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus to carry the cross, 6) Veronica wipes Jesus’ face, 7) Jesus falls for the second time, 8) Jesus consoles the pious women, 9) Jesus falls for the third time, 10) Jesus is stripped of his garments, 11) Jesus is nailed to the cross, and 12) Jesus dies on the cross. Two additional stations – 13) Jesus is taken down from the cross, and 14) Jesus is laid in the tomb – were added a few years later (the exact date is unknown) for pious purposes: believers wanted to complete the Passion cycle. The most complete analysis of the Way of the Cross from a historical perspective is still the study of Amédée de Zedelgem, “Aperçu historique sur la dévotion au chemin de la Croix.” For early modern Northern European examples see also Mitzi Kirkland-Ives, “Alternate Routes,” 249–70, and for Latin American cases see my article “Vía Crucis y series pasionarias en los virreinatos latinoamericanos.” 3 See the study by Clara Bargellini in this volume on the reproduction of Houses of Loreto in Ibero-America for a discussion of a similar phenomenon. 4 The work of Richard Schechner has been important for my thinking on these issues. In particular, see The Future of Ritual. 5 For more on this concept and artistic expression, see Moura Sobral and W. Booth, Struggle for Synthesis. 6 See the study of Piotr Nawrot in this volume for a comparable integration of music, dance, prayer, and architecture in the processions of Moxos and Chiquitos. 7 Bial, “What Is Performance?,” 59–60.
The Way of the Cross as Performance in New Spain 175 8 Bial, “Ritual,” 87. 9 Ashley. “Art in Ritual Context,” 2. 10 Ashley, “Art in Ritual,” 10. 11 For a detailed account of the stages in the historical evolution of the Way of the Cross see Zedelgem. See note 2. 12 “Avvertimenti necessari,” 81. 13 Fray Leonardo de Porto Mauricio, Vía Crucis explanado, xxiii, 10. 14 See Lara, City, Temple, Stage. 15 For Huejotzingo see Webster, “Art, Ritual, and Confraternities,” 5–43. 16 One of the first scholars to stress this link was Iguiniz, Breve historia, 89–98. 17 Método breve, n.p. 18 Práctica de las estaciones, fol. 32. Even though flagellation was not part of the traditionally accepted stations, an analysis of printed and visual works in Spain and in Latin America demonstrates the existence of an alternate model that was widely disseminated in the early modern era. See Robin, “Vía Crucis.” 19 “de memoria como de coro, sino de voluntad, y afectos.” Práctica de las estaciones, fol. 25. 20 “o el que la anda tan corto de discursos.” Práctica para andar, n.p. 21 Práctica de las estaciones, fols. 12, 22, 23. 22 “luego se levantarán, y proseguirán sus Estaciones.” Pardo, Vida Regulada, 166. 23 See Fray Francisco Soria, Manual de ejercicios; Diez, Aljaba apostólica; and Torres, Breve resumen. 24 Fray Félix Sáiz Díez, El Museo, 12–16. 25 See the following texts that circulated widely in Spanish America: Adrichomio Delpho. Breve descripción de la ciudad de Jerusalén; Gómez Durán, Historia; and Castillo, Devoto peregrino. 26 Information concerning their use was taken from the accounts of the Third Order of San Francis, who were responsible for the maintenance of the chapels; it is preserved in the Archivo General de la Nación. See Robin, Las capillas. 27 Some of these chapels are still standing (Puebla, Antigua Guatemala), some only partially (Querétaro, Acámbaro, Tehuacán, Quetzaltenango); others are known only through documentary evidence (Mexico City, Tlatelolco, Guadalajara, Ozumba, Guatemala City). See Robin, Las capillas. 28 Pérez de la Serna, “Representación del arzobispo, 14–16; Fernández de Echeverría y Veytia. Historia de la fundación, 316–24; and Vázquez, Crónica de la provincia, 417–33. 29 Like many eighteenth century Novohispano painters, López is still awaiting serious scholarly consideration. The most complete catalogue of his work can be found in Armella de Aspe et al., Andrés López.
176 Alena Robin 30 Herrera might be a regional painter. His name and work have not been registered in the historiography of Novohispano painting. I am grateful to Rogelio Ruiz Gomar for sharing his opinion on Herrera’s series. 31 Atlante dei Sacri Monti, 42. 32 Catholic Encyclopedia Online, s.v. “Way of the Cross.” 33 The doctoral dissertation of Ana Isabel Pérez Gavilán (2010), which studies the different Ways of the Cross in the Sanctuary of Atotonilco, is illustrative of this possibility. 34 Many painted series illustrating the Way of the Cross are preserved in museums, removed from their original setting and their provenance is not always known, which further complicates their study. 35 I am here referring to Richard Schechner’s model in The Future of Ritual, 24–7. Novohispano observations of the performance of the Way of the Cross have yet to be found. However, some nineteenth-century commentaries on the celebration of Holy Week provide glimpses, although not dealing specifically with the Way of the Cross. See Scott Frances Erskine Inglis, better known as Madame Calderón de la Barca, for the Holy Week celebrations of Mexico City in 1840 and of Coyoacán in 1841; the American traveller to Central America John Lloyd Stephens, who around the same period arrived in Quetzaltenango (Guatemala) on Holy Thursday; and the French artist Jean-Baptiste Debret, who resided in Brazil between 1816 and 1831 and presented vivid descriptions of the Holy Week celebrations he witnessed as part of the historical events of the Portuguese court. Cf. Calderón de la Barca, La vida en México, 96–104, 269–74; Stephens, Incidents of Travel, 211–17; Debret, Voyage pittoresque, 19–29. 36 See for example the description of Francisco Vázquez for the celebration of 1619 in Antigua Guatemala in Crónica de la provincia, 4: 424. 37 See for example Vázquez, Crónica de la provincia, 426–8. 38 Schechner’s observation applies well to the situation of the spectators of the Way of the Cross: “It is possible to be playing but not be in a play mood; to be playful but not playing; to be playing and neither know it or be in a play mood.” See Schechner, The Future of Ritual, 25–6. 39 “Avvertimenti,” 84n13. 40 Porto Mauricio, Vía Crucis, 14. 41 Ibid., xvii, 14, 51, 52. WORKS CITED Adrichomio Delpho, Christiano. Breve descripción de la ciudad de Jerusalén y lugares circunvecinos, como estaba en tiempo de Cristo nuestro Señor, y de los lugares que fueron ilustrados con su Pasión y la de algunos Santos; con una declaración de las principales dificultades en las historias que se tratan, muy necesarias para
The Way of the Cross as Performance in New Spain 177 entender la Sagrada Escritura. Acompaña a esta descripción el plano o mapa topográfico que le corresponde. Traducido al castellano por el P. F. Vicente Gómez, del orden de predicadores y doctor en teología. Va agregado al fin el viaje de Jerusalén que hizo y escribió Francisco Guerrero, para que se vea la diferencia que hay en esta ciudad de aquel tiempo al de ahora. Barcelona: Juan Francisco Piferrer, [1590] n.d. Armella de Aspe, Virginia, Guillermo Tovar y de Teresa, Virginia Aspe de Cortina, Salvador de Pinal-Icaza y Enríquez, María del Rosario G. de Toxqui, and Javier Curiel Hernández. Andrés López, pintor novohispano. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, 1994. Ashley, Kathleen. “Art in Ritual Context: Introduction.” Journal of Ritual Studies, 6, no. 1 (1992): 1–11. Atlante dei Sacri Monti, Calvari e Complessi devozionali europei/Atlas of Holy Mountains, Calvaries and Devotional Complexes in Europe. Edited by Amilcare Barbero. Novara, Italy: De Agostini, 2001. “Avvertimenti necessari per ben regolare il devoto esercizio della via crucis.” In Decreta authentica sacrae congregationis indulgentiis sacrisque reliquiis, praepositae ab anno 1668 ad annum 1882. Edited by Sanctissimi D.N. Leonis pp. XIII. Rome: Friderici Pustet, 1883: 84–8. Bial, Henry, ed. The Performance Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 2007. – “Ritual.” In Bial, The Performance. – “What Is Performance?” In Bial, The Performance. Calderón de la Barca, Madame. La vida en México durante una estancia de dos años en ese país, Mexico City: Editorial Porrúa, 1997. Castillo, Fray Antonio del. Devoto peregrino y viaje a Tierra Santa. Madrid, 1654. Debret, Jean-Baptiste. Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil. Séjour d’un artiste français au Brésil depuis 1816 jusqu’en 1831 inclusivement … Vol. 3. Paris: Firmin Didot Frères, 1839. Diez, Joseph. Aljaba apostólica de penetrantes flechas, (…) Pónese al principio el modo de ofrecer la Vía Sacra, (…). 1731. Ejercicio santo, y modo de andar la Via-Sacra, o Via-Crucis (…). 1776. Eliade, Mircea. Symbolism, the Sacred, and the Arts. Edited by Diane ApostolosCappadona. New York: Crossroad, 1986. Fernández de Echeverría y Veytia, Mariano. Historia de la fundación de la ciudad de Puebla de los Ángeles en la Nueva España. Vol. 2. Puebla: Conaculta, 1990. Gómez Durán, Pedro. Historia universal de la vida y peregrinación de el Hijo de Dios en el mundo, muerte, Pasión y resurrección de Cristo, redentor, y señor nuestro, con toda la descripción de la Tierra Santa de Jerusalén. Pamplona: Joachin Joseph Martínez, [1609] 1720. Iguiniz, Juan B. Breve historia de la Tercera Orden Franciscana en la Provincia del Santo Evangelio de México, desde sus orígenes hasta nuestros días. Mexico City: Editorial Patria, 1951.
178 Alena Robin Kirkland-Ives, Mitzi. “Alternate Routes: Variation in Early Modern Stational Devotions.” Viator. 40, no. 1 (2009): 249–70. Lara, Jaime. City, Temple, Stage. Eschatological Architecture and Liturgical Theatrics in New Spain. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004. Método breve y utilísimo para rezar el santo via crucis, compuesto por el P.D. Luis Felipe Neri de Alfaro, patrono y fundador del Santuario de Jesús Nazareno de Atotonilco, dos leguas y media distante de la Villa de San Miguel el Grande, se reimprime a expensas de un devoto de la Sagrada Pasión. Puebla: Real Seminario Palafoxiano, 1778. Modo de andar la via-sacra, sacado de la Mystica Ciudad de Dios. 2 part. lib. 6, cap. 21 (…). 1763. Moura Sobral, Luís de, and David W. Booth, eds. Struggle for Synthesis: The Total Work of Art in the 17th and 18th Centuries. 2 vols. Lisbon: Instituto Portugués do Património Arquitectonico, 1999. Pardo, Diego. Vida regulada por el serafín llagado N.P.S. Francisco, y comunicada por la Santidad de Nicolao IV a sus Seráficos Hijos del Orden Tercero de Penitencia. Pónese en cada capítulo los estatutos conducentes a su más perfecta observancia, ajustados a la Práctica del Venerable Orden Tercero de esta Ciudad de Oaxaca. Quien lo dedica a su Seráfica Madre la Santa Provincia de San Diego de Religiosos Descalzos de la más estrecha Observancia Regular en esta Nueva España. Mexico City: Biblioteca Mexicana, [1729] 1764. Pérez de la Serna, Juan. “Representación del arzobispo de México, don Juan Pérez de la Serna, a uno de los ministros del consejo, sobre varios puntos, en que dice haberle agraviado la audiencia de México.” In Documentos relativos al tumulto de 1624, colectados por don Mariano Fernández de Echeverría y Veitia, caballero del orden de Santiago, vol. 1.Mexico City: Imprenta de F. Escalante y Comp, 1855. Pérez Gavilán, Ana Isabel. “The Via Crucis in Eighteenth-Century New Spain: Innovative Practices in the Sanctuary of Jesus of Nazareth at Atotonilco, Guanajuato.” PhD diss., State University of New York, 2010. Porto Mauricio, Fray Leonardo de. Vía Crucis explanado e ilustrado con los Breves y declaraciones de los Sumos Pontífices Clemente XII y Benedicto XIV, y de la Sagrada Congregación de Indulgencias, y con la resolución de todas las dudas suscitadas para impedir tan santa y devota devoción, pónese al fin un modo fácil de oír con mucho aprovechamiento de las almas el santo Sacrificio de la Misa. Translated by Fray Julián de San Joseph. Madrid: Ramón Ruiz, 1793. Práctica de las estaciones de los Viernes, como las andaba la V. M. María de la Antigua, según se ha podido colegir, y sacar de su libro. Copiada a la letra, de una instrucción M. S. que un Religioso de la Compañía de Jesús dispuso, para dos niñas hijas espirituales suyas. Diole a la estampa, para uso, y alivio de las Señoras Religiosas, que las andan, el Licenciado Juan de Miranda Presbítero, Domiciliario de este Arzobispado. Mexico City: Viuda de Bernardo de Calderón, 1681.
The Way of the Cross as Performance in New Spain 179 Práctica para andar las estaciones de la Semana Santa. Con decencia, devoción, y fruto. Dispuesta particularmente para uso, y útil de la Congregación de la Purísima. Fundada con autoridad Apostólica, en el Colegio Máximo de San Pedro, y San Pablo, de la Compañía de Jesús, de México. Mexico City: Francisco de Rivera Calderón, 1720. Robin, Alena. “Vía Crucis y series pasionarias en los virreinatos latinoamericanos.” Goya 339 (2012): 130–45. – Las capillas del Vía Crucis de la ciudad de México. Arte, patrocinio y sacralización del espacio. Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas–UNAM, 2014. Sáiz Díez, Fray Félix. El Museo del Convento de los Descalzos. Lima: Convento de los Descalzos, 2002. Schechner, Richard. The Future of Ritual: Writings on Culture and Performance. New York: Routledge, 1993. Soria, Fray Francisco. Manual de ejercicios para los desagravios de Christo Señor Nuestro. 1743. Stephens, John Lloyd. Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatán. Vol. 2. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1844. Torres, Joseph de. Breve resumen de las más singulares indulgencias, que gozan hoy día los hijos terceros de nuestro seráfico padre San Francisco (…). 1744. Vázquez, Francisco. Crónica de la provincia del Santísimo Nombre de Jesús de Guatemala de la orden de Nuestro Seráfico Padre San Francisco en el Reino de la Nueva España. Vol. 4, Guatemala City: Tipografía nacional, 1944. Webster, Susan Verdi. “Art, Ritual, and Confraternities in SixteenthCentury New Spain: Penitential Imagery at the Monastery of San Miguel, Huejotzingo.” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 19, no. 70 (1997): 5–43. Zedelgem, Amédée de. “Aperçu historique sur la dévotion au chemin de la Croix.” Collectanea Franciscana 19 (1949): 45–142.
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8 Music in Processions at the Jesuit Reducciones of Moxos and Chiquitos in Bolivia
piotr nawrot
The recent discovery of the musical scores of the former Jesuit reducciones, kept by the Moxos and Chiquitos peoples in present-day Bolivia, has revolutionized our knowledge of the use and importance given to music by the Jesuit missionaries in the evangelization of America. More than five thousand pages of mission music from Chiquitos and more than seven thousand folios of musical scores from the Jesuit villages in Moxos, jealously guarded for almost three hundred years by Indigenous musicians and copyists, contributed to two of the most significant music archives in the world.1 The repertoire of both collections is complete and consists mainly of Baroque vocal and instrumental music used by the Christian communities for worship as well as for their traditional festivities.2 Combining both collections, one finds more than eighty polyphonic masses, sets of vespers (hymns, psalms, Magnificats, antiphons, and verses), dozens of major antiphons, arias, motets, cantatas and operas, villancicos, and other forms of vocal compositions.3 In terms of instrumental music, there are pieces for small musical ensembles (sonatas, concertos, suites) and for keyboard instruments (organ, harpsichord). In addition, these collections contain a good deal of music with texts in Indigenous languages, Indigenous music (jerure, machetero), and other musical genres. These written testimonies find their complement in the living tradition that is still practised in many communities in eastern Bolivia, where some of this musical repertoire continues to be copied by hand and performed. In some of these communities, early musical instruments are still kept; local craftsman continue to make new copies of Baroque violins and local instruments used by the missions’ capilla musical in worship and other festivities. In addition, the precise and systematic descriptions of musical practices in the Jesuit reducciones left by missionaries and visitors (superiors, bishops, governors, travellers) offer a rich account of the unique musical culture that originated
184 Piotr Nawrot
in South America. Using this documentation, as well as seventeenth- and eighteenth-century accounts kept in the archives of Chiquito and Moxos, I reconstructed the musical scores in some of the procession pieces whose manuscripts are damaged or incomplete. Because liturgical music for the most part follows well-established structures, it is possible to fill in gaps with historically informed musical segments. However, due to the magnitude and richness of the repertoire, the study of processional music in the Bolivian collections is far from complete.4 The missionaries were aware of the musical skills of the Indigenous population and thus did not hesitate to use European music and instruments as an enticement to conversion. Polyphonic masses by Giovanni Battista Bassani (1650–1761), compositions by Johann Joseph Ignaz Brentner (1689–1742), Johann Valentin Rathgeber (1682–1750), Domenico Zipoli (1688–1726), and others composers made their way from Europe to the missions, crossing the ocean and vast American territories. Villancicos composed in the cathedrals of Peru have surfaced in the libraries of the missions of Moxos, where they are still sung today. In the missions, European compositions went through various forms of adaptation. Local musicians did not perform them in the same way that they were performed in their place of origin. Their adaptations included changing the text from Latin to an Indigenous language, replacing violins for flutes, as well as introducing local melodies, and using violins and other instruments. Sometimes a local composer would be inspired by a European piece to create a completely new composition. Thus, a new style emerged – the Baroque missionary style – different from the Indigenous one and from the European one, but inspired by both. With the passing of time, this style did not remain static, but rather was subject to constant transformation. Processions with Music Processions had gained popularity in Europe – particularly in Spain, Portugal, and Italy – by the end of the fifteenth century. With the arrival of the Spaniards to America this external expression of religious faith was practised there too. The church in America was divided into two branches: the Spanish church, to which the Spaniards, criollos, and mestizos belonged, and the missionary church, to which the Indigenous belonged. While the Spanish church imitated the cathedrals of Seville and Toledo, the missionary church was more creative and looked for inspiration in the apostolic church.5 The great processions of Lima, Cusco, Quito, and Guatemala City, in which the colonizers, their children, and their grandchildren participated, in many ways looked like the
Music in Processions at the Jesuit Reducciones in Bolivia 185
processions common in the Iberian peninsula. In contrast, the processions at the missions, as much in spirit as in external manifestations, were different not only because the Spaniards did not take part in them but because Indigenous culture, with its own decorum and music, exerted its influence in significant ways. The main objective of the processions was to celebrate an occasion and there was a direct relation between the rank of the celebration, the type of procession, and its tone. In the reducciones, the typical orchestra was large; with more than forty musicians, it was able to produce a wide range of sounds. In formal processions, the orchestra would use instruments reserved for special occasions, such as bugles (which were in the upper hierarchy of instruments), trumpets, and small transportable organs. Another goal of a festive procession was to deepen the faith of its participants; its music and lyrics related to the religious occasion that was being commemorated. Even a dance, which could be part of a procession, had to be well-defined. The balance between the voices and the instruments, as well as the chosen tempo of the work, were intended to direct the souls of the pilgrims towards God, not distract them with the abilities of the musicians. As an example, I cite Tata Jesu Christo, which corresponds to the Latin litany Jesu dulcissime. The latter was originally composed for soprano solo and a choir of three voices accompanied by two high-pitched instruments (violins) and continuo (possibly organ and bassoon). The new arrangement of the work was simplified so that professional musicians were not needed for its performance; it could be sung while walking through the streets or square, sailing on the rivers, or following paths in the jungle. What was originally a litany of 138 bars became a verse of 19 bars. The new arrangement keeps the character of the music for solo voice and choir, without the use of instruments. The choir, however, responds in unison, not in three parts. Finally, although the manuscript does not have parts for the violin, its absence does not necessarily mean that they were not included. Perhaps the violin part went astray, or the violins joined the vocal parts in unison (figs. 8.1 and 8.2). A procession upon the arrival of a guest to the missions was an occasion to express the joy and gratitude for the visit to the village. The distinguished guest was received at a distance from the mission and was accompanied with music and song on the last leg of the journey as well as at the entrance of the village. The journey along the river or road, or through the jungle, was accompanied by motets, litanies, duets, and simple songs in Indigenous languages. Closer to the mission, the music (marches) became more formal to emphasize the importance of the visit. The procession always ended at the entrance to the church and
186 Piotr Nawrot
Figure 8.1. Iesu dulcissime
Music in Processions at the Jesuit Reducciones in Bolivia 187
Figure 8.2. Tata Jesu Christo
with the solemn performance of a Te Deum to give thanks for divine protection during the voyage, transforming the expression of joy into one of gratitude. The music of the choir and the orchestra contributed to the solemnity and splendour of the occasion. The use of music in processions from the mission to the workplace sought to raise the enthusiasm of the participants towards the required tasks. Songs in the local language in honour of Saint Isidore the Farmer,
188 Piotr Nawrot
Figure 8.3. Bico payaco borechu
Music in Processions at the Jesuit Reducciones in Bolivia 189
with the accompaniment of autochthonous instruments, were often heard. These marches were simple, allowing amateur musicians to perform them, as professional musicians were exempt from work on the land. In such processions, however, a verse in honour of another saint, such as the patron saint of the village, could also be sung. One of the most popular saints in the reducciones was Saint Francis Xavier. Here I reconstruct a simple song in his honour; its character corresponds to the music of this type of procession (fig. 8.3). Solemn Processions and Simple Processions Not all of the processions followed the same format. Depending on the occasion they could be ceremonial or simple, and the music varied according to this distinction. In an elaborate procession, almost the entire village participated. Days before, the musicians and dancers rehearsed the repertoire, which could be complicated and lengthy. In the formal procession that took place on Holy Saturday, the musicians of the mission divided themselves into two groups; one accompanied the men carrying the image of the risen Christ on one side of the square while the other accompanied the women carrying the statue of the Virgin on the other side. The musicians that marched around the square would play effusively while singing Regina coeli, to the sound of instruments used on special occasions: bugles and chirimías. In the same procession, portable organs and bajones were also carried. The Jesuit missionary José Cardiel (1704–1782) does not provide much detail in his Breve relación about the compositions sung by each group.6 Presumably, each side sung the same text of the major antiphon, but in a different arrangement. In the Musical Archive of Moxos there are ten compositions for this occasion: the choirmaster had ample choice. The antiphon here cited is still sung today in some communities in the jungles of Bolivia (fig. 8.4). In simple processions, for those who were travelling, going to work, or receiving guests, a smaller number of people participated. Neighbourhood devotional processions would also be simple. The music on these occasions had a less formal character and was not very elaborate, and was frequently performed by amateur musicians. The songs, usually for solo voice with lyrics in an Indigenous language, were accompanied by a blend of Indigenous instruments, violins, and flutes. On some occasions, a few professional musicians helped the amateurs in performance, but this was not done on a regular basis.
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Figure 8.4. Regina coeli laetare
Liturgical Context of Processions The processions that took place at the missions followed two formats: liturgical and non-liturgical. Liturgical processions, associated with the main religious feasts of the year, such as Christmas, Corpus Christi, and Holy Week, were formal and elaborate. The repertoire for these celebrations included, for the most part, polyphonic songs in Latin accompanied by European instruments that had been brought by the missionaries; sometimes chant melodies were also sung. Only professional singers and musicians performed on these occasions. However, solemn processions were staged for different occasions, such as in thanks for the eradication of an epidemic or to celebrate the centenary of the foundation of the Society of Jesus. The musical repertoire for these occasions was extensive. In the Moxos collection there are thirty compositions that served this purpose, all with texts in Latin, including fifteen hymns, four sequences, five motets, five sets of processional antiphons, and a psalm. The works by Zipoli, the greatest Jesuit composer who travelled to the New World, demonstrate the quality of music of this category found in the collection. Other elaborate processions took place at the reducciones, such as those for Candlemas, Ash Wednesday, and Palm Sunday, or those that accompanied asperges at the beginning of the mass. In addition, the Indigenous community led small processions, almost spontaneously, in honour of their devotional saints. The music and the use of instruments for these occasions were less grandiose.
Music in Processions at the Jesuit Reducciones in Bolivia 191
The Corpus Christi Procession Corpus Christi was the most spectacular of all processions.7 The song Tantum ergo Sacramentum opened the procession; Zipoli’s Tantum ergo illustrates the solemnity of the event (fig. 8.5). The Corpus Christi procession typically took the following format:8 • The priest carried in his hands the Blessed Sacrament, placed in a dazzling monstrance, while the choir, with all the string and wind instruments of the missions, sung and played the hymn Tantum ergo. The instruments that Cardiel lists are violins, flutes, bugles, clarinets, bajones, harps, drums, tamborils, and caja drums, as well as other wind and string instruments. In addition, the altar boys rang handbells and the bells from the church tower (which could be more than ten) could be heard. The richness of the music from the missions of Chiquitos, Moxos, and Guarayos suggests that while walking from one altar to another the musicians performed different musical arrangements of this hymn. • On arriving at the altar, the priest sung the prayer. • After the prayer, the musicians sung a motet (in Latin) or a villancico (in Spanish or an Indigenous language) in honour of the Blessed Sacrament. In the Musical Archive of Moxos there are three of these motets in Latin (Hic est Panis; Missit me vivens Pater; Venite, exsultemus), and thirteen villancicos in Spanish. • Immediately afterwards, dances took place in front of the Blessed Sacrament. These dances, accompanied by harps and violins, were performed with great reverence, according to a set choreography. Eight, ten, or more people presented the dance of the angels or that of the nations. On nearing the Blessed Sacrament, they raised incense to the Lord, bowing deeply, while the sopranos slowly sang Lauda Sion Salvatorem to the rhythm of the censing. When the censing was finished, the rhythm changed, becoming more hurried, and all of the dancers, not just sopranos, sung Lauda Sion Salvatorem. The second verse, Quantum potes tantum aude, was again solemnly and deliberately sung by two sopranos, to the rhythm of the censing, and then everyone repeated Lauda Sion Salvatorem more hurriedly. The dance lasted for the duration of the whole hymn.9 On occasion, the sopranos were replaced by tenors, who represented the four parts of the world, with their crowns and sceptres. When dancing in front of the Blessed Sacrament they sung the Sacris solemniis. They did the steps in the same way that the sopranos did while singing Lauda Sion. • At the second, third, and fourth altars the same plan was followed: prayer, letrilla or motet, and dance.
192 Piotr Nawrot
Figure 8.5. Tantum ergo
Music in Processions at the Jesuit Reducciones in Bolivia
Figure 8.5. (Continued)
193
194 Piotr Nawrot
The repertoire of this procession included four Tantum ergo (for choir with all of the instruments), four motets or villancicos (solo voice or a combination of voices with selected instruments), and four dances (accompanied by harps, violins, and other local instruments). In addition, the priest sang prayers and scripture verses in Gregorian monody. I demonstrate the extraordinary beauty of the music for this procession by citing two compositions from the missionary archives, Venite, exsultemus and the villancico Amado Dueño mío; both date from the beginning of the eighteenth century (figs. 8.6 and 8.7). Dances were an integral part of the procession of Corpus Christi and a distinctive feature of religious devotion in the reducciones. At each mission, a variety of dances were known; most were Spanish, but some were autochthonous.10 According to Anton Sepp (1655–1733), a missionary to the Guaraní, dances were to be performed with the greatest splendour possible.11 Dances increased the formality of the celebration; since the dancers usually also sang some devotional verses, their performance amplified the devotion of the spectators.12 The Lauda Sion Salvatorem sequence from the Chiquitos collection is the composition that best exemplifies the characteristics described by the missionaries in their texts (fig. 8.8). Doctrinal Processions and Processions Honouring Saints Small chapels, erected at a distance from each village, were the final point of another type of procession. Marching from their streets or neighbourhoods towards these chapels, the participants stopped in front of the cross that was placed at the end of the street and sang a motet there, whose words told of the purpose of the procession or of an article of Christian doctrine. Upon arriving at the chapels, they sang regular prayers that ended in another motet.13 These motets, often in local languages, were sung in unison, with violins and flutes doubling the voices. If the procession was made in honour of the Virgin Mary, a litany was sung on arriving at the chapel,14 while the final motet was a major antiphon, sometimes called Salve or Ave. To thank a saint for his or her intervention, the community offered a procession, whose level of celebration corresponded to the favour received. Processions for the Foundation of a New Mission Music was the primary method missionaries used to establish contact with the communities they wanted to Christianize. The missionaries did not carry firearms; their arms were music, sacred images, and their
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Figure 8.6. Venite, exsultemus
196
Piotr Nawrot
Figure 8.6. (Continued)
Music in Processions at the Jesuit Reducciones in Bolivia
Figure 8.6. (Continued)
Figure 8.7. Amado Dueño mío
197
198 Piotr Nawrot
Figure 8.7. (Continued)
testimony of eternal life. Antonio Sepp left the following account about his march with the aim to “spiritually conquer” new nations and found a mission: “It was the 13th of September of 1697 when I left with two priests, missionaries of the nearby reducción of San Lorenzo, to look for convenient land for the foundation of the new village … The bugles played happily; chirimías, bassoons, and flutes echoed in the green jungle around us; the martial drum directed our march.”15 In his account, Sepp does not indicate the repertoire that his musicians played in the march through the jungle, nor the number of musicians that he brought with him, but their purpose was to express joy.
Music in Processions at the Jesuit Reducciones in Bolivia 199
Figure 8.8. Lauda Sion Salvatorem
200 Piotr Nawrot
The processions took place early on in the establishment of the missions, and their frequency and elaboration corresponded to the growth of the reducciones. Only two decades after the foundation of San Ignacio, the first reducción among the Guaraní, the missionaries organized a spectacular procession to celebrate the day of their patron saint. The Carta Anua of 1631 describes it thus: We have celebrated his festival with great happiness and with the highest formality possible, preparing ourselves for it many days in advance, encircling the square with arches where the procession would pass, and on the eve, riding on horseback, and at night, there being much lighting, with much noise of flutes, bells, drums, and trumpets, and everyone in one voice crying out to San Ignacio, invoking his name, it seemed that they were mad with happiness; what delighted them the most was to see fireworks shooting, something very new for them, and they spent that whole night without any sleep, preparing their dances and plays.16
Processions for the Arrival of New Missionaries or Authorities to the Missions Another occasion for a procession with music was the arrival of authorities to the missions. The mission villages were established far from Spanish cities, and the Spaniards did not have permission to live in them. Nevertheless, the administration of the reducciones had to be supervised by the bishop of the jurisdiction, the superiors of the Jesuits, the governor, and other civil authorities. Francisco Xarque (1601–1691), a missionary to the Guaraní, described how a village welcomed the arrival of a bishop with “the sound of caja drums, bugles, and chirimías, joyful with dances and praises.”17 The arrival of new missionaries could also be an occasion for a procession. Sepp details the arrival of his party by boat at the mission in the Yapeyú region. Each one of their boats had a drummer, a musician that played the chirimía, and a trumpet player; the village received them with music, a mock battle, and, upon their arrival to the church, the musicians sang Laudate Dominum omnes gentes.18 Processions to the Place of Work Marches performed to the sound of flutes, violins, and percussion instruments accompanied the processions from the mission to the fields. The music was simple, played by amateur musicians, and its objective was to create among the workers a feeling of unity and enthusiasm for their tasks.19
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Marches and Indigenous music interpreted with autochthonous instruments were common in these occasions. At the head of this type of procession, the workers carried a statue of a saint who was implored to bless their work.20 Graham Cunnighame writes of this in his A Vanished Arcadia: So to the task of agriculture the Jesuits marshalled their neophytes to the sound of music, and in procession to the fields, with a saint borne high aloft, the community each day at sunrise took its way. Along the paths, at stated intervals, were shrines of saints, and before each of them they prayed, and between each shrine sang hymns. As the procession advanced, it became gradually smaller as groups of Indians dropped off to work the various fields, and finally the priest and acolyte with the musicians returned alone. At mid-day, before eating, they all united and sang hymns, and then, after their meal and siesta, returned to work till sundown, when the procession again re-formed, and the labourers, singing, returned to their abodes. A pleasing and Arcadian style of tillage, and different from the system of the “swinked” labourer in more northern climes. But even then, the hymnal day was not concluded; for after a brief rest they all repaired to church to sing “rosary,” and then to sup and bed.21
Processions before Travelling A statue of the saint to which the travellers were devoted would be brought along every trip, in anticipation of the saint’s intercession for a safe journey.22 Before leaving, the travellers would bring the statue to church, where they offered the saint prayers and songs. These songs were no more than simple devotional airs or a litany in the saint’s honour, sung by the whole community. Amateur musicians, on occasions supported by professional ones, accompanied the singing. At the end of their prayers the priest would speak about the purpose of the trip. From the church, they went in procession around the square to the sound of flutes, chirimías, caja drums, and handbells, playing marches or other appropriate pieces.23 Indigenous Instruments and Repertoire Regarding Indigenous music and its inclusion in processions, Xarque indicates that the Indigenous inhabitants knew a wide variety of dances and sometimes also presented “one or another in their Indian usage.”24 In all likelihood, Indigenous instruments were played in the accompaniment of these presentations. Such practices were also seen in the cities, particularly in Cusco, where the Indigenous presence was pervasive.
202 Piotr Nawrot
The use of Indigenous instruments and musical repertoire was probably common among villagers on their way to work or while travelling along the rivers, although this matter is not discussed in detail in the accounts examined. Nonetheless, the study of the actual collections of music from the missions indicates that a tenth of the music in the Moxos archive has texts in Indigenous languages: Trinitario, Ignaciano, and Canichana. These texts are mainly lamentations, passions, and catechetical songs. In addition, the instrumental music section of the archive has several compositions with Indigenous tunes. Processions Today Perhaps the rainforest in Bolivia is the only context where the Jesuit reducciones saw their foundation and dissolution but never their cultural demise. Despite the expulsion of the missionaries in 1767–8, musical traditions in these communities have not changed much. To date, the Chiquitos and Moxos continue making musical instruments, copying music of the eighteenth century by hand, observing the liturgical calendar and rituals of the past, and marching in processions. In their festive processions, Indigenous music is heard to the sound of the festive jerures, and the musicians move around the village, inviting the celebrants to join in or perform the macheteros dance around the plaza. I present below (figs. 8.9 and 8.10) a jerure and a machetero, reconstructions of the compositions kept in the Musical Archive of Moxos. Jerure (Herure) The jerure dance is named after the pre-Hispanic instrument that was used for its performance. This instrument, which is a type of panpipe, or small bajón, is made of the leaves of the cusi palm tree, with a mouthpiece of tarara wood. The Jesuits introduced violins, flutes, and percussion instruments to its performance. Since then, the jerure is performed to accompany processions in the village, announcing the celebrations and inviting participation in them. The jerure usually starts its path in the town hall and returns there at the end of the route. In the collection of musical manuscripts in Moxos there are thirty-two compositions called jerure or herure. Thirteen are designated for Christmas, another thirteen for the feast of the Holy Trinity, one for the feast day of Saint Lawrence. The others do not have any indication of their use (fig. 8.9).
Music in Processions at the Jesuit Reducciones in Bolivia 203
Figure 8.9. Jerure para la fiesta Santísima Trinidad
Figure 8.10. Machetero de Navidad
204 Piotr Nawrot
Chiriperono (Macheteros or Tontochis) In Trinidad (the former Reducción of Moxos), on the feast day of the patron saint as well as on Corpus Christi, more than one hundred Indigenous macheteros march through the streets and the main square of the city to the sound of orchestras of local instruments that accompany the dancers’ steps and their devotion. Among the pre-Hispanic dances of the Moxos, the chiriperono was the most distinctive of this ethnic group. In the Moxo language, the word chiríperu indicates a weapon made from palm trees. Ono, in the same language, is used to indicate a plural subject. The dancers that participate in its performance carry a palm-sized machete in their right hand. This is why the chiriperono became known as the dance of the macheteros or, simply, the macheteros. The same dance is also alluded to with the onomatopoeic name tontochis, since it is performed to the beat of the bombo bass drum (ton – ton), accompanied by the muffled and permanent “chis” of the bells of seeds (called paichachi) worn on the ankles of the dancers. The dance continues to be performed in several villages of Beni in an almost primitive form, and includes the use of fan-shaped crowns with brilliant feathers.25 Despite its military origins and clear evocations of the old war dances of the missionary era, the chiriperono acquired a religious character and is performed in all of the major feasts of the liturgical year, above all at Christmas, Easter, Corpus Christi, the feast of the Holy Trinity, and the celebration of the feast day of the patron saint of the village. Summary Processions played an integral part in the life at the Jesuit reducciones. They were performed for religious festivities, journeys, marches to work, grand entrances to the mission of an illustrious guest, and for many other occasions, simple or more elaborate, in accordance with the importance of the event in the life of the mission society. In every procession there was music, music whose function was to enhance the piety of the event, to express joy, to create a feeling of communion among the participants, to inspire and motivate participation in assigned work, or to express faith in one’s devotional saint, whether asking for intercession or giving thanks for it. This is why the repertoire of processional music is extensive and varied. It consists of many elaborate or simple musical works, with texts in Latin, Indigenous languages, and Spanish. The melodies are Gregorian or Indigenous, intended to by performed by a single chorus or a multi-choral polyphony, a cappella, or with accompaniment of instruments. The processional repertoire was different from that of
Music in Processions at the Jesuit Reducciones in Bolivia 205
Spain or Spanish American cities. Some of it was composed at the missions; works brought from elsewhere were not reproduced by local musicians in the exact form of the musical score, but were newly arranged, in accordance with the reality of the reducciones and local taste. The most common changes involved the replacement of texts in Latin or Spanish with verses in an Indigenous language and the substitution of the violin with a local instrument. On occasion, however, foreign music served only as a reference point for new versions composed at the missions. The biggest religious feasts had a complete program of processional music, although this music was not classified as such in the books destined for this purpose. The choirmaster, always an Indigenous person, composed the program; it consisted of sequences, antiphons, motets, villancicos, and instrumental music which accompanied the marches and dances. Formal processions merged cultures. A dance of macheteros, the singing of a hymn or motet in Latin after which a villancico was performed, exemplify this meeting of worlds. The inclusion of autochthonous instruments in the musical production, the decoration of the path with arches, where fruits and flowers of the jungle hung and where cages with wild birds and animals were placed, and the costumes of the dancers made for an extraordinary spectacle, unique to the missionary environment. Thanks to the adaptation of the processions to the reducciones and the appropriation of them by the Indigenous population, processions did not disappear after the expulsion of the Jesuit missionaries. On the contrary, they gained importance and frequency well into the twentieth century. With the absence of the priests, mass no longer united the community; communal action became centred on solemn processions that required planning, preparation, and performance. In rural eastern Bolivia, processions with an astonishing display of costumes, dances, instruments, and musical repertoire continue to this day, promoting faith and uniting communities. NOTES 1 The Archivo Musical de Chiquitos is located in the town of Concepción in the Department of Santa Cruz. The Archivo Musical de Moxos is located in San Ignacio, Department of Beni. These towns of less than twelve thousand inhabitants, would have been much smaller during the seventeenth century. Other reducciones also had musical archives; however, only the repositories in eastern Bolivia are extant. 2 The publication of scores from these repositories is an ongoing project. See Nawrot, Música de vísperas.
206 Piotr Nawrot 3 For a study of villancicos see the article by Aurelio Tello in this collection. 4 The 2004 recording Bolivian Baroque by Florilegium and Bolivian soloists is the first of a series interpreting the reconstructed music from Moxos and Chiquitos. The following documentary provides an overview of this endeavour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tkKKXiooOQ. No recordings have yet been made of the processional music discussed here. 5 For a discussion of the adoption of European musical fashion in the Cathedral of Mexico City see the article by Lucero Enríquez Rubio in this collection. 6 “La mañana de resurrección es cosa de gloria. Al alba, ya está toda la gente en la iglesia. Por calles, plazas y pórticos de la iglesia, todo está lleno de luces: todo es resonar cajas y tambores, tamboriles y flautas, tremolar banderas, flámulas, estandartes, y gallardetes en honra de las estatuas de bulto entero colocadas en medio, de Cristo resucitado y de su Santísima Madre: haciéndolas grande y sonora música los bajones, clarines, chirimías, órganos y todo ese género de instrumentos, que todos juntos, con muy alegres sones, concurren á causar una alegría del cielo. Los Cabildantes, los militares, los danzantes, con las mejores galas, y todas sus banderas y banderillas de varios colores.” (The morning of the Resurrection is a thing of glory. At dawn, everyone is already in the church. All around in the streets, squares and porticoes of the church, everything is full of lights: everything is the echoing of drums and caja drums, tamborils and flutes, fluttering flags, pennants, standards, and banners in honour of the statues of Christ Resurrected and of his Blessed Mother placed in the middle: making for them big and resonant music the bajones, bugles, chirimias, organs and all those types of instruments, which all together, with very joyful sones [tunes], come together to cause a heavenly joy. The church council, the military, [and] the dancers, [are all present] in their best finery and all their flags and banners of many colours.])Cardiel, Breve relación, 116. All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated. 7 “Pero nada hay comparable a la procesión del Santísimo Sacramento … Dícenos el general D. Antonio de Ulloa, que se ven allí muy hermosas danzas, y muchas de ellas de más mérito que las de la provincia de Quito; que los danzantes llevan trajes muy pulcros y que la pompa iguala á la de las mayores ciudades; pero viéndose aquí más decencia y devoción … se ven revolotear aves de todos colores … como si de sí propias hubiesen venido á mezclar sus gorjeos con el canto de los músicos y de todo el pueblo … El gorjeo de los pájaros, el rugido de los leones, el bramido de los tigres, la voz de los músicos y el canto llano del coro, todo deja oir sin confusión y forma un concierto único.” (But nothing is comparable to the procession of the Blessed Sacrament … The General D. Antonio de Ulloa tells us that many beautiful dances are seen, and many of them of more merit than those
Music in Processions at the Jesuit Reducciones in Bolivia 207 of the province of Quito; that the dancers wear very exquisite costumes and that the pomp equals that of the greatest cities; but seeing here more honesty and devotion …]one sees birds of all colours fluttering around … as if they themselves had come to mix their chirping with the songs of the musicians and of the whole village … The warbling of the birds, the roar of the lions, the howling of the tigers, the voice of the musicians and the chanting of the choir, all is heard without confusion and forms a unique concert.) Charlevoix, Historia del Paraguay, 88. 8 See José Cardiel, Carta y Relación de las Misiones de la Provincia del Paraguay [1747], quoted in Furlong, José Cardiel y su Carta-Relación, 168–9. 9 See Cardiel, Breve relación, 566. 10 Xarque, Insignes misioneros, 350. 11 Sepp, Jardín de flores paracuario, 71. 12 Xarque, Insignes misioneros, 352. 13 Charlevoix, Historia del Paraguay, 91. 14 Sepp, Relación de viaje, 169. 15 “Fue el día 13 de septiembre del año 1697 cuando partí con dos Padres, misioneros de la cercana reducción de San Lorenzo, a buscar un terreno conveniente para la fundación del nuevo pueblo… Los clarines tocaban alegremente; chirimías, fagotes y flautas repercutían en la selva verde alrededor de nosotros; el tambor marcial dirigía nuestra marcha.” Sepp, Relación de viaje, 193. 16 “Hemos celebrado su fiesta con gran contento y con la mayor solemnidad posible preparándose muchos días antes para ella, cercando la plaza de arcos por donde había de pasar la procesión, y la víspera, saliendo a caballo, y la noche, habiendo mucha iluminación, con mucho ruido de flautas, campanas, tambores y trompetas, y todos a una voz clamando a San Ignacio, invocando su nombre, que no parece sino que estaban fuera de sí de contento; y lo que más los regocijó fue ver volar unos cohetes, cosa bien nueva para ellos, y toda aquella noche pasaron sin dormir aparejando sus danzas y entremeses.” “Anua de la reducción de San Ignacio del Paraná el año de 1631,” in Blanco, Historia documentada, 193. 17 “á son de caxas, clarines, y chirimías, aregozijo de danças, y victores.” Xarque, Insignes misioneros, 309. 18 Sepp, Relación de viaje, 183–6. 19 “En una palabra: es increíble qué amplias capacidades de trabajo tienen estos indiecitos y con qué entusiasmo ponen la mano de obra, la cual es siempre acompañada de música de tambores y pífanos alegres, pues siempre van músicos delante de ellos y si se termina un trabajo vuelve la música a tocar.” (In one word: it is incredible what wide capacities for work these little Indians have and with such enthusiasm they put their hand to work, which is always accompanied by the music of drums and cheerful
208 Piotr Nawrot fifes, thus musicians always go in front of them and if they finish a job, music is played again.) Sepp, Continuación de las labores, 259. 20 “Mientras que se les toca a todos al trabajo, que suele ser como media hora después. Y entonces al son de tamborillos se juntan otra vez todos los que ya son capaces de trabajar, y los que tienen oficio se van a sus oficinas que todas están en un patio grande de la casa del padre; contiguo a ello, y los demás al son del mismo tambor van, como en procesión, a su trabajo de campo, llevando consigo algún santo en sus andas, que por lo común es San Isidro Labrador, por quien los pobres indios tienen particular devoción en todos aquellos pueblos.” Escandón, “Carta al padre Andrés Marcos Burriel,” (While they all are called to work, it is usually half an hour after. And so to the sound of tamborils they join together once again all those who are already capable of work, and those who have a church position go to their offices that are all in a large courtyard at the priest’s house; adjacent to it, and the others, to the sound of the same drum, go, as in procession, to their work in the fields, bringing with them some saint on his platform, which is usually Saint Isidore the Laborer, for whom the poor Indians have a particular devotion in all of those villages) 18 June 1760, Madrid, in Furlong, Juan de Escandón, 92. 21 Cunninghame, A Vanished Arcadia, 178–9. 22 See Cardiel, quoted in Furlong, Juan de Escandón, 178. 23 See Cardiel, Breve Relación, 564. 24 “qual, ò qual à su vsança Indica.” Xarque, Insignes misioneros, 350. 25 Becerra Casanovas, Reliquias de Moxos, 9. See also Mathews, Up the Amazon. WORKS CITED Becerra Casanovas, Roger. Reliquias de Moxos. La Paz: Proinosa, 1990. Blanco, José María. Historia documentada de la vida y gloriosa muerte de los Padres Roque de Santa Cruz, Alonso Rodríguez y Juan del Castillo de la Compañía de Jesús. Mártires del Caaró y Yjuhi. Buenos Aires: Sebastián de Amorrortu, 1929. Cardiel, José. Breve relación de las misiones del Paraguay. Edited by Ernesto J.A. Maeder. Buenos Aires: Secretaría de Cultura de la Nación and Ediciones Theoría, 1994. Charlevoix, Pedro Francisco Javier de. Historia del Paraguay. Translated by Pablo Hernández. Madrid: Librería General de Victoriano Suárez, 1912. Cunninghame, Graham. A Vanished Arcadia: Being Some Account of the Jesuits in Paraguay. London: Willaim Heinemann, 1901. Furlong, Guillermo. José Cardiel y su Carta-Relación (1747). Buenos Aires: Librería del Plata, 1953. – Juan de Escandón, S.J., y su Carta a Burriel, 1760. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Theoría, 1965.
Music in Processions at the Jesuit Reducciones in Bolivia 209 Maeder, Ernesto, ed. Cartas Anuas de la Provincia del Paraguay, 1637–1639. Buenos Aires: Fecic, 1984. Mathews, Edward D. Up the Amazon and Madeira Rivers through Bolivia and Peru. London: Sampson Low & Co., 1879. Moreno, Gabriel René. Catálogo de Mojos y Chiquitos. La Paz: Librería Editorial Juventud, 1973. Nawrot, Piotr, ed. Música de vísperas en las reducciones de Chiquitos – Bolivia (1691–1767): Obras de Domenico Zipoli y maestros jesuitas e indígenas anónimos. La Paz: Don Bosco, 1994. – Misiones de Moxos: Catálogos. Archivo musical de Moxos. Catálogo de música manuscrita. Vol. 1 – Tomo I, II. Santa Cruz: Fondo Editorial APAC, 2011. Sepp, Antonio. Relación de viaje a las misiones jesuíticas. Translated by W. Hoffmann and Monika Wrang. Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, 1971. – Continuación de las labores apostólicas. Translated by W. Hoffmann. Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, 1973. – Jardín de flores paracuario. Translated by W. Hoffmann. Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, 1974. Xarque, Francisco. Insignes misioneros de la Compañía de Jesús en la Provincia del Paraguay. Pamplona: Juan Micon, 1687.
9 Neapolitan Technology and Galant Style in a Novohispano Context: Eight Concerted Responsories by Ignacio Jerusalem
lucero enríquez rubio
Galant, a term to describe a discourse that charms and seduces, a refined social behaviour, and a visual aesthetics of soft colours and sweeping shapes, began to be applied as a technical musical concept after 1721, when Johann Mattheson used it to refer to composers of Italian operas who were exponents of the most modern trends of the time. Galant music came to signify Italianized music of operatic origin, associated with modernity, elegance, and good taste.1 Robert Gjerdingen defines galant as “a code of conduct, as an eighteenth-century courtly ideal (adaptable to city life), and as a set of carefully taught musical behaviors.”2 We are, thus, dealing with an ethics, an aesthetics, and a technique that differ from those of the Baroque.3 In eighteenth-century Naples, the concertmasters and the four city conservatories refined music theories and traditions by using new concepts and techniques. This process of purification and enrichment generated a repository of musical patterns built from traditional bass melodic lines like the Romanesca, harmonies created from these bass notes, and identifiable melodic patterns which were amenable to countless small variations. By means of combinatorial and transfer strategies, which in turn created discursive formulas, these musical patterns were interchangeable and carried out functions such as initiating, continuing, or concluding a section. By using them, it was possible to improvise and even to “compose” an entire work. This musical language was hermetic for those who were neither noble nor cultured; it was a way of thinking about music and decoding it, resulting from two processes that nourished each other. One process emerged from the insatiable demand for innovation that characterized the courts of the eighteenth century: the nobles and princes of the church competed against each other to promote the “latest of the latest” crafted within their palaces.4 The other process resulted from the theoretical knowledge and techniques of
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creation and conveyance of musical compositions as taught in Naples. Musicians trained in the use of this technology were capable of “composing” a great quantity of works in a short period of time. They were also capable of identifying innovations in musical arrangements and introducing them into their next “composition,” satisfying their patrons’ vanity and ever-changing taste, while seeking positions with a higher salary or social rank. One of these musicians trained in the Neapolitan style was Ignacio Jerusalem (Ignazio Gerusalemme, Lecce, 1707–Mexico City, 1769), appointed chapelmaster by the cabildo (Mexico City cathedral’s chapter) in 1750. Although controversial, the appointment of Jerusalem put an end to ten years of increasing deterioration of the cathedral’s music chapel. Even when the cabildo had other concerns,5 it realized that a music crisis was going on in its domain. This was due in part to the exhaustion of a musical tradition incapable of responding to the new artistic style increasingly favoured by the elite members of the novohispano metropolis. More important, however, was the cabildo’s scant interest in music, deeming musicians as servants and neglecting music practice beyond its role in the liturgy. The mid-eighteenth-century cabildo’s disregard for musical training also contributed to the long period during which the music chapel remained headless,6 thereby resulting in the above-mentioned crisis.7 This also affected the cathedral musicians because part of their income came from the services – from soirees to funerals – that they provided to the elite. Therefore, in 1742, José Cardenas, the administrator of the Mexico City Coliseo theatre, travelled to Cádiz to hire versatile musicians in order to nourish the city’s impoverished musical landscape.8 Three of these musicians, including Jerusalem, were Italians trained in Neapolitan musical technology. The Maitines de San José (Saint Joseph’s Matins) and the Context for Jerusalem’s Responsories The office of matins is the longest and most complicated of the Liturgy of the Hours, or Divine Office. Music of different genres, texts, and prayers are structured in three nocturnes reminiscent of the monastic tradition; these were chanted in the middle of the night, to recalling the Roman vigils.9 In the cathedral of Mexico City, however, matins were increasingly scheduled by the cabildo at any given time,10 instead of at midnight as had been done in the past. Only the holidays of “the birth of the Lord, his resurrection, and the Tinieblas [matins and lauds of Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of Holy Week]” remained unchanged.11
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In 1747, Juan Antonio Vizarrón y Eguiarreta (Cádiz, 1682–Mexico City, 1747), archbishop of Mexico from 1730 to 1747 and interim viceroy from 1734 to 1740,12 stated in his will “that with the capital amount of ten thousand pesos” he would fund “the anniversary of the solemn matins … to the most glorious patriarch Saint Joseph on his day of fame … so that with this revenue the said matins could be celebrated and chanted, to start at precisely the end of vespers, in order to end with the light of day.”13 This request for an earlier matins responded to the frequent “scandals” that arose in the cathedral due to the immodest attire of the women attending the service and the “multiplicity of mixtures of men and women” observed “in the matins of the night.”14 Times were changing, and a certain level of compromise from the cabildo was needed to respond to a more profane spirit and taste, and this compromise played a role in the type of music that was to be used in the services. The boundaries of church music were being blurred; unlike the Baroque style, the galant style did not differentiate between features: court, stage, and church music, as well as their “composition” frameworks, were interchangeable. Those that frequented the Coliseo theatre, many of whom attended the cathedral services during the great festivities, had begun to familiarize themselves with the music-making of the Italians who had arrived in 1742, and expected similar music in the cathedral. The evaluations in Jerusalem’s tenure examination reveal the coexistence of these two trends among the cabildo: one was inclined towards the ancient tradition of church music, while the other preferred a modern style, that is, the galant style.15 Jerusalem said to those examiners who strongly opposed him, “so was music learned and taught in his homeland, Italy, 16 and in other foreign nations, and there was no more need for discourses or old books to perfectly understand, teach, and learn music.”17 Even though Jerusalem’s appointment did not happen until 1750, his theatre music must have been known and liked by the public long before. His name became so popular that “at the matins of his composition, played in the same [cathedral] on Maundy Thursday in the year 1753, their excellencies, the viceroy and the vicereine, were in attendance, in addition to the numerous attendees who were there to hear them.”18 Via a Neapolitan, the new style had arrived at the cathedral of Mexico City. To have a pleasant, elegant, less contrasting music to deploy the liturgy was in accordance with the Catholic Enlightenment ideals espoused by Pope Benedict XIV. The guidelines he set in the encyclical Annus qui hunc of 1749 restored Latin sung responsories and prohibited villancicos in Romance languages, for example.19
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Despite scant documentary evidence, it can be thus inferred that upon the death of Vizarrón, and in absence of an officially recognized chapelmaster, Jerusalem was commissioned to compose the first juego20 of the matins for Saint Joseph paid from the archbishop’s endowment; he had been appointed as composer, violón player, and music teacher since 1746.21 Responsory and Meta-genre In music, form does not determine genre, a multifactorial concept per se that includes intrinsic features of the works, such as the technical and stylistic resources used by the composer, as well as extrinsic factors, including the context in which the music will be performed, its functional intention, including its title, and the expectations of the audience according to convention. While Ernst Gombrich says that without establishing the primacy of genre, all attempts to decipher methods, aims, purposes, or intentions are in vain,22 and ends and means can be confused. Thus, it is necessary to discern the “prime purpose” without which a work “would have never been accomplished.”23 Jerusalem’s prime purpose for composing the responsories for the matins service for the feast of Saint Joseph was to link each responsory with the preceding lectio, substituting chant or the responsory’s intonation with his own music in the singing of the liturgical texts. He also had subordinate purposes, such as writing a score using Neapolitan technology for the voices and instruments of the music chapel, pleasing the cabildo and other attendees, and consolidating his future position. What the author intended his work to signify24 unfailingly leads to the problem of the ends and the means, in other words, to the confrontation between form and function of a work of art.25 Both determine the genre, and this, in turn, is the result of both. In the Gregorian repertoire,26 works labelled as “responsory” are determined by their structure and function. Using biblical, hagiographic, and homiletic texts, the structure follows a responsory–verse–abbreviated responsory pattern. The function of the responsories is to comment on the preceding text, the lectio or lesson. According to one seventeenthcentury critic, the responsories are “echoes of the learning that is conveyed to us in the lessons [and hence] they appropriated this name … [they] are given to us in brief clauses, just to let us taste the cream of their content.”27 Perhaps that was the reason why in the Gregorian repertoire responsories were “the most important chants in the context of musical development”28 and one of the genres of the Divine Office that began using polyphony in the sixteenth century. That responsories have been esteemed since the Middle Ages for their abundance and diversity is no
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coincidence:29 it was one of the few liturgical genres in which experi mentation was possible. In the structure of the matins, the grand responsories (or extensive responsories) hold a privileged position in terms of the complex cognitive process experienced by the participants of the ritual. After the introductory invocation, the invitatorium, and hymn, each one of the three nocturnes begins with a group of three psalms framed by their respective antiphons. Their function is to prepare the congregation for the fundamental part of the service: the lessons and their responsories. The lectio is important in content and magnitude: the essence of the celebration is found within this text as a direct reference, an analogy, or a moral example. A responsory follows each lectio and has the function of glossing, “emotionalizing,” or reflecting on the content of the reading. The third responsory closes each of the nocturnes; the ninth responsory is often replaced by a thanksgiving, or Te deum. An extracted and synthetized outline30 of this service for a feast day in a cathedral (Ordo cathedralis) appears below: MATINS Prayers in silence
Lesson, responsories (3)
Invocation, invitatorium, hymn
THIRD NOCTURNE
FIRST NOCTURNE
Antiphon, psalm, antiphon (3)
Antiphon, psalm, antiphon (3)
31
Verse, reply, prayer
Verse, reply, prayer
Lesson, responsories (2 or 3)
Lesson, responsories (3)
Te Deum (in place of the 9th responsory)
SECOND NOCTURNE
Verse, prayer, farewell
Antiphon, psalm, antiphon (3) Verse, reply, prayer
In the repertoire of Gregorian chant, the first two responsories of each nocturne usually have the following structure: R (a, *b) – V – R (*b). In the last responsory of each nocturne (third and sixth), the minor doxology (Gloria Patri) is placed in between, resulting in the following pattern: R (a, *b) – V – R (*b) – G – R (*b) R (a, *b).32 Each of Jerusalem’s eight responsories for the feast of Saint Joseph perfectly fulfils the liturgical function of the genre. In addition, the eight small works create an underlying musical structure that rounds up each nocturne and the whole of the service. Notwithstanding the discrete and professional input of another hand,33 Jerusalem succeeded in working out the entire composition of each responsory as well as indicating its tempo and instrumentation, using
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the idiomatic resources of the stylo concertato, which combines the immovable liturgical textual structure with different musical structures. Jerusalem’s use of different musical forms within the responsory is ingenious and shows his command of Neapolitan technology. In doing so, the responsory becomes a meta-genre34 that “shelters”35 other genres like the cantada and the da capo aria. The permeability of a liturgical genre to stylistic musical innovations must be emphasized vis-à-vis the invariable dogmatic core of liturgical texts. Jerusalem’s responsories for Saint Joseph belong to a type that I designate “concerted responsory,” in opposition to “monodic responsory” or “polyphonic responsory.” Jerusalem’s Eight Responsories for the Maitines de San José The prime purpose of the responsories composed by Jerusalem for the feast of Saint Joseph was to celebrate in the cathedral of Mexico City the matins of the feast with freshly written music for the most important musical parts of that service. While these compositions required a certain level of vocal and instrumental skill, they were not “concerts,” they were liturgical music to be performed interwoven with chant, psalm intonations and prayers. The “compositional” skills deployed by Jerusalem in the idiomatic writing for violins, voices, recorders, or organ, favouring one or another in each responsory according to the intention of the text, was the least that could be expected from a chapelmaster trained in Naples. Those were the musical resources available to him to comply with the ultimate purpose: to turn the responsories into the “echoes of the learning that is conveyed to us in the lessons, … the cream of their content.” That these methods were considered unique or exceptional speaks of the extremely limited musical context in New Spain.36 There is evidence – though scant – that Jerusalem first wrote what has been catalogued as a series of responsories, Responsorios para el Patrocinio de San José,37 for the celebration of Joseph as Patron of the Universal Church, to be held on the third Sunday after Easter,38 and later, the responsories of the juego for the 19 March celebration of Joseph, the husband of Mary. I shall briefly discuss this second collection.39 Given the physical characteristics of the documents, it is evident that the collection had been assembled over several years.40 Attempting to date either the period or the year when these eight works were composed is difficult, given the sporadic and case-by-case dating of the extant originals and copies in the cathedral’s music archive. There are differences in the handwriting and in content. The papers for the second and fifth responsories are “loose,” and that is how they are referred to in the score (draft), as well as in some of the parts.41 On the title page of the organ part of the seventh responsory, a “1764” appears. However, on the
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right-hand margin of the last folio of the score for the second responsory there is a note that says, “This responsory is taken from the first [responsory] of Saint Joseph’s patronage”; on the accompaniment cover page of this other collection of responsories, the year “1757” is written.42 Each responsory “composed” by Jerusalem has distinctive features. Nevertheless, there are three aspects shared by all of them. One aspect is the opening strategy, which is instrumental. The responsories that embrace a cantada (3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th) use a static harmony on the degrees I, IV, and V of the scale. Their structure, do-mi-sol or sol-mi-do, follows the operatic tradition started by Claudio Monteverdi in the instrumental introduction of his Orfeo: the rhetorical function as an exordium of these opening sections seems clear. Another common feature is the managing of voice and instruments in stylo concertato. The third feature, remarkable indeed, is the preservation of the exact verbal order of the liturgical text, faithfully obeying the repetition of the pressa and the inclusion of the short doxology in each nocturne’s last responsory. The texts of the first three responsories – both the responsory body and the verse – as well as their preceding lessons are taken from the chapters of Genesis dedicated to the story of Joseph. The remaining five lessons contain sermons by Saint Bernard and Saint Jerome, while the responsories that include comments on the texts are taken from the gospels of Luke and Matthew in which Joseph is mentioned. As said before, Jerusalem preserved the structure of the liturgical text, something that refined European courtiers would have undoubtedly recognized and valued. He did so with great ease, using a learned replacement-insertion schemata technology. In the compositional juggling of these responsories the dialectic mode of a genre embracing another genre, contributing to the uniqueness and specific nature of a work, is revealed. In this case we have a collection of eight responsories, of which five are cantadas, one is a da capo aria, and two preserve the structure of the liturgical responsory where the musical structure runs parallel to the textual structure: the responsory embraces a responsory, so to speak. In order to have a better understanding of this set of responsories, I include two figures. Figure 9.1 provides a brief catalogue entry for each responsory. The abbreviations used to indicate parts, key, and time signatures are those established by RISM.43 In figure 9.2, using very simple graphic resources, I show how the musical structure is integrated within the structure of the liturgical text. In Jerusalem’s matins, the features and expressive resources of the globalized galant style infiltrated responsory music, though not its function, texts, or the typical structure of the liturgical genre. The re-signification of the matins as concert pieces, although understandable today, elides the liturgical sound construction for which these works were written.
Figure 9.1. Textual sources and catalogue entries of the responsories for Saint Joseph’s Matins by Ignacio de Jerusalem
Figure 9.2. Text and music structural sections of the responsories for Saint Joseph’s Matins by Ignacio de Jerusalem
Neapolitan Technology and Galant Style in a Novohispano Context 219
Even more, equating a matins service to an opera disregards the essence, implications, and restrictions of Catholic liturgy. The concepts of genre and meta-genre used here account for the intrinsic features of the works as well as the extrinsic factors such as their particular social function. As noted, the work’s individuality exists in a dialectical relationship between tradition and originality, universality and uniqueness, pattern and deflection. Genre behaves as a “contract” between the author and the target receivers, a contract whose validity is subject to circumstances, and thereby subject to breach or transgression.44 The inferential analysis method in which “description and explanation are interwoven,” proposed by Michael Baxandall for the study of visual arts,45 is also useful for the study of music since it fosters “the reconstruction of webs in the entangled relations that are present” in a given work,46 as well as the analysis of technological solutions and aesthetic statements that are thereby perceptible. I also find it useful for discussing certain terms such as “sacred,” “profane,” or “Baroque,” which are often used insufficiently to categorize musical works. More than a few pictorial and musical works created in New Spain between 1720 and 1780 have been qualified in a compelling way as “Baroque” while the signifying and expressive characteristics of the Baroque coexisted with characteristics of the galant. That a very developed and effective Neapolitan musical technology arrived in New Spain did not ensure its acclimatization and propagation, even under the extremely skilled hands of Jerusalem. Despite the cultural circulation within the Hispanic world, a more nurturing field than New Spain’s cathedrals and its cultural elites would have been necessary for the musical seed brought by the Neapolitan to have sprouted and borne fruit. NOTES 1 Heartz, Music in the European Capitals, 3–65. 2 Gjerdingen, Music in the Galant Style, 6. Some of the concepts that I develop in this section come from this excellent study. 3 Davies, “The Italianized Frontier,” 41–53. 4 Gjerdingen, Music in the Galant Style, 6. 5 Central among these concerns was supporting archbishop Vizarrón’s efforts to obtain from Rome the proclamation of the Virgin of Guadalupe as Mexico City’s patron in 1737, after the 1736 typhus epidemic, and as patron of New Spain in 1746. 6 Between 1739, when Manuel de Sumaya left the position of chapelmaster and 1750, when Jerusalem replaced him, the escoletas (rehearsals and training) of musicians and children were led by Presbyter Domingo Dutra.
220 Lucero Enríquez Rubio He was gradually relieved of this obligation (Ac book 39, f. 227v, 30 April 1748). For abbreviation see footnote 10. 7 Enríquez, “Mentalidad y praxis artística.” 8 The full payroll is included in two works: González Obregón, México Viejo, 345–6, and Gembero Ustárroz, “Migraciones,” 37. Gembero Ustárroz notes the facilities granted to the foreign musicians, given the urgency to send them to America to perform (34). 9 Fernández de la Cuesta, Historia de la música española, 234. 10 See in the Chapter Archive of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Mexico (Archivo del Cabildo Catedral Metropolitano de México), from now on referred to as ACCMM, the records of the chapter (Actas de cabildo), from now on referred to as Ac (book 05, ff. 177–8v, 26 January 1610, and f. 232v, 29 April 1611). There is an error in the note that is added to the last one mentioned regarding the schedule of the matins service. All translations from these archives are mine. 11 Ac, book 39, f. 227, 30 April 1748. 12 On 13 May 1731 he was consecrated archbishop of Mexico, a position he held until his death on 25 January 1747. Rubio Mañé, El Virreinato, 4: 183–94, 233. 13 Ac, book 39, f. 219, 9 April 1748. 14 Ac, book 39, f. 227, 30 April 1748. 15 Canonjías (also in the ACCMM), book 1, ff. 97–133v. See also Zamora and Alfaro, “El examen de oposición,” 12–23. The issue can be found at www .musicat.unam.mx/publicaciones. 16 For documentary information obtained by Luisa Cosi in the archives of Lecce see Stevenson, “Ignacio Jerusalem.” 17 Canonjías, ff. 100–3. 18 González Obregón, México Viejo, 346. The author cites manuscript notes by Fernando Orozco y Berra, who, in turn, cites minutes from the local government. 19 For this change and its repercussions in Portugal, see Torrente, “Misturadas de castelhanadas,” 193–235. Torrente does not document his affirmation that Mexico City’s cathedral was the first to follow this initiative in 1757 (234). In fact, this happened much earlier, at least four years before as we learn from the quotation’s date. For the long-standing interest in villancicos see the article by Aurelio Tello in this volume. 20 Juego is a specific type of collection of liturgical works of different genres (sometimes composed by different authors) put together for matins or for vespers for a given feast day (Christmas, feasts of Saint Peter, the Assumption, etc.). In the case of matins, the juego includes an invitatorium, a hymn, and at least five responsories. 21 Ac, book 38, ff. 106–106v, 15 July 1746. 22 Gombrich, The Uses of Images, 5. 23 Ibid., 14.
Neapolitan Technology and Galant Style in a Novohispano Context 221 4 Gombrich, Imágenes simbólicas, 4. 2 25 Gombrich, The Uses of Images, 14. 26 The liturgical chant of the Catholic Church, practised, compiled, and organized throughout the first ten centuries of the Christian era, is usually called “Gregorian chant” because of its legendary association with Pope Gregory I (ca. 540–604). The designation was useful when a work could neither be identified as belonging to a given time period and place nor attributed to a person. In this sense, “a legendary label is as good as any other.” Hiley, Western Plainchant, 513. This monodic liturgical chant also is referred to as “canto llano.” The “canto llano” in the choir books of the novohispano cathedrals appears in most cases to be the fruit of the Counter-Reformation. 27 In Juan Nieto’s Manogito de flores, cuya fragancia descifra los misterios de la Missa y Oficio Divino, published in 1760 (quoted in Davies, “The Italianized Frontier,” 90). 28 Asensio, El canto gregoriano, 283. 29 Hiley, Western Plainchant, 69–76. 30 Ibid., 25–7; Fernández de la Cuesta, Historia de la música, 233–8; Asensio, El canto gregoriano, 262–72. 31 An antiphon preceded and concluded the singing of a psalm. 32 R = Responsory body; a = first part of the responsory; *b = second part. The asterisk indicates where the repetition or pressa will be inserted. The repetition is often called the refrain (or estribillo). Given that estribillo is used for the repeating sections in villancicos, I prefer the term pressa. V = Verse; G = Gloria Patri. 33 Dianne Lehmann Goldman has been working on the presence of a “second hand” in some of Jerusalem’s responsories. The “second hand” was Antonio Juanas (c. 1762–c.1821), chapelmaster at Mexico City’s cathedral between 1791 and 1815. According to Goldman, and based on paleographic and musical arguments, Juanas wrote the contrafacta (changing the text, adding oboes and horns, and at times changing the tonality and even small portions of the music), in at least seventeen works originally attributed solely to Jerusalem. See Goldman, “Antonio Juanas,” 137–61. 34 A concept proposed by Bernardo Illari to explain the flexibility of a genre like the villancico. See Illari, “The Popular, the Sacred,” 409–40. Illari’s proposal is based on Samson, “Chopin and Genre,” 213–31, and Kallberg, “The Rhetoric of Genre,” 238–61. 35 Samson, “Chopin and Genre,” 224. 36 See Roubina, El responsorio “Omnes Moriemini …” de Ignacio Jerusalem. 37 A0439, Archivo de música (also in the ACCMM). Although I have not found documentary evidence that Jerusalem was commissioned and paid to compose precisely these responsories with Vizarrón’s endowment (1747–8), it can reasonably be supported, but not here. Suffice is to say that in 1747 Jerusalem’s name already appeared as “composer musician of this holy church.” Ac book 39, f. 86v, 31 May 1747.
222 Lucero Enríquez Rubio 38 José de Torres y Vergara, one of the two founding canons of the “Colegio de Infantes” of the cathedral of Mexico City, sponsored the patronage (Ac book 28, ff. 159v–60, 17 September 1715). In 1747, Archbishop Vizarrón also endowed this celebration (Ac book 39, f. 219, 9 April 1748). The establishment of Saint Joseph as the patron saint of the novohispano church took place in 1555. Concilios provinciales Primero y Segundo, 67. 39 Maitines de San José, Archivo de música (also in the ACCMM), A0508a. For extensive mention on this juego, see Enríquez et al., Catálogo de Obras de Música del Archivo del Cabildo Catedral Metropolitano de México, 152–8. 40 For details on how juegos were put together, see Enríquez, “El servicio de maitines,” in Enríquez et al., Catálogo de Obras de Música. 41 Responsories 2nd (Archivo de música, A0508a.04), 5th (Archivo de música, A0508a.07), and 8th (Archivo de música, A0508a.10) are contrafacta (same music, different text and added instruments) of other works by Jerusalem (Archivo de música, A0439.01, A0505.03, and A1842, respectively). Responsories 2nd and 5th, in general, present very interesting case studies. The “second hand” of Juanas, according to Goldman’s hypothesis, would be present in the 2nd, 5th, and 8th of the responsories herein covered. This requires further study. 42 See note 37. 43 Répertoire International des Sources Musicales. S = soprano; A = alto; T = tenor; B = bass; org = organ; acomp = instrumental bass with or without figures; vl = violin; vc = violoncello; fl.picc = recorder; ob = oboe; cor = French horn; timp = timpani. 44 Samson, “Chopin and Genre,” 213–31. 45 Baxandall, Modelos de intención, 49–50. 46 Bourdieu, La distinción, 105. WORKS CITED Actas de cabildo. Archivo del Cabildo Catedral Metropolitano de México. Archivo de música. Archivo del Cabildo Catedral Metropolitano de México. Asensio, Juan Carlos. El canto gregoriano. Madrid: Alianza, 2003. Ashley, Kathleen. “Art in Ritual Context: Introduction.” Journal of Ritual Studies 6, no. 1 (1992): 1–11. Baxandall, Michael. Modelos de intención. Translated by Carmen Bernárdez Sanchos. Madrid: Hermann Blume Central de Distribuciones, 1989. La Biblia Vulgata Latina, traducida en español y anotada conforme al sentido de los padres y expositores católicos. Madrid: Benito Cano, 1794. Bourdieu, Pierre. La distinción: Criterio y bases sociales del gusto. Translated by Ma. del Carmen Ruiz de Elvira. Madrid: Taurus, 1988. Breviarium Romanum Ex Decreto Sacrosancti Concilii Tridentini Restitutum. Turonibus. Canonjías. Archivo del Cabildo Catedral Metropolitano de México. Concilios provinciales Primero y Segundo … Mexico City: José Antonio de Hogal, 1769.
Neapolitan Technology and Galant Style in a Novohispano Context 223 Davies, Drew Edward. “The Italianized Frontier: Music at Durango Cathedral, Español Culture, and Aesthetics of Devotion.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2006. Enríquez, Lucero, ed. Harmonia Mundi: Los instrumentos sonoros en Iberoamérica, siglos XVI al XIX. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2009. – “Mentalidad y praxis artística: Dos casos novohispanos para estudio.” Revista de Musicología. 33, nos. 1–2 (2010): 209–22. –, ed. De música y cultura en la Nueva España y el México Independiente: Testimonios de innovación y pervivencia. Vol. II. Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas – Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2017. – “El servicio de maitines en la Catedral de México: Apuntes de historia y liturgia.” In Enríquez et al., eds., Catálogo de Obras de Música del Archivo del Cabildo Catedral Metropolitano de México, Vol. III, 33–57. Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas – Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2019. Enríquez, Lucero, Drew Edward Davies, Analía Cherñavsky, and Carolina Sacristán, eds., Catálogo de Obras de Música del Archivo del Cabildo Catedral Metropolitano de México. Vol. III. Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas – Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2019. Fernández de la Cuesta, Ismael. Historia de la música española: Desde los orígenes hasta el “ars nova.” Madrid: Alianza, 2004. Gembero Ustárroz, María. “Migraciones de músicos entre España y América (siglos XVI– XVIII): Estudio preliminar.” In Gembero Ustárroz and Emilio Ros-Fábregas, eds., La música y el Atlántico: Relaciones musicales entre España y Latinoamérica, 17–58. Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2007. Gjerdingen, Robert O. Music in the Galant Style. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Goldman, Dianne Lehmann. “Antonio Juanas como vínculo entre pasado y presente visto a través de los responsorios de la Catedral de México.” In Enríquez, De música y cultura en la Nueva España, 137–61. Gombrich, Ernst H. The Uses of Images: Studies in the Social Function of Art and Visual Communication. London: Phaidon, 2000. – Imágenes simbólicas: Estudios sobre el arte del Renacimiento. Translated by Remigio Gómez Díaz. Madrid: Debate, 2001. González Obregón, Luis. México Viejo. Mexico City: Porrúa, 1976 [1900]. Heartz, Daniel. Music in the European Capitals. The Galant Style: 1720–1780. New York: Norton, 2003. Hiley, David. Western Plainchant. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Illari, Bernardo. “The Popular, the Sacred, the Colonial and the Local.” In Tess Knighton and Álvaro Torente, eds., Devotional Music in the Iberian World, 1450–1800, 409–40. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2007. Kallberg, Jeffrey. “The Rhetoric of Genre: Chopin’s Nocturne in G Minor.” 19th-Century Music. 11, no. 3 (Spring 1988): 238–61.
224 Lucero Enríquez Rubio Maitines de San José. 1764, 1766, 1768. Archivo de música, A0508a. Archivo del Cabildo Catedral Metropolitano de México. Nocturnale Romanum: Antiphonale Sacrosanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Pro Nocturnis Horis. Heidelberg: Editio Princeps, 2002. Obra pía. Archivo del Cabildo Catedral Metropolitano de México. Responsorios para el Patrocinio de San José, 1757. Archivo de música, A0439. Archivo del Cabildo Catedral Metropolitano de México. Roubina, Evguenia. El responsorio “Omnes Moriemini …” de Ignacio Jerusalem. Mexico City: Escuela Nacional de Música – Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2004. Rubio Mañé, José Ignacio. El Virreinato. Vol. IV. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México – Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, 2005. Samson, Jim. “Chopin and Genre.” Music Analysis 8, no. 3 (1989): 213–31. Stevenson, Robert. “Ignacio Jerusalem (1707–1769): Italian Parvenu in Eighteenth-Century Mexico.” Inter-American Music Review 16, no. 1 (1997): 57–61. Torrente, Álvaro. “‘Misturadas de castelhanadas com o oficio divino’: La reforma de los maitines de Navidad y Reyes en el siglo XVIII.” In Miguel Ángel Marín, ed., La ópera en el templo: Estudios sobre el compositor Francisco Javier García Fajer, 193–235. Logroño, Spain: Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, 2010. Zamora, Fernando, and Jesús Alfaro. “El examen de oposición de Ignacio de Jerusalem y Stella.” Cuadernos del Seminario Nacional de Música en la Nueva España y el México Independiente 1 (December 2006): 12–23.
10 The Resonance of Sor Juana’s Villancicos in Spanish Cathedral Archives aurelio tello / translated by janice shewey
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and the Novohispano Baroque Villancico The corpus of villancicos, a repertoire of popular-style religious songs, was relevant only in the Ibero-American world. Baroque villancicos were cultivated throughout the Iberian peninsula as well as in the territories belonging to the Spanish crown in the Americas and in the Philippines. Villancicos were sung during matins, at the time normally reserved for the Latin responsories following the readings of each one of the nocturnes. However, this did not mean that responsories were no longer sung. By the seventeenth century, villancicos were the only songs in the vernacular that were included in religious ceremonies conducted in Latin. In the viceroyalties and audiencias (high courts) of the New World, celebrations by local cults in honour of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico, Saint Rose of Lima, the Virgin of Copacabana in the Audiencia de Charcas, and the Virgin of the Topo, in Santa Fe de Bogotá, were added to the traditional feasts of Christmas and Corpus Christi, to Marian feasts such as those of the Immaculate Conception, Annunciation, Purification, Nativity, and Assumption, as well as to the celebrations of prominent saints such as Peter, Matthew, Ildephonsus, and Lawrence. A sizeable repertoire of lyrics and music for these varied festivities emerged from the close collaboration of the villanciquero, the poet who authored texts for villancicos, and the chapel master. By authoring villancicos, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648–1695), the Tenth Muse, participated in this custom of contributing texts that were set to music by chapel masters. She wrote villancicos at the express wish of the church, either at the request of the church council or in association with a composer responsible for supplying villancicos for a particular festivity. Like many of her contemporaries, Sor Juana was a villanciquera, one who wrote lyrics that would be expressed through song.
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When Sor Juana started writing lyrics for villancicos around 1676, the genre and the tradition of using it during matins were solidly established. Sor Juana’s villancicos did not deviate from the tradition established by poets such as Lope de Vega, Luis de Góngora, José de Valdivielso, and Alonso de Ledesma, or those closer to her time, including Manuel de León Marchante and José Pérez de Montoro. As a whole, the villancicos of the seventeenth century, and even those of the eighteenth century, were the vehicle through which the church would spread a set of religious ideas to a mainly illiterate society, one that needed to be reminded of principles of faith, stories, and events that would affirm their belief in a religion practised throughout the Spanish empire. Furthermore, this needed to be achieved using the secular language; in much of Spanish society, Latin was a dead language, while in the Indigenous and black communities it was culturally foreign. Sor Juana in Peninsular Cathedrals Among the small number of verses for villancicos from New Spain that were performed in the Iberian peninsula, only those of Sor Juana are documented. There is no evidence that the works of other villanciquero poets such as Simón Esteban Beltrán de Alzate, Lorenzo Antonio González de la Sancha, or Pedro Muñoz de Castro were sung in Spain or Portugal. In 1995, after examining catalogues of Spanish cathedral archives and then conducting an exhaustive study of lyrics for villancicos in the Cervantes Room of the National Library of Spain, I was able to establish an inventory of works composed by peninsular chapel masters for texts written by or attributed to Sor Juana. In June of 2009, with support from Western University in Ontario, Canada, and within the framework of the Hispanic Baroque project, I visited various Spanish archives and collected the manuscripts of the following villancicos: 1) “Cómo se debe venir a la mesa del altar” (How One Must Come to the Altar Table), for soprano and tenor duet with accompaniment. Anonymous, Cathedral of Cuenca. 2) “El alcalde de Belén” (The Mayor of Bethlehem), for solo tenor, four-voice choir, violins, horns, and continuo. Anonymous, Cathedral of Ávila. 3) “Escuchad dos sacristanes” (“Listen to Two Sacristans”), for three voices, violins, and continuo, set to music by Francisco Morera in the Cathedral of Orihuela. 4) “Escuchen dos sacristanes,” villancico “in dialogue, for Christmas, in jest”1 for two sopranos and accompaniment, by Miguel Gómez Camargo, chapel master of the Cathedral of Valladolid.
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5) “Escuchen dos sacristanes,” by Antonio Soler, Musical Archive of the Monastery of San Lorenzo at the Escorial. 6) “Hoy que el mayor de los Reyes” (Today That the Greatest of Kings), for 12 voices and continuo (harp and organ), by Antonio Teodoro Ortells, Cathedral of Valencia. The copy is from 1726, but the year of its composition is unknown. 7) “Hoy que el mayor de los Reyes,” for 12 voices, violins, horns, and continuo, by José Pradas Gallén, Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. 8) “Los que tienen hambre vengan y hallarán” (Come the Hungry and You Shall Find), for soprano and tenor duet with accompaniment. Anonymous, Cathedral of Cuenca. 9) “Los que tienen hambre vengan y hallarán,” by Melchor López Jiménez, Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. 10) “Pues mi Dios ha nacido a penar” (Well My God Has Been Born to Suffer), for eight voices, by Miguel Gómez Camargo, Cathedral of Valladolid, 1679. 11) “Si Dios se contiene en el Sacramento” (If God Is Contained in the Sacrament), for alto and accompaniment, by Matías Juan Veana, Cathedral of Segovia. 12) “Si Dios se contiene en el Sacramento,” for two violins, two oboes, two horns in D, requisite first choir for four voices, and “ripieno or non-requisite” second choir, and continuo, by Melchor López Jiménez, Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, 1800. In this essay, I focus on the way in which peninsular composers addressed the following three villancicos from Sor Juana’s Letras que se cantaron en 1690 en la dedicación del templo de las monjas de San Bernardo (Verses Sung in 1690 in Dedication to the Church of the Nuns of Saint Bernard): the anonymously written “Cómo se debe venir a la mesa del altar,” López Jiménez’ “Los que tienen hambre vengan y hallarán,” and his “Si Dios se contiene en el Sacramento.” These verses came to life in response to a request to Sor Juana, near the time when she wrote the Carta Atenagórica (Athenagoric Letter), to provide lyrics for the dedication of the church of the Conceptionist nuns of Saint Bernard. Having been performed in Mexico City in 1690 during these festivities, the texts appeared in the Segundo volumen de las obras de Sóror Juana Inés de la Cruz (Second Volume of the Works of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz) in mid-1692 in Seville and were reprinted in Barcelona in 1693. These Letras consist of a set of 32 villancicos, entitled Letras sagradas, en la celebridad de la dedicación de la Iglesia del insigne Convento de Monjas Bernardas de la Imperial Ciudad de México (Sacred Verses, in Celebration of the Dedication of the
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Church of the Distinguished Bernardine Nuns of the Imperial City of Mexico). As Margo Glantz points out, various topics – or obsessions, as the Mexican scholar calls them – addressed by Sor Juana in other texts are present here: a) The theme of the finezas, or gifts, of Christ; b) The Eucharist, also very important for the Carta Atenagórica and her religious play El Divino Narciso (The Divine Narcissus); and c) An interpretation of Saint Paul’s words “Mulieres in Eclesiis taceant,” contrary to that of Paulinist commentators, which asserts that some women, including herself, could venture into the domain of knowledge, and even that of the priesthood, an idea that also appears in the Carta Atenagórica and in her Respuesta a sor Filotea (Response to Sor Filotea). In addition, Sor Juana is credited with the following: d) She increases the wealth of texts on Marian devotion; e) She finds a balance between the physical church or temple and the spiritual one, and the work of art that occupies a space between them (the first 18 lines refer to the temple); f) She traces a hagiographic and iconic representation of the life of Saint Bernard, “founder of convents, powerful critic of Abelard, of popes and bishops, promoter of the construction of Cistercian convents, preacher and great wordsmith, depicted in these villancicos as a sweet nursling”;2 g) She manifests her agreement with the Bernardian interpretation of the Song of Songs presenting the church as the Bride of Christ; h) She emphasizes the importance that Bernard, the “Mellifluous Doctor,” assigned to language, calling it “a boundless lyrical blossoming;”3 i) She contributes to the glorification of the Holy Sacrament, given that a substantial number of verses are dedicated to the Corpus Christi and its symbols – the host, bread, and wine –expressed through metaphors and allegories (this is alluded to by Glantz). The entire set of verses is marked by a guiding principle: that of the sublime fabric of the church. Glantz expounds: The spiritual temple where the body of Christ lies is, as a material construc tion, a temple made of stone. Relying on scripture, Sor Juana depicts perfectly
Sor Juana’s Villancicos in Spanish Cathedral Archives 229 orthodox poetic images and metaphors. Simultaneously signifying the construction materials needed for building a church like the one celebrated by her verses, she alludes to Christ as the angular stone of the church and also as the consecrated bread in the Eucharistic sacrament, sweet nourishment of redemption. And when talking about sweetness, “Bernard the Mellifluous” appears, in whom the milk and honey symbolically join, a reiterated image from the Bible, highly metaphorized and eroticized in the Song of Songs, object of some of the Cistercian’s sermons. The nun intertwines her themes as in a symphony in which each of the songs alternately addresses, as a variation of the main themes, the motifs, images, and theological digressions, those digressions that a preacher had to organize and select from sacred texts (“What things I could say/drifting from one text to the other/searching for a connection?”).4 As such, the verses in her set of villancicos are also an edifice, a “fabric” of words perfectly based on restraint and on balance with the harmonic order of divine creation:
Esta es la casa de Dios, This is the house of God, firmemente edificada firmly built sobre columnas a quienes on columns that are sustentan eternas basas. sustained by eternal pedestals. ¡Esta es la casa! This is the house! (Villancico XIII, vv. 12–16, p. 194).5 In this complicated metaphor, the sonorous quality of the verses becomes apparent. Although it is unknown if these words had been set to music in 1690, their musical quality represents the other supporting column of the metaphor. Not only are lyrics a “sublime fabric,” whose achievement is similar to the construction of the stone church, the latter is a metaphor for the spiritual temple, itself synonymous with precision, order, and truth, that is, with beauty. Likewise, the constructions of sounds are also a “sublime fabric,” born from the hand of architects of sound, the composers or chapel masters that dressed these verses with the perfection, order, and beauty of sonorous relationships, of music. In this lies the main idea of my study: to discover the manner in which several of Sor Juana’s verses for the dedication of the church for the nuns of Saint Bernard were set to music by different composers, specifically those from the Iberian peninsula, as hers were some of the few villancicos composed in the New World that were known, arranged musically, and disseminated throughout several cathedrals of Iberia.
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“Cómo se debe venir a la mesa del altar” (Anonymous) This villancico is found alongside the anonymous Los que tienen hambre, vengan y hallarán. The text is that of Villancico XXII of the series written by Sor Juana for the dedication of the church of the Conceptionist convent of Saint Bernard in 1690;6 these villancicos were likely sung in the nine days of solemn celebration and the eight days that took place immediately afterwards. Estribillo
Refrain
1. ¿Cómo se debe venir a la Mesa del Altar? 2. Yo digo que han de llorar. 3. Yo digo que han de reír. 1. En tan contrario sentir, necesitáis de probar por qué, el uno, han de llorar; por qué, el otro, han de reír. ¿Cómo se debe venir a la Mesa del Altar?
1. How must one come to the Altar Table? 2. I say, one shall come weeping. 3. I say, one shall come laughing. 1. With such opposing sentiments, you need to prove Why one shall come weeping; why the other shall come laughing. How must one come to the Altar Table?
Coplas
Coplas
2. Tiene el llanto tal valor en su raudal doloroso, que nos lava, y poderoso justifica al pecador: luego el llanto es el mejor para llegar al Altar. ¡Yo digo que han de llorar!
2. Tears have such worth in their painful torrent, that they cleanse us, and powerfully they absolve the sinner: and so, tears are more favourable for coming to the Altar. I say, one shall come weeping!
3. Aunque el dolor le preceda, dice la Sabiduría que del Señor en el día la alegría le suceda, porque nuevo gozo pueda tanta ventura aplaudir. ¡Yo digo que han de reír!
3. Though pain precedes joy, the Word of God says that elation should befall one on the day of the Lord, and jubilation anew shall welcome such good fortune. I say, one shall come laughing!
2. El llegarnos con temor, es medio más conveniente para poder dignamente recibir tan gran favor,
2. To approach with trepidation is the most suitable manner to solemnly receive such exalted favour,
Sor Juana’s Villancicos in Spanish Cathedral Archives 231 y permanente el dolor en el alma debe estar. ¡Yo digo que han de llorar!
thus, the soul must dwell in perpetual suffering. I say, one shall come weeping!
3. Si ya en otro Sacramento se consiguió la pureza, para festejar la Mesa es necesario el contento, pues también merece atento agradecer y servir. ¡Yo digo que han de reír!
3. If in some other Sacrament pureness has been attained, joy is essential to honour the Table, thusly, giving thanks and serving also merit regard. I say, one shall come laughing!
Coro.¿Cómo se debe venir a la Mesa del Altar? ¡Yo digo que han de llorar! ¡Yo digo que han de reír! (Villancico XXII, Méndez Plancarte, p. 205–6).
Chorus. How must one come to the Altar Table? I say, one shall come weeping! I say, one shall come laughing!
As with other villancicos included in the Letras para la Consagración (Verses for the Dedication), this one refers to Eucharistic themes, and at Cuenca seems intended to be sung at a Corpus Christi celebration, the simple reason being that the consecration of the church of the nuns of Saint Bernard occurred on or after 24 June 1690. June is the month in which the Holy Sacrament is displayed and carried in procession. Josefina Muriel points out that the consecratory celebrations started on the eighteenth of that month with the blessing of the church. Six days later the dedication took place in the names of the Virgin of Guadalupe and Saint Bernard. Nine days of festivities followed. Muriel affirms that “the beautiful verses written by Sor Juana were read,”7 but I believe that these verses were meant to be set to music. The publication of the Segundo volumen de las obras de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in Madrid by Tomás López de Haro in 1692, and its reprint in Barcelona in 1693, do not specify that these verses were intended to be sung. However, I believe Alfonso Méndez Plancarte published them as “Other Sacred Verses for Song” with good reason. These are villancicos, similar in every way to what Sor Juana usually produced for the cathedrals of Mexico City and Puebla (and Oaxaca in 1691). Although, as far as we know, no one has provided written evidence of these verses in the year 1690, everything leads us to assume that they were sung, if not by the nun’s choir, perhaps by the cathedral’s choir, which in that year was under the direction of Antonio de Salazar. In any case, several of these villancicos went beyond the borders of New Spain and were sung in churches in Spain, Guatemala, and the Audiencia de Charcas.
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Sara Poot Herrera refers to Sor Juana’s preference for using the romance (ballad) in her poetry.8 Although it is true that none of the sets of villancicos by Sor Juana are dedicated to the Corpus Christi celebration, this was the occasion in which she was able to address that feast. The first eighteen villancicos, which could easily make up a couple of sets of villancicos for morning prayers (perhaps sung in two series of nine),9 refer to the Temple as a place inhabited by God, but also as a metaphor for faith: Templo material, Señor, os dedica quien intenta que en el templo de su pecho tengáis perenne asistencia. ¡Así sea, como el alma lo desea! (Villancico V, vv. 1–6, p. 186)
Material temple, God, dedicates to you he who attempts that in the temple of his breast you have eternal presence. Let it be thus, as the soul desires!
From Villancico XIX on, the predominant theme is the Holy Sacrament, which continues to Villancico XXV. I agree with Poot Herrera’s assessment of these verses: “Sor Juana addresses the subject of the temple – physical and spiritual – the divine word, the incarnate Word present in the Sacrament, in the Eucharist, in the Host. The poetic and religious knowledge of the writer is prodigiously transformed into lyrics on sacred themes of great theological importance.”10 In the Cuenca manuscript, the first page of “Cómo se debe venir a la mesa del altar” carries a heading that says “Soprano Duo to the Holy Sacrament.”11 It consists of the following: – A recitativo secco. This corresponds to the first part of the refrain, sung separately by each voice, following the dialogue laid out by the text. The voices join only in the final question with a brief, double-voiced phrase. – An arietta that corresponds to the coplas, or four-line verses, sung in alternating form by the soprano and tenor, beginning with the male voice. In the text, Sor Juana includes three characters: one that asks and two that respond; characters 2 and 3 then alternate coplas and all conclude in unison with a reminiscence of the refrain. In the Cuenca manuscript,
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this chorus does not have its own part; rather, it appears with the ritornello in the refrain of the piece: 1. ¿Cómo se debe venir a la Mesa del Altar? 2. Yo digo que han de llorar. 3. Yo digo que han de reír. Therefore, the soprano takes on roles 1 and 3 (fig. 10.1).
Figure 10.1. Ritornello, anonymous, Cómo se debe venir a la mesa del altar
The continuation of the villancico (character 1) is assumed by the tenor, leaving the strange sensation that the roles have been changed. But the composer, perhaps because the text that he knew had already established this or because he decided to introduce a variation, reduces the action to two characters: Sor Juana’s version Cuenca version 1. With such opposing sentiments 1. With such opposing sentiments you need to prove let us both prove why one shall come weeping; why one shall come weeping; why the other shall come laughing? why the other shall come laughing? How must one come to the Altar Both. How must one come Table?12 to the Altar Table?13
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In finalizing the refrain, Sor Juana assigns the last question to the first character rather than to all the characters as a whole. However, the composer’s solution seems appropriate to me; having joined the voices together, he provides a convincing ending by concluding with a choral refrain (fig. 10.2).
Figure 10.2. Refrain, anonymous, Cómo se debe venir a la mesa del altar
Without an intervening pause, the coplas enter immediately. What stands out is their different metre: a ternary rhythmic structure for the tenor (who sings coplas 1 and 3) and a binary one for the soprano (who sings coplas 2 and 4). There is also a difference in the accompaniment line: for the tenor the accompaniment is very melodic, practically adding a second voice to the vocal line, while for the soprano there is only a constant rhythmic beat over the notes for each chord. The tenor’s copla becomes more dramatic and the soprano’s recedes into a more intimate expression. With a virtuoso air, the tenor’s part includes two ornamental passages with notes of very short duration. This suggests that the average cadence for this villancico is lento and as such, the sustained tempo gives it a certain solemn and processional character (fig. 10.3).
Figure 10.3. Tenor’s coplas, anonymous, Cómo se debe venir a la mesa del altar
The villancico shows Italian influences, such as the tonos humanos (secular, popular songs) or a lo divino (songs in religious style) from the seventeenth century, obvious in the utilization of the bajo continuo (continuous
Sor Juana’s Villancicos in Spanish Cathedral Archives 235
bass) and of the recitativo (recitative) – a novelty in Spanish music of the second half of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century. At the end of the piece is the statement, “Sigue otro” (Another follows), suggesting that the villancico written on the next staff, “Los que tienen hambre, vengan y hallarán,” also by Sor Juana, should be sung. It is assumed that both formed part of a set of villancicos intended for Corpus Christi. Humility and fear, confidence and jubilation, are expressed as characteristics of those who wish to receive communion. The music goes even further by phrasing these feelings through sound. A pity the name of the composer remains unknown. “Los que tienen hambre vengan y hallarán,” by Melchor López Jiménez López Jiménez’ villancico is kept in the Library of the Major Seminary in Santiago de Compostela, in volume 10 of the villancico scores, folio 160–7v. López Jiménez (1759–1822) developed a style far removed from the Baroque; it was more closely aligned with the Enlightenment thought that flooded the Iberian peninsula at the end of the eighteenth century.14 This translated into a preference for the style of Franz Joseph Haydn, owing to its consolidation of the tonal system (the villancico is in D major) and features associated with it: modulation to neighbouring keys, symmetrical phrases of four and eight measures, and “Mannheim style” orchestral techniques (two oboes, two horns, and strings). Sponsored by Prince Charles Phillip, Elector Palatine, the orchestra founded by violinist Johann Stamitz embodied the spirit of mid-eighteenthcentury music, which was characterized by flamboyance, freedom, and expressions of Sturm und Drang (storm and stress). The exponents of this musical style imparted a dramatic sensibility to sonata-type works, concertos, and symphonies. However, these compositions were nonetheless subject to the rigidity of form and the strict organic relationship between the elements that make up a musical work. The Mannheim School created an expressive style that was a cross between Italian and German music, and contributed to the transformation of the orchestra into a new type of ensemble capable of producing a wide range of sounds. This style was characterized by precision in the use of the bow, a dramatic sense of phrasing, the use of dynamic ranges that extended from pianissimo to fortissimo, and the melding of diverse families of instruments into a homogeneous unit. Two of the greatest composers from that era who
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took the Mannheim principles to their maximum level of development were Haydn and, in his short life, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The Mannheim style expanded through diverse musical centres, and the peninsular cathedrals were no exception. Affiliated with this trend were the works of López Jiménez, chapel master of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. López Jiménez composed “Los que tienen hambre vengan y hallarán” for Sor Juana’s text in 1800. The score comprises two violins, two oboes, two horns, two choirs of four voices each, and accompaniment. López Jiménez arranged the composition in two extended movements: the refrain and the coplas, distinguished from each other by their tonalities: D major for the first, D minor for the second. This is a work of great breadth, such that both sections possess distinct characteristics, even though they constitute a musical unit, much like the movements of a cantata or a symphony. However, López Jiménez never abandons certain earlier principles inherent to the villancico: a spirit of debate inspires the work. The villancicos of opposition, competition, disputes, or wagering were already several centuries old. In addition, the composer gives an important role to the ritornello or vuelta, as it was called in the sixteenth century; the terms describe a recurring passage in which the song returns to the refrain. The two choirs also have defined roles: one is a concertino; the other is a ripieno, reminiscent of the Baroque style. An instrumental introduction consisting of 27 measures opens the villancico; elements can be heard in it that the voices present later: elements of sound, some of which are sung further on, and dramatic elements, notably when the violins start as a duet and then the concertino first violin rises to a protagonist role, suggesting the sense of debate that prevails in the piece (fig. 10.4).
Figure 10.4. Violin duet, Melchor López Jiménez, Los que tengan hambre vengan y hallarán
Sor Juana’s Villancicos in Spanish Cathedral Archives 237
The verses of the refrain are presented by the soprano (“Los que tienen hambre …”) and the tenor (“Los que tienen sed …”), but the remarks “sí hallarán, no hallarán” become a debate between tenor and bass, overlapping their “sí, sí, sí” and “no, no, no.” Estribillo 1.- Los que tienen hambre, vengan y hallarán Grano, Espiga, Harina, Pan. 2.- Los que tienen sed, Amor les previno Agraz, Uvas, Mosto, Vino. 3.- ¡No hallarán! 2.- ¡Sí hallarán! 3.- ¡No hallarán sino Carne y Sangre, y no Vino y Pan! (Villancico XXI, p. 205)
Refrain 1.- Come the hungry and you shall find Grain, Ear, Flour, Bread. 2.- For the thirsty Love provided Verjuice, Grapes, Must, Wine. 3.- You shall not find it! 2.- Yes, you shall! 3.- No, you shall not for it is Flesh and Blood, not Wine and Bread!
This debate is accented by the strong rhythmic motifs of the violins on top of the male voices (fig. 10.5).
Figure 10.5. Refrain, Melchor López Jiménez, Los que tengan hambre vengan y hallarán
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After a second confrontation between the tenor and the bass, we hear the verses from the refrain again, but in three voices: the soprano and the tenor sing the same rhythmic figurations in a closed imitative counterpoint while the bass has a line to itself. The overlap of texts calls to mind the technique of the polytextual motet. When the solo voices conclude their interlude, the choruses enter singing verses from the refrain once again, but in the manner of a Greek choir expressing a collective feeling. The homophonic texture gives body to the section, and expression is accentuated through contrasting nuances (fp) introduced by the violins and accompaniment. The refrain closes with the tutti that lends a great richness of sound over the tonal chord. The opening measures of the coplas take up the ideas from the refrain again, supporting the unity of the work. The soprano and tenor voices alternate coplas (the soprano sings the first, third, and fifth, and the tenor sings the second, fourth, and sixth). The bass enters when the verses “sí hallarán, no hallarán …” are sung. Following each copla is a ritornello in tutti. As far as form is concerned, this villancico may seem schematic, but we must not forget the scope of its use in a religious service where everything must be transparent and the text must be understood by the listeners who were parishioners, not audiences at a concert. What remains clear is that López Jiménez had understood the implicit dramatic component in Sor Juana’s villancico and knew how to handle it expertly. The text flows unhindered, thanks to the limpidity of the vocal melodies; the appropriate connections between literary and musical emphasis contributes to the comprehension of what each singer says, and the dramatic use of the instruments reinforces the “message” in the lyrics. “Si Dios se contiene en el Sacramento,” by Melchor López Jiménez This villancico for two violins, two oboes, two D horns, requisite first choir for four voices, and “ripieno and non-requisite” second choir, and continuo in E major was also composed by López Jiménez in 1800. Villancico XIX of the Letras is one of the villancicos most frequently set to music, as much in Spain as in the Audiencia de Charcas, and is famous for its puns: Estribillo Si Dios se contiene en el sacramento, allí está contento de estar contento.
Refrain If God is contained in the sacrament, there, he is content to be contained.
Sor Juana’s Villancicos in Spanish Cathedral Archives 239 Coplas En Círculo breve, aunque es Dios inmenso, lo miro abreviado, si me acerco, a cerco. Que allí está contento de estar contento.
Coplas Though he is God almighty, in this tight circle, I see him abbreviated, if I draw near the rim. There, He is content to be contained.
Blanco es Soberano de nuestros deseos, y si la Fe apunta el acierto, acierto. Que allí está contento de estar contento.
The Target is King of our desires, and if Faith points towards it, I hit it on the mark. There, He is content to be contained.
Aunque velo cubre su Poder supremo, lo descubro, porque en su velo velo. Que allí está contento de estar contento.
Though the veil covers his supreme Power, I uncover it, for I am guard to his guard. There, he is content to be contained.
Quiere a los sentidos estar encubierto aunque por gozarlo con anhelo anhelo. Que allí está contento de estar contento.
To the senses He wishes to be concealed though in enjoying him with longing, I long for him. There, He is content to be contained.
Como no lo miro, aunque más lo veo, de la Fe la vista con aliento aliento. Que allí está contento de estar contento.
Since I cannot see him, as much as I look, the sight of Faith with encouragement, I encourage. There, He is content to be contained.
Desmiento a los ojos, sólo al Alma creo, y en contradecirles con aprieto, aprieto. Que allí está contento, de estar contento. (Villancico XIX, pp. 201–2)
I deny my eyes, only believing my Soul, and in casting away this bind, I bind myself [closer to him]. There, He is content to be contained.
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This work is kept in the Library of the Major Seminary in Santiago de Compostela, which adjoins the cathedral, in catalogue number 62/3, volume 10, pages 168–74. The characteristics of this villancico are similar to “Los que tienen hambre vengan y hallarán” by the same author. López Jiménez has been seen as a composer affiliated with the classical style; his resources derive from the galant music of Italy in which the melody takes precedence over the harmonic and rhythmic elements.15 According to Jean-Philippe Rameau, E major is the key of magnificence, of tender, lively, or grandiloquent songs.16 If this idea still carried weight at the end of the eighteenth century, then surely López Jiménez chose the appropriate key. Sor Juana’s villancico addresses the complex theme of the Eucharist from a human point of view. The occult powers of the sacred bread become apparent to the senses of sight, taste, and smell. From this dimension one tries to understand the essence of that which lies in the host. The composer seeks to express this relationship by compelling us to listen, from the beginning, to one of the symbols of perfect order: the major triad, repeated often to remind us of this perfection (fig. 10.6).
Figure 10.6. Major triad, Melchor López Jiménez, Si Dios se contiene en el Sacramento
Sor Juana’s Villancicos in Spanish Cathedral Archives 241
The tempo of the piece, in 6/8 time, flows quickly. The handling of the text of the refrain is, on the one hand, a call-and-response style since the contralto soloist dialogues with the oboe. On the other hand, it is also responsorial owing to alternations between the contralto and the choir. The instruments open and close the refrain with commentaries that frame the vocal discourse and perform agile accompaniments on the triadic elements. The melodic theme of the solo voice is already present in the instrumental introduction, but the composer transforms it into the core of the refrain (fig. 10.7). The voice of the alto sings only the first two coplas and the melody is nuanced by the sound of the oboe that doubles it an octave higher, creating a kind of symbolic aura, indicating the brilliance that emanates from the sacrament contained in the host and that extends to the external rays of the monstrance (fig. 10.8). The role of the choir is limited to repeating the verses “Que allí está contento de estar contento” after the second copla, which concludes the villancico. The fact that this work was included in the compilation of scores in the archives of the Major Seminary in Santiago de Compostela suggests that the intention was to preserve the compositions beyond their practical use (which would require only the individual parts for each instrumentalist and singer). Because these loose sheets are missing, we cannot know how much of the villancico was performed. Like López Jiménez’s other villancico, this one grazed the edges of classicism. The result is an elegant piece that, with its melodies of triadic origin, complements the spirit of the verses. Final Observations Music was an integral part of the bel composto, invigorating the Baroque spaces for which it was composed. The manuscripts of Sor Juana’s villancicos found in Iberian archives provide evidence of the widespread and enduring interest in her verses. With some of these manuscripts dated as early as 1679, more than a decade before the published edition of her villancicos, and others as late as 1800, Sor Juana’s texts remained popular with chapel masters for over a century. That her poems are found in nine repositories across the peninsula as well as archives in Guatemala and South America demonstrates the reach of the cultural networks of the Hispanic world, which were not limited to spreading in a centre-periphery direction, nor were they dependent entirely on the circulation of printed texts. The villancicos of 1690 for the Bernardine nuns, originally conceived for the consecration of their church, found new use in Cuenca and Santiago de Compostela as sacred music to celebrate Corpus Christi. Adapted to the musical principles of the Mannheim as well as the galant style, these fashionable reworkings retained the most salient characteristics of the earlier musical and literary versions. Sor Juana’s texts continued to be performed in these churches, even while as a poet she was scorned by many for being associated with the Baroque. How did Sor Juana’s
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Figure 10.7. Refrain, Melchor López Jiménez, Si Dios se contiene en el Sacramento
texts remain in use so long at Cuenca and Santiago de Compostela? Why did López Jiménez persist in composing villancicos in an era when the church had almost ended the custom of using them in the mass in order to reinstate the Latin responsories? Had Sor Juana’s verses become “classic,” making it possible to set them to any style of music?
Sor Juana’s Villancicos in Spanish Cathedral Archives 243
Figure 10.8. Coplas, Melchor López Jiménez, Si Dios se contiene en el Sacramento
Sor Juana composed villancicos throughout her writing career, and they comprise a large portion of her texts. She is one of the most prolific composers of this genre, and for scholars such as Marta Lilia Tenorio she is “the number one villanciquera of the Hispanic world.”17 Tenorio affirms that if Sor Juana’s villancicos are still enjoyed today, despite the secularization of culture and taste, that is because they are good poetry. The wit and charm of her verses were clearly recognized by the composers that set them to music elsewhere and at later moments, attesting to the adaptability of Baroque genres and the lasting resonance of the Tenth Muse’s words. NOTES 1 “en diálogo, de Navidad, de chanza,” f. 1. 2 Glantz, Sor Juana, 453. 3 “una desbordante floración lírica.” Glantz, Sor Juana, 455. 4 “¿qué cosas dijera yo, / andando de texto en texto / buscando la conexión?” Villancico XX, vv. 9–11, 202. 5 Glantz, Sor Juana, 465. 6 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Letras de San Bernardo, 182. 7 “se leyeron los hermosos versos que Sor Juana compuso.” Muriel, Conventos de monjas, 154. 8 Poot Herrera, Los guardaditos de Sor Juana, 297. 9 This assumption goes against Méndez Plancarte’s opinion that each day, three or four villancicos could have been sung during the nine days of the consecration celebrations. The description of the ceremonial was made by Alonso Ramírez de Vargas, who gathers the principle moments of this great celebration in Sagrado / Padron. Méndez Plancarte clarifies that no mention is made of Sor Juana. Margo Glantz reiterates this in the chapter dedicated
244 Aurelio Tello to the “Verses of Saint Bernard” in her book on Sor Juana, citing Marie Cecile Bénassy-Berling, who consulted the extremely rare document in the John Carter Brown Library. See Glantz, Sor Juana, 43. 10 “Sor Juana trata en su poesía el tema del templo – material y espiritual – la palabra divina, el verbo encarnado presente en el Sacramento, en la Eucaristía, en la Hostia. La cultura poética y religiosa de la escritora es un prodigio hecho letras para cantar temas sacros de gran raigambre teológica.” Poot Herrera, Los guardaditos, 166. 11 “Tiple al dúo al Santísimo,” f. 1. 12 “1 En tan contrario sentir, / necesitáis de probar/por qué, el uno, han de llorar; / por qué, el otro, han de reír. / ¿Cómo se debe venir / a la Mesa del Altar?” 13 “1. En tan contrario sentir, / vamos los dos a probar / por qué, el uno, han de llorar; / por qué, el otro, han de reír. / Los dos. ¿Cómo se debe venir / a la Mesa del Altar?” 14 For another example of a Baroque genre adapted to Enlightenment ideals see in this volume the article on literary dreams in New Spain by Beatriz de Alba-Koch. 15 For the earlier adoption of the Italianate galant style in Mexico City see in this volume the article on Ignacio de Jerusalem (1707–1769) by Lucero Enríquez Rubio. 16 López Cano, Música y retórica, 67. 17 Tenorio, “El villancico novohispano,” 501. WORKS CITED Cruz, Sor Juana Inés de la. Letras de San Bernardo, En la celebridad de la Dedicación de la Iglesia del Insigne Convento de Monjas Bernardas de la Imperial Ciudad de México, año de 1690. Vol. 2, Obras completas de Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, edited by Alfonso Méndez Plancarte. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1952. Glantz, Margo. Sor Juana: La comparación y la hipérbole. Mexico City: Conaculta, 2000. – “Letras de San Bernardo.” In Ensayos sobre literatura colonial, vol. 1, 453–71. Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2006. López Cano, Rubén. Música y retórica en el Barroco. Mexico City: UNAM, 2000. Muriel, Josefina. Conventos de monjas en la Nueva España. Mexico City: Editorial Jus, 1995. Poot Herrera, Sara. Los guardaditos de Sor Juana, Mexico City: UNAM, 1999. Sagrado / Padron / y / Panegyricos Sermones / A la Memoria Debida Al Sumptuoso/ Magnifico Templo y curiosa Basilica del Convento / de Religiosas del glorioso Abad / San Bernardo, / Que Edificó En Su Mayor Parte el Capitan / D. Joseph de Retes Largache. Mexico City: Viuda de Francisco Rodríguez Lupercio, 1691. Tenorio, Martha Lilia. “El villancico novohispano.” In Sor Juana y su mundo, edited by Sara Poot Herrera, 447–501. Mexico City: Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana, 1995.
11 Emblems and Wit in the Hispanic Baroque according to Baltasar Gracián
pablo restrepo gautier
In 1531, Italian jurist Andreas Alciatus published in Augsburg Emblematum Liber, establishing with it the print form of the emblem, a cultural product of the Renaissance that would play a key role in the Baroque.1 The invention of the printing press in 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg allowed for the printing and distribution of books of emblems, making the combination of image and word easily accessible to a wide reading public; these developments resulted in an emblem-publication craze that lasted from the middle of the sixteenth century to late in the eighteenth century. Collections of emblems served, among other things, as manuals of ethics, iconology reference books, and sources of entertainment. Even the illiterate came in contact with emblems, as the emblematic images were painted on murals and windows and used in poetic jousts, comedies, public celebrations, and sermons. Emblems, whether in print version or not, exemplify the Baroque way of thinking, a mindset that relished novelty, mystery, complication, obscurity, difficulty, and intellectual challenge. The Hispanic Baroque adopted the emblem, with its classical, medieval, and Renaissance roots, and adapted it to its circumstances. The appropriation of the emblem illustrates the flexibility of Baroque culture, which was keen to refashion past cultural products to suit its various cultural, social, political, and geographical contexts. For example, emblems in the Hispanic world appear in publications as different as Emblemas morales (Madrid, 1610), a collection of emblems by Sebastián de Covarrubias and Orozoco, and Idea de un príncipe christiano (Monaco, 1640), a manual for princely education, by Diego Saavedra y Fajardo. The Hispanic Baroque produced emblems that, according to the goals of the writer, ranged from frivolous games of ingenio (wit), to serious political or religious thought. In fact, the emblem’s paradigmatic tripartite form (pictura, subscriptio, and inscriptio)2 falls in line with the Baroque way of thinking, which considered images as carriers of hidden
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meanings that had to be revealed by the mind of the viewer. The dissemination, accessibility, and popularity of emblem books indicate that the emblem may have played an important role in the formation of reading and writing strategies for the Baroque reader, and that it influenced the manner of thinking and reasoning of that period.3 To establish the significance of the emblem as a cultural product of the Baroque, this study examines the relationship between the emblem and the concepto (conceit), as understood by Baltasar Gracián in Agudeza y arte de ingenio (Wit and the Art of Inventiveness) (Huesca, 1648). It then explores the nature of the emblem as a Baroque mechanism that breaks and reconfigures semiotic systems. The Relationship between Conceit and Emblem The relationship between the emblem and the conceit is complex. Unlike the conceit, whose cultural and intellectual value has never been challenged, scholars have often debated the value of the emblem as a cultural product, and have questioned its relationship to the conceit. The publication of Mario Praz’s Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery triggered a reassessment of the role of emblematic forms in the Renaissance and Baroque.4 The role the emblem plays in the development of the Baroque conceit is a central issue in this debate: Do the emblem and its related forms influence the conceit and its development? Are emblematic forms second-rate cultural products that have no impact on the conceit? The following two sections explore the debate on the relationship between the emblem and the conceit and then analyse Gracián’s theory of the emblem as formulated in his Agudeza y arte de ingenio. The Controversy In his article on Diego López’s Declaración magistral sobre los emblemas de Alciato (Treatise on Alciatus’s Emblems) (Nájera, 1615), Pedro F. Campa argues that in the sixteenth century, López and his teacher, el Brocense, the two main Spanish commentators on Alciatus, “exemplify the ‘conceptista’ vanguard that will not be interpreted as such until the middle and the latter parts of the seventeenth century.”5 Karl Ludwig Selig insists that “the device or emblem is to a large extent enigmatic, mysterious, recondite, and erudite – qualities all of which Gracián admired and considered vital ingredients and aspects of agudeza.”6 Selig concludes that the emblem, compressed and abstract in form, contains a message, individual and universal in nature and application, that is expressed in manifold ways using engravings, mottos, epigrams, and, at times, prose
Emblems and Wit according to Baltasar Gracián 249
explanations. By virtue of its stylistic and intellectual constituent elements, the emblem held a special appeal for Gracián and in a way served as a model to bring about the organic whole of his work.7 Although Selig never explicitly proposes a genitive relationship between conceptismo, a Spanish Baroque movement based on the concepto (conceit), and emblematics, his analysis of Gracián’s work establishes a common foundation for both movements. The implications of this conclusion are that, although there was not necessarily a kindred relationship between the emblem and conceit, the emblem, as a cultural product that is part of the Baroque way of thinking, plays a role in the creation of the conceit. Praz is perhaps the most influential proponent of the link between emblematics and conceptismo, and pays close attention to Gracián’s role. In Seventeenth-Century Imagery, he proposes that poetics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries develops in a line that extends from Baldassare Castiglione’s Il cortegiano (1528) to Gracián’s Agudeza, and that, consequently, there is a genitive relationship between the poetics of Secentismo and that of the Renaissance.8 He holds that the emblem, much like the concept, is derived from the Greek epigram:9 the emblem represents the visual aspect, while the epigram constitutes the literary aspect of the same technopaegion.10 Consequently, the emblem and the epigram, the latter understood as a concepto, come to represent two faces of the same coin: the emblem is the visual representation that illustrates an epigram-as-concepto, and, at the same time, an epigram-as-concepto constitutes a verbal construction that illustrates a pictorial work, in this case the pictura of an emblem.11 Marie-F. Tristan proposes that only the device, a close cousin of the emblem, can be linked to the concepto. She argues that the emblem, which has a tendency to explain its own meaning, lacks intellectual difficulty and, devoid of wit, does not constitute a conceit. Even though emblems are not always difficult, and some of them function as an easy metaphor to convey religious, moral, or political messages, they can be witty, as Gracián clearly demonstrates repeatedly in his Agudeza. Although the epigram and the occasional prose explanation tend to clarify and reveal meaning, these two elements can be understood as an aid for those unable to decipher the hidden meaning proposed by the pictura and inscriptio unit. According to emblem theorists, mystery and difficulty do characterize the emblem. Luis Alfonso de Carvallo in Cisne de Apolo (Apollo’s Swan) (Medina del Campo, 1602) explains: “Emblems may be classified as part of the ‘enigma’ genre, since they are painted or written figures, or one or the other, that secretly reveal some form of morality or doctrine.”12 The
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adverb “secretly” (“ocultamente”) connects the emblem with Baroque obscurity and difficulty, and indicates that readers are required to utilize their intelligence to elucidate a hard-to-uncover meaning. The belief that emblems lack intellectual difficulty may stem from the popularity of the emblem form: clever and not so clever emblemists used it for a variety of goals and, as a result, emblems ranged from witty creations to trite combinations of words and images. Definitions of the emblem based on the difficulty of individual examples or lack of it may be ignoring such diversity. To characterize the emblem as a genre, it is essential to understand its evolution and its print form.13 Towards the end of the height of its popularity in the seventeenth century, many emblems favour an easy didacticism, especially in Spain and its colonies. Nonetheless, the emblem frequently displays an enigmatic quality that links it to conceptismo. It has to be pointed out as well that the differences between the normally witty device and the emblem remain unclear. Some writers, such as Juan de Borja, blur the lines between the two. For instance, his book of emblems appears under the title Empresas morales (Moral Devices).14 The theorist and emblemist Juan de Horozco y Covarrubias insists that the best emblems ought to adhere to the rules of the device: “Any sensible person will conclude that emblems are at their best when they adhere to the rules of the device.”15 The similarity between the emblem and the “device” (“empresa”) is manifest in their structures. If the emblem’s subscriptio and occasional prose section are put aside, only the inscriptio and the pictura remain, forming a dialectic structure, which, in the finest of instances, blurs the lines between device and emblem. A case can be made for a classification of emblems ranging from those that partake in the wit of the device, that is, those that constitute “acts of understanding” (“actos del entendimiento”), to those that amount to artless rhetorical games. Emblemas agudos (witty emblems) have an element of surprise, obscurity, novelty, or mystery, and are at times no different from a device. Given the equivalency between device and conceit that Tristan proposes, these emblemas agudos would qualify as conceptos. On the contrary, emblems merely based on a simple trope or rhetorical figure would differ from the device in that they may lack the element of wit. Joseph Anthony Mazzeo argues against a relationship between emblematics and the conceit in his article “A Critique of Some Modern Theories of Metaphysical Poetry.”16 He argues that the theories of the relationship between emblem and conceit do not approach the issue from the point of view of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theorists, who implicitly reject it.17 According to Mazzeo, these theorists consider the device and the emblem as “incidental topics involved in the analysis
Emblems and Wit according to Baltasar Gracián 251
of conceit or metaphor. They were fully aware that any theory of the conceit had to be a theory of metaphor or analogy, not a theory of genres.”18 However, Gracián dedicates a full chapter to emblem-like constructions (the emblem, the device, and the hieroglyph) and finds examples of agudeza (wit) in many of Alciatus’s emblems. The relationship between the emblem and the conceit may seem unlikely if one considers the former as a superficial and incidental cultural phenomenon19 and, consequently, an improbable predecessor of an influential cultural phenomenon such as the conceit. However, the revaluation of the emblem and evidence of its popularity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries indicate that the emblem may indeed have played a key cultural role in the Renaissance and Baroque. Robert J. Clements and Peter Daly claim that Mazzeo’s “understanding of the conceit is greater than his appreciation of the emblem … leading him to exaggerate the incompatibility of the two.”20 Mazzeo argues against Praz’s theory by pointing out that the ludic character of the emblem is evidence of its superficiality. This ludic element may make the emblem undesirable, for instance, for the metaphysical poems of authors such as Richard Crashaw. However, according to Praz’s ludic theory, the essence of the emblem lies in the question or riddle that results in the combination of incriptio and pictura. Readers need to exercise their intelligence to reveal its meaning. If they do not guess it, the subscriptio will help them find the solution. In other words, the combination of inscription and pictura can be ludic and, at the same time, witty and obscure, and, consequently, representative of the Baroque fondness for intellectual difficulty. Emblems and Their Relation to Conceit in Gracián’s Agudeza Gracián was familiar with Alciatus’s emblems. He had access to the library of his patron, Vivencio Juan de Lastanosa, a collector of emblem books and an aficionado of numismatics, an art related to emblematics.21 Emblem books, especially Alciatus’s Emblematum Liber, inform Gracián’s Agudeza and his theory of the conceit. According to Gracián, the conceit’s essence is found in an ingenious game or intellectual strategy that seeks to discover hidden correspondences between the object and its extremes, or between various objects. Gracián finds examples of conceits in many of Alciatus’s emblems, which indicates that, in his mind, the emblem is a way of thinking that embodies the difficulty and challenge to the intellect that characterizes the Baroque. Gracián’s exploration of wit in his Agudeza makes it clear that he regards many of Alciatus’s emblems as true conceits. He dedicates
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Discourse LVII, “Other Types of Feigned Witticism” (“Otras especies de agudeza fingida”),22 to emblematics. He classifies the emblem and similar compositions as a type of agudeza based on “the similarity of the signified with the object that appears painted, which can be called the signifier.”23 Gracián considers them agudezas compuestas (compound witticisms),24 since emblems and devices can harbour a variety of types of agudezas, ranging from the non-metaphorical (e.g., “agudeza por ponderación misteriosa” [agudeza based on mysterious consideration]) to the metaphorical (e.g., “ponderaciones y argumentos por semejanza sentenciosa” [considerations and arguments based on solemn and moral similarity]). In the same chapter, Gracián praises Alciatus’s aptitude for wit: “Alciatus … would lend his great acumen to any form of subtlety.”25 Gracian’s definition of conceit can often be applied to specific emblems. Gracián defines conceit as “an act of understanding that expresses the correspondence that is found among objects.”26 This correspondence is not limited to metaphor, but extends to other processes.27 In the same way, the emblem is more than a mere form or rhetorical figure; it can be seen as a mental process and can consequently be characterized, in Gracián’s terms, as “an act of understanding” (“un acto del entendimiento”). The following paragraphs explore Gracián’s treatment of Alciatus’s emblems, and illustrate the adaptability and flexibility of the emblem.28 Let us start by considering Alciatus’s Emblem 185 (fig. 11.1), which Gracián considers an example of an “witticism based on mysterious consideration” (“agudeza por ponderación misteriosa”), discussed in Discourse VI, a type of agudeza that harbours “a hidden and recondite truth” (“una verdad escondida y recóndita”).29 Its procedure consists of “bringing up the mysterious in the connection of apparently unrelated features of a subject, and, after analysing a possible coincidence among them, providing a subtle yet adequate explanation.”30 This emblem draws on the harp-playing competition between Euonymus and Ariston. During this competition, at the climax of his performance, Euonymus breaks one of the strings of his instrument; flying, right at that moment, is a cicada, which, positioning itself on the peg of the broken string, starts humming as if to compensate for the broken string. Euonymus explains this mystery by saying that music is enjoyable to the Heavens and, thus, they favour and give it authority with their Providence.31 Gracián points out that the wit of this emblem rests on connections among its unexpected and mysterious elements. The emblem connects the cicada replacing the broken string and the harmonious sound it produces with the pleasure Divine Grace derives from human music. Gracián is not concerned with the emblematic structure
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Figure 11.1. Andreas Alciatus, Emblem 185, Emblemata,1548
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itself (inscriptio, pictura, subscriptio), but rather with the intellectual process: the emblem writer considers an unusual situation and provides a clever explanation. Emblem 113 (fig. 11.2) illustrates Gracián’s Discourse XI, “Similarities Based on Mysterious Consideration, Difficulty, and Objections” (“Semejanzas por ponderación misteriosa, dificultad y reparo”).32 It poses an analogy between the deep pain caused by little Cupid’s arrows and the discomfort produced by a tiny bee’s sting. The god of love tries to understand how such a small insect can cause so much irritation. Venus finds an explanation and tells her son he should not find this unusual, as he himself, in spite of his small size, often inflicts pain as a bee would: “Smiling at him Venus said, ‘You too, my son, imitate this creature, for though small, you also inflict so many hurtful wounds.”33 The emblem writer focuses on a link between characteristics of Cupid and the insect. Gracián qualifies Venus’s answer as witty, indicating that she establishes the analogy between the two terms with “artificiosa retorsión” (“contrived twisting”).34 A dolphin beached by a violent storm constitutes an “extreme contingency” (“extremada contingencia”)35 in Emblem 167 (fig. 11.3). It represents a warning against the dangers of the sea. Alciatus links the dolphin’s predicament with that of a castaway. He concludes that, if an ocean creature cannot trust Neptune, neither can a human being. Gracián places this agudeza in Discourse XII, “Considerations and Arguments by Solemn and Moral Similarity” (“Ponderaciones y argumentos por semejanza sentenciosa”).36 In this type of conceit, the intellect utilizes “similarities to draw a moral teaching; it considers the term of comparison within its context and provides a solution that convinces the subject.”37 The element of wit rests on the “lack of proportion, similarity and critical allusion” (“improporción, semejanza y alusión crítica”), which Alciatus uses to link dolphin, castaway, and moral lesson.38 According to Gracián, Alciatus’s gourd vine and pine tree emblem (Emblem 125) typifies conceits by dissimilarity (“conceptos por desemejanzas”) discussed in Discourse XIII (fig. 11.4).39 The fragility of the gourd vine, which dies in the fall, contrasts with the pine’s evergreen sturdiness. In Alciatus’s emblem, this image constitutes a warning against arrogance. The pine tree provides the support that allows the fragile gourd vine to grow high. Unfortunately, the haughty gourd believes itself to be taller than any other tree. This state of false glory is fleeting: “A gourd is said to have grown next to a lofty pine-tree, and to have grown luxuriant with large leaves. When it embraced the tree’s branches and surmounted its very top, it believed that it was superior to the other trees. The pine said to it, ‘this glory is all too brief; for you forthwith will
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Figure 11.2. Andreas Alciatus, Emblem 113, Emblemata,1548
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Figure 11.3. Andreas Alciatus, Emblem 167, Emblemata,1548
Emblems and Wit according to Baltasar Gracián 257
Figure 11.4. Andreas Alciatus, Emblem 125, Emblemata,1548
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come what will bring utter ruin: winter.’”40 Gracián proposes that the wit of the emblem rests on capturing both the similarity and dissimilarity between two terms:41 while the circumstances of the vine are different from those of an arrogant person, their glory is fleeting and founded on faulty premises. This emblem is witty (agudo) because Alciatus extracts (exprime)42 a hidden meaning from its motif. It is important to note that for Gracián, the invention of new images is not paramount; rather, true wit lies in finding novel and unusual meanings within existing motifs to express a moral teaching. Such is the case of Emblem 28 (fig. 11.5), which Gracián includes as part of Discourse XIV “Witticism by Clever Comparison” (“Agudeza por paridad conceptuosa”).43 He indicates that Alciatus bases this emblem on a “mystery that lies in a relevant contingency” (“misterio, fundándolo en alguna relevante contingencia”).44 Its motto is “At last, at last, justice prevails.” The epigram reads: The shield of Achilles, son of Aeacus, was sprinkled with Hector’s blood, which the unfair council of the Greeks gave to the Ithacan, Ulysses; a more just Neptune snatched it as it was tossed into the sea in a shipwreck, so that it might go to its rightful master. Indeed a wave carried it to the tomb of Ajax on the shore, where it cries out loud and strikes the sepulchre with these words: “You have conquered, son of Telamon, being more worthy of the arms. It is right for emotion to yield to justice.”45
Finding a meaning for an unlikely event (the shield carried by the waves to Ajax’ tomb) is at the centre of this emblem’s difficulty. The author’s wit rests on figuring out the moral teaching hidden in such an improbable event: according to Gracián, Alciatus sees a coincidence between the judge’s decision to give the shield to Ulysses (human justice) and the gods’ decision to cause a storm to return it to Ajax (Divine Justice). Gracián places Emblem 87, “On Courtiers,” in Discourse XVII, “Witty Transpositions” (“Ingeniosas transposiciones”). This type of agudeza seeks to “transform the object and turn it into the opposite of what it appears to be.”46 The emblem’s moral teaching regards greed: “The vainglorious court is said to bind with golden fetters those retainers it trains as chamberlains.”47 As Gracián explains, in this case, wit is not about revealing a hidden link, but rather about finding a novel way to express a commonplace (“a palace is like a prison”): “What most express as a simile, the witty man expresses as a subtle transformation. Alciatus judiciously states that although a palace may seem to be one, it truly is a prison: the courtiers’ golden necklaces are chains, and their riches are shackles.”48
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Figure 11.5. Andreas Alciatus, Emblem 28, Emblemata,1548
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In Emblem 129, a vulture vomits the entrails of its prey, yet believes they are its own. Gracián places this emblem in Discourse XVIII, which deals with “turning the tables” (“las prontas retorsiones”): “[This type of concept] consists in turning a saying or an event, on the person who proposes it, both criticizing and praising him/her.”49 When the young vulture complains to his mother about his fears and discomfort, rather than comforting her offspring, “gracefully turning the tables” (“con donosa retorsión”), she reinterprets the situation to reveal a moral teaching: “My son, you spew that which you steal and does not rightfully belong to you.”50 While theft from the perspective of the vulture has positive connotations, it has negative ones in the human realm. The mother’s comment is, then, at once praiseful and reproachful. According to Gracián, Alciatus’s Emblem 181 (fig. 11.6), about the power of wisdom, is an example of “witticism by exaggeration” (“agudeza por exageración”) (Discourse XIX).51 Under the motto “Eloquence more powerful than strength,”52 Alciatus presents an aging Hercules with chains extending from his mouth to the ears of other men. The classical hero, contrary to expectations, is imprisoning his followers by dint of his eloquence rather than by his physical strength. Gracián insists, once more, that agudeza results from discovering unexpected connections: the agudeza of this emblem resides not only in its exaggeration but also in “the contrast between eloquence and valour, between knowledge and power.”53 Emblem 178, regarding peace, is an example of “witty praise” (“encarecimientos conceptuosos”) (Discourse XX).54 The motto “From war, peace”55 hovers over the image of an abandoned helmet, in which nestles a beehive. A perceived contrast between the instrument of war and the beehive leads to the following conclusions: “Let arms lie at a distance; let it be just to make war only when you cannot otherwise enjoy the art of peace.”56 For Gracián, the agudeza stems from this unique contrast, and the thought process that went into its creation. Gracián argues that, in the two following emblems, agudeza rests on the invention of a tale to explain a situation. Emblem 108 (fig. 11.7), “The Force of Love,” illustrates “praise” (“encarecimientos”) (Discourse XXI):57 “The winged god has broken the winged thunderbolt; thus Eros shows that there is a fire stronger than fire.”58 In this case, Gracián perceives this brief fictive scene to be witty, as it shows that he, who embodies the fire of love, is stronger than the powerful fire of lightning.59 In Discourse XXXV, “Conceits by Fiction” (“Conceptos por ficción”),60 Gracián notes that Emblem 155 is based on a “mysterious objection” (“misterioso reparo”): the apparent paradox that death takes many
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Figure 11.6. Andreas Alciatus, Emblem 181, Emblemata,1548
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youths, while love wounds the old. To explain this situation, Alciatus invents the following fiction: Death was carrying the quivers, tiny Eros the arrows. They sojourned together, and together bedded down at night. Eros was blind, Death at this time was blind. Each has taken the careless weapons of the other: Death holds the golden ones, Eros the arrows of bone. Hence an old man who should now be in Hades, behold, he is in love, and prepares for his pate flowery garlands. Whereas, I, because of Eros with borrowed bow has struck me, grow weak, and the fates are laying their hands on me.61
Gracián praises this story as crafty and witty. Emblems 152 and 83 illustrate the agudeza by paradox (Discourse XXIII).62 Emblem 152 presents a contrast between Heraclitus’s weeping and Democritus’s shrieks of laughter. This situation leads to the following thoughts: “Now more than ever bewail the misfortunes of human life, Heraclitus: it abounds in many evils. You, on the other hand, if you laughed at another time, increase your laughter, Democritus: life has become more ludicrous. Meanwhile, perceiving these matters, I am considering to what end I should finally weep with you, or how I should belly-laugh with you.”63 A small remora stops an enormous ship in its tracks in Emblem 83. This image brings up the following moral: “The remora, tiny as a snail, can by itself cause a ship to stop, disdaining the force of the wind and oars. So does a petty cause hold back in mid-course those drawn to the starts by their talent and virtue. It is like a worrisome lawsuit of passion for a harlot, which draws youths from outstanding studies.”64 The agudeza in these two emblems rests on paradoxes, and finding within them hidden messages or moral meditations. In Discourse XXIX, Gracián tackles agudeza sentenciosa (“aphoristic witticism”), which, he claims, constitutes “the highest application of understanding, because sharpness of wit and precision in judgment are both present in it.”65 The image of Emblem 130 reveals three young girls rolling dice to see who will die first. The girl with the worst luck dies after a roof tile falls on her head. Alciatus concludes: “In adverse circumstances a bad fate is not eluded; and in auspicious affairs neither prayers, nor effort has a place.”66 Gracián qualifies this emblem as agudo because of the unique circumstance from which the moral lesson is derived: “The more astonishing the circumstances, the harder it is to find the element that gives rise to the moral teaching.”67 A question gives rise to what Gracián labels “enigmatic witticism” (“agudeza enigmática”) (Discourse XL).68 In Emblem 188 (fig. 11.8), a summary
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Figure 11.7. Andreas Alciatus, Emblem 108, Emblemata,1548
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Figure 11.8. Andreas Alciatus, Emblem 188, Emblemata,1548
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of the riddle of the sphinx, Alciatus asks himself “why does it [the sphinx] have the fair face of a girl and the feathers of a bird, and the limbs of a lion?” He responds: “Ignorance of things took on this appearance; that is to say, the cause and origin of evil is threefold. There are some whom frivolity, some whom alluring pleasure, and some whom proud hearts render ignorant.”69 In this case, agudeza is the result of the witty moral teaching with which Alciatus “crowns his emblem” (“corona su emblema”),70 connecting the sphinx with ignorance and teaching virtue in prudence. Agudeza de apodo (“witticism by nickname”) (Discourse XLVIII)71 is a type of compound conceit presented in Emblem 190. Alciatus presents Phrixus riding the golden-fleeced ram, and concludes, in a most misogynist manner, that Phrixus allows the lamb to carry him, just as a rich man allows his wife or his slave to master him.72 According to Gracián, the agudeza of this emblem lies in the clever insult that is hurled against the rich. 73 The Emblem: A Baroque Tool for Fragmenting and Reconfiguring Semiotic Systems In The Emblem and the Device in France, Daniel Russell defines the emblematic process as the fragmentation of medieval sign systems or of known allegorical works, which is followed by the recombination of the fragmented elements into new, surprising, and meaningful units.74 Much like Gracián’s Baroque conceptismo, in such a process of fragmentation and recombination, the intellect seeks to forge new and unexpected connections to create meaning. Emblems contain clues to decipher the new systems. This process is quintessentially Baroque, given the difficulty and intellectual challenge that characterize it. Frederick de Armas illustrates the emblematic process with the motif of the almond tree, which can be traced to biblical references where the beauty of its flowers carried positive connotations. Alciatus modifies the biblical meaning, focusing on a new reference: the relationship between the bloom of the almond tree in the early spring and the foolishness of youth.75 Before this image became commonplace, readers would assign it its traditional positive meaning, only to find that their interpretation was incorrect in the new context. Another example that illustrates the emblematic process of fragmentation and reconfiguration of sign systems is that of the elm and the vine. Emblemists take this motif and combine it with that of the ivy in order to create a variety of meanings not found, although perhaps always implied, in the original. The topic of the elm and the vine appears for the first time in poems by Catullus and in the works of Horace, Virgil, and Quintilian, although it is possible that they were also found in lost works of the Greek
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poet Sappho. In Catullus, the topic has the meaning of marital union, which seems to be derived from the agricultural practices of the Italian peninsula whereby the vine yield would be greater if planted next to the elm. Along with the arrival of Christianity, the biblical connotations of the vine were incorporated into the topic of marriage. Aurora Egido notes that in the initial representation of the vine as a symbol of Mary and the church, the embrace of the elm and the vine comes to signify the union of Christ and the church.76 Owing to reasons still unclear, the topic loses its vitality during the Middle Ages and enjoys a resurgence in the Renaissance, with a wealth of variants in poetry, drama, prose, and books of emblems. The topic on the elm and the vine appears first as a printed emblem in Alciatus’s book, where it takes on the idea of a lasting friendship (Emblem 160, “Friendship Lasting Even after Death”). The Renaissance and Baroque emblemists create new variants with meanings ranging from friendship to lust. As is pointed out by Peter Demetz, the Renaissance highlights the sexual sense of the topic, as derived from Catullus’s poem LXI, where the vine is replaced by ivy, representing sexuality. The ivy also acts as a symbol of ingratitude, a meaning that stems from an image of Plutarch that portrays an ivy plant destroying the very tree that upholds it.77 Two sets of variants are, then, established and repeatedly modified during the Baroque: one with a positive connotation (marriage, friendship) and another with a negative connotation (lust, ingratitude). Alciatus’s emblem of the pine tree and gourd, which Gracián considers a conceit, is a further fragmentation of the emblem of the elm and the vine. The elm and the vine are replaced by other botanical motifs, allowing the emblemist to utilize two characteristics that are not present in the original sign system, and, thus, to arrive at a new and unexpected conclusion. In Spain, the original motif is also modified: Sebastián Covarrubias y Orozco replaces the elm tree for a wall, and the vine for ivy as a warning against prostitutes;78 Borja pictures a vine entwined around a flimsy post as a warning against those looking for the favour of capricious patrons;79 the same author presents a vine laden with fruit embracing a dry elm tree to signify friendship beyond death.80 The procedures that Gracián identifies in many of Alciatus’s emblems can be considered agudos, compatible with his idea of conceit, and representative of the Baroque thought process, which is characterized by difficulty and the ability to find new and unusual relationships among disparate elements. The Spanish theorist finds numerous examples of agudeza and ingenio put to practice in the Emblematum Liber. In Alciatus’s book, Gracián identifies the Baroque way of thinking, which also characterizes emblematic procedures. The agudeza of emblems and conceits rests on drawing surprising connections between objects and their most
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recondite characteristics: agudeza occurs when unexpected relations are pointed out, or when a commonplace is expressed in a new way. The Italian and the Spaniard, separated by a lapse of nearly one century, yet united by a century of emblem making, share a similar method of expressing ideas. As Gracián would have it, Alciatus knows how to express and extract (exprimir) ideas out of a motif, making novel and surprising connections. Alciatus’s emblemas agudos and those of other emblemists likely helped to establish a way of thinking that became part of Baroque culture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: the fragmentation of sign systems and the recombination of the resulting fragments into new systems of meaning. To sum up this discussion and open it up to new directions, it is worth noting that the emblem tradition, with its influence on the Baroque way of thinking, is not confined to the geographical boundaries of Spain or Europe. It crosses the Atlantic and establishes a firm foothold in the Americas. Just like their Spanish and European counterparts, emblems in the colonies adopt forms that break away from the printed page. Two examples that illustrate this phenomenon come to mind: in New Spain, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Neptuno alegórico explains the emblematic images that she chose to decorate the triumphal arch built to celebrate the arrival of viceroy Tomás de la Cerda y Aragón, marquis of la Laguna, in Mexico City in November of 1680.81 Further south in the kingdom of New Granada, the sixteenth-century courtyard of the house of Don Gonzalo Suárez Rendón, founder of the city of Tunja, in present-day Colombia, is decorated with a complete emblematic program, which has been carefully studied by Santiago Sebastián.82 Juan Luis Suárez notes that a fuller understanding of the Hispanic Baroque requires an exploration of its transatlantic dimensions: “The division between the Renaissance and the Baroque is an exclusively European classification that does not quite fit into the Spanish case since it does not take into consideration the peculiarities of Spanish culture and politics of the fifteenth century, or the American dimension of the Hispanic world since 1492.”83 The studies carried out thus far on the emblems of Europe and their circulation beyond the continent contain key elements for a deeper appreciation of the cultural complexity of what is now Latin America as well as the Hispanic Baroque as a whole. NOTES 1 Alciato’s Emblematum liber can be consulted here: https://www.emblems.arts .gla.ac.uk/alciato/books.php?id=A31a. An English translation can be found here: https://www.mun.ca/alciato/.
268 Pablo Restrepo Gautier 2 Variants of the tripartite form are common. For instance, some emblemists add a prose explanation, while others eliminate all written elements. 3 Regarding the influence of the emblem on reading strategies, see works of Daniel S. Russell on emblematics in France. 4 See Daly, Emblem Theory. 5 Campa, “Diego López’s Declaración, 232. The two most important commentaries in Spain on Alciatus’s book are that of Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas, El Brocense, Franciscii Santi Brocensis comment. in And. Alciatus Emblemata (Lugduni, 1573), and that of Diego López de Valencia, Declaración magistral sobre los Emblemas de Andrés Alciatus con todas las Historias, Antigüedades y Doctrinas tocantes a las buenas costumbres (Nájera, 1615). 6 Selig, Studies on Alciatus in Spain, 125. 7 Ibid., 128. 8 Praz, Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery, 18. 9 Ibid., 32. 10 Ibid., 23. 11 Ibid., 22. 12 “Casi deste genero ‘enigma’ son los emblemas, los quales, son unas figuras pintadas o escriptas, o lo uno o lo otro que ocultamente significan alguna moralidad o doctrina.” Carvallo, Cisne de Apolo, 90. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are mine. 13 The print form of the emblem is of great use for studying emblematics, since it lends itself to empirical studies. For the history of the emblem, see Clements, Picta Poesis; Daly, Emblem Theory; and Pérez Sánchez, La literatura emblemática española. 14 See the article by André Stegman who considers the difference between empresa and emblem to lie in their essence rather than their manner of expression. Stegman, “Les théories de l’Emblème.” 15 “El emblema cuanto más guardare las propiedades de la empresa será mejor según yo entiendo y juzgara qualquiera.” Horozco y Covoarrubias, Emblemas morales, 64v, book 1, ch.17. 16 Arthur Terry reiterates Mazzeo’s position, saying “Praz and other critics are mistaken in attributing the popularity of the conceit to an extension of the sixteenth-century taste for epigram and emblem.” Terry, Seventeenth-Century Spanish Poetry, 60. 17 Mazzeo, “A Critique,” 88. 18 Ibid., 92. 19 Ibid., 93. 20 Daly, Emblem Theory, 67. 21 Selig, “Gracián and Alciatus’s Emblemata,” 1. 22 Gracián, Agudeza y arte de ingenio, 2: 210.
Emblems and Wit according to Baltasar Gracián 269 23 “la semejanza del sujeto figurado con el término que se pinta y substituye, y podemos llamar el figurante.” Gracián, Agudeza y arte de ingenio, 2: 212. 24 The emblems, empresas, and hieroglyphics appear in the second treaty, “De la agudeza compuesta.” From the composed agudeza in Discourse LVII, “De otras especies de agudeza fingida” (From Other Species of Feigned Agudeza). Ibid., 2: 210–17. 25 “Alciato no perdonaba su gran ingenio a género alguno de sutileza.” Ibid., 1: 218. 26 “un acto del entendimiento, que exprime la correspondencia que se halla entre los objetos.” Ibid., 1: 55. 27 Parker, “Concept and Conceit, xxiii. Parker affirms that Mazzeo never had any reason to equate the concept with metaphor. 28 We are referring here only to those emblems whose agudeza is explained by Gracián in some detail. Gracián uses some of Alciatus’s emblems as examples of specific types of agudeza. However, his analysis is too brief and insufficient for our discussion. For a complete list of emblems in Gracián’s Agudeza, see Selig, “Gracián and Alciatus’s Emblemata,” 8–9. 29 Gracián, Agudeza y arte de ingenio, 1:88. This and all subsequent images are taken from https://archive.org/details/emblemataandreae00alcia. 30 “levantar misterio entre la conexión de los extremos o términos correlatos del sujeto …; y después de ponderada aquella coincidencia y unión, dase una razón sutil, adecuada que la satisfaga.” Gracián, Agudeza y arte de ingenio, 1: 89. 31 “Estando Eunomo en la mayor fuga de su armonía, quebró una de las cuerdas del instrumento; voló al mismo punto una cigarra, que asentándose en … la clavija de la quebrada cuerda, comenzó con su canto a suplir la falta della … [D]a salida al misterio diciendo, que es tan agradable la música aun al mismo cielo, que con providencia especial la favorece y autoriza.” Ibid., 1: 91. 32 Gracián, Agudeza y arte de ingenio, 1: 130. 33 Alciatus, Index Emblematicus, Emblem 113. All quotes from Alciatus come from the English translation found in Daly’s edition: Andreas Alciatus, Index Emblematicus, Volume 1: The Latin Emblems. This edition does not numerate the pages containing the emblems. The reader will easily find the emblems by their number. 34 “Dale su madre la solución, aplicándole con artificiosa retorsión su semejanza.” Gracián, Agudeza y arte de ingenio, 1: 133. 35 Ibid., 1: 141. 36 Ibid., 1: 137. 37 “las semejanzas para sacar una moralidad provechosa; pondera el término asimilado con sus circunstancias y concluye convenciendo al sujeto.” Gracián, Agudeza y arte de ingenio, 1: 137.
270 Pablo Restrepo Gautier 8 Ibid., 1: 141. 3 39 Gracián, Agudeza y arte de ingenio, 1: 144. 40 Alciatus, Index Emblematicus, Emblem 125. 41 Gracián, Agudeza y arte de ingenio, 1: 151. 42 Note Gracián’s use of the Gallicism exprimir to play with its Spanish meaning (to extract) and its French sense (to express). 43 Gracián, Agudeza y arte de ingenio, 1: 152. 44 Ibid., 1: 159. 45 Alciatus, Index Emblematicus, Emblem 28. 46 “transformar el objeto y convertirlo en lo contrario de lo que parece.” Gracián, Agudeza y arte de ingenio, 1: 179). 47 Alciatus, Index Emblematicus, Emblem 87 48 “lo que otro exprimiera por un símile, el ingenioso lo pondera por esta sutil transformación. El juicioso Alciatus dice que el palacio no lo es, aunque lo parece, sino verdadera cárcel; las cadenas de oro de los áulicos no son adornos sino prisiones; y las riquezas, grillos.” Gracían, Agudeza y arte de ingenio, 1: 181. 49 “consiste [esta especie de concepto] en retorcer un dicho, o un hecho, sobre el mismo que lo propone, ya motejando, ya alabando.” Ibid., 1: 188. 50 “No echas, hijo, sino lo ajeno, que siempre robas.” Ibid., 1: 192. 51 Gracián, Agudeza y arte de ingenio, 1: 197. 52 Alciatus, Index Emblematicus, Emblem 181. 53 “una contraposición entre la elocuencia y el valor, entre el saber y el poder.” Gracián, Agudeza y arte de ingenio, 1: 202. 54 Gracián, Agudeza y arte de ingenio, 1: 204. 55 Alciatus, Index Emblematicus, Emblem 178. 56 Ibid. 57 Gracián, Agudeza y arte de ingenio, 1: 313. 58 Alciatus, Index Emblematicus, Emblem 108. 59 Gracián, Agudeza y arte de ingenio, 1: 218. 60 Ibid., 2: 69. 61 Alciatus, Index Emblematicus, Emblem 155. 62 Gracián, Agudeza y arte de ingenio, 1: 224. 63 Alciatus, Index Emblematicus, Emblem 152. 64 Ibid., Emblem 83. 65 “la máxima operación del entendimiento, porque concurren en ella la viveza del ingenio y el acierto del juicio.” Gracián, Agudeza y arte de ingenio, 2: 22. 66 Alciatus, Index Emblematicus, Emblem 130. 67 “cuanto más prodigiosas las circunstancias empeñan más el reparo a que da salida la sentencia.” Gracián, Agudeza y arte de ingenio, 2: 25. 68 Ibid., 2: 105. 69 Alciatus, Index Emblematicus, Emblem 188.
Emblems and Wit according to Baltasar Gracián 271 0 Gracián, Agudeza y arte de ingenio, 2: 107. 7 71 Ibid., 2: 146. 72 Alciatus, Index Emblemicus, 234. 73 Gracián, Agudeza y arte de ingenio, 2: 149 74 Russell, “Emblematic Structures,” 64. 75 de Armas, “The Flowering of the Almond Tree,”. 76 Egido, “Variaciones,” 217. 77 Erdman Jr., “Arboreal Images in the Golden Age Sonnet,” 592. 78 Covarrubias y Orozco, Emblemas morales, 37r. 79 Borja, Empresas morales, 40v. 80 Ibid., 57v. See Restrepo-Gautier, La imaginación emblemática, 80–5. 81 For a study of Sor Juana’s use of emblems in this text, see Pascual Buxó, “Función política de los emblemas.” 82 Sebastián, “La pintura emblemática.” 83 Suárez, “A Model,” 34. WORKS CITED Alciatus, Andreas. Index Emblematicus: Volume 1, The Latin Emblems. Edited by Peter M. Daly. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985. Armas, Frederic de. “The Flowering of the Almond Tree.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos 14 (1980): 117–34. Borja, Juan de. Empresas morales. Prague, 1581. Campa, Pedro F. “Diego López’s Declaración magistral sobre los emblemas de Alciatus: The View of a Seventeenth-Century Spanish Humanist.” In The Emblem Tradition: Essays in Honour of Virginia Woods Callahan, edited by Peter M. Daly, 223–48. New York: AMS, 1989. Carvallo, Luis Alfonso de. Cisne de Apolo. Edited by Alberto Porqueras Mayo. Madrid: CSIC, 1958. Clements, Robert J. Picta Poesis: Literary and Humanistic Theory in Renaissance Emblem Books. Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1960. Covarrubias y Orozco, Sebastián. Emblemas morales: 1610. Edited by John Horden. Menston: Scolar Press, 1973. Daly, Peter. Emblem Theory: Recent German Contributions to the Characterization of the Emblem Genre. Nendeln, Liechtenstein: KTO Press, 1979. – Literature in the Light of the Emblem: Structural Parallels between the Emblem and Literature in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979. Demetz, Peter. “The Elm and the Vine: Notes towards the History of a Marriage Topos.” PMLA 73 (1958): 521–32. Egido, Aurora. “Variaciones sobre la vid y el olmo en la poesía de Quevedo: Amor constante más allá de la muerte.” In Homenaje a Quevedo, edited by
272 Pablo Restrepo Gautier Víctor García de la Concha, 213–32. Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1982. Erdman, E. George, Jr. “Arboreal Images in the Golden Age Sonnet.” PMLA 84 (1969): 587–95. Gracián, Baltasar. Agudeza y arte de ingenio. Edited by Evaristo Correa Calderón. Madrid: Castalia, 1969. Horozco y Covarrubias, Juan de. Emblemas morales. Segovia, 1589. Mazzeo, Joseph Anthony. “A Critique of Some Modern Theories of Metaphysical Poetry.” Modern Philology 50 (1952–3): 88–95. Parker, Alexander. “Concept and Conceit: An Aspect of Comparative Literary History.” Modern Language Review 77, no. 4 (1982): xxi–xxxv. Pascual Buxó, José. “Función política de los emblemas en el Neptuno alegórico de sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.” In Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz y sus contemporáneos, edited by Margo Glantz, 245–55. Mexico City: UNAM, 1998. Praz, Mario. Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery, Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1964. Restrepo-Gautier, Pablo. La imaginación emblemática en Tirso de Molina. Newark, DE: Juan de la Cuesta, 2001. Russel, Daniel S. The Emblem and the Device in France. Lexington, KY.: French Forum Publishers, 1985. Pérez Sánchez, Aquilino. La literatura emblemática española: Siglos XVI y XVII. Madrid: Sociedad general española de librería, 1977. – “Emblematic Structures in Sixteenth-Century French Poetry.” Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik 14, no. 1 (1982): 54–100. Sebastián, Santiago. “La pintura emblemática de la Casa del Fundador de Tunja (Colombia).” Goya 166 (1982): 8–20. Selig, Karl Ludwig. “Gracián and Alciatus’s Emblemata.” Comparative Literature 8, no. 1 (1956): 1–11. – Studies on Alciatus in Spain. New York: Garland, 1990. Stegman, André. “Les théories de l’Emblème et de la Devise en France et en Italie (1520–1620).” In Emblèmes et Devises au temps de la Renaissance, edited by M.T. Jones-Davies, 23–31. Paris: Jean Touzot, 1981. Suárez, Juan Luis. “A Model for the Study of Cultural Complexity in the Atlantic World.” South Altantic Review 72, no. 1 (2007): 31–47. Terry, Arthur. Seventeenth-Century Spanish Poetry: The Power of Artifice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Tristan, Marie-F. “L’art des devises au XVIe siècle en Italie: Une theorie du symbole.” In Emblemes et devises au temps de la Renaissance, edited by M.T. Jones-Davies, 47–63. Paris: Jean Touzot, 1981.
12 The Baroque as Paradox: Novelty and Printed Courtly Sermons in Seventeenthand Eighteenth-Century New Spain
perla chinchilla pawling
The processes of reproduction of the diverse aspects that shape a culture at a given time are often understood as “technologies of culture.” Here I focus on two of these technologies, amplification and paratexts of the Baroque sermon, which, in its oral as well as in its printed version, has been recognized as an iconic symbol of the religious world of the Baroque.1 However, close scrutiny of the printed versions reveals how the printed sermon’s function as a reproductive technology of Catholic doctrine and morals was disrupted and, by changing its identity2 contributed to the reproduction of emerging modern Art.3 The Baroque: Religion and Art A historiographical commonplace is that one of the central aspects contributing to the emergence of modernity is the confrontation between science and religion,4 where Art is seen as an ally of religion, collaborating with it in the resistance to modernity. However, drawing on Niklas Luhmann’s writings on the concept of Art, this study proposes that Art was one of the functionally differentiated subsystems that made possible the emergence of the modern world as it distanced itself from religion, a distancing that was more a paradox than a “confrontation.” In fact, we could argue that the Baroque5 itself is a cultural “paradox.” Why a paradox? Because from this perspective of the Baroque, Art became autonomous, thanks to religion, while religion lost part of its centrality due to Art. I discuss here a small part of this process by looking at the “paratexts” 6 that prefaced sermons printed in New Spain between 1640 and 1760. Art would slowly become independent from the “guardianship” of religion, without religion feeling threatened, unlike how religion felt attacked by science. Since the fourteenth century, signs of Art’s
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“liberation” from religion can be perceived. As Luhmann explains: “Images are no longer primarily devotional ones; nor are they learning or memory aids for the illiterate. And literacy is no longer restricted to clerics. As a result, controversies about texts, such as those involving rhetoric and poetics, are no longer internal religious controversies per se.”7 This is because the “perfection” that the Renaissance discovered in the ancient Greek world did not entail any critique or attack on religion.8 What is paradoxical is that, once this process of liberation had begun, a reverse process could be seen as of the seventeenth century, an aspect of which is studied here, where religion, particularly post-Tridentine Catholicism,9 became an authentic “evolutionary attractor” for the emergence of Art as an autonomous system. This emergence contributed, imperceptibly, to the contraction of religion itself, turning it into yet another subsystem of the modern world. How did this self-detrimental phenomenon of religion begin? “Early Modern Catholicism,” in which the Society of Jesus played a central role, faced the task of re-catechizing a congregation on tenterhooks owing to the Protestant Reformation. In order to achieve the retention and recovery of its flock – unaware of the consequences of this endeavour – this “Early Modern Catholicism” undertook a paradoxical transition, in which the conditions of its possibility would prove the same as those of its impossibility: in giving in to persuasion instead of argument, the sacred urban discourse turned to the movement of affections and later to the enjoyment of the senses. This persuasion, instead of inducing piety and virtue as expected by the church, led the audience and, later, the readers of these sermons towards an artistic space. Opting for theological reasoning, however, would have shown the limits of “revealed truth” – already at this point fragmented by the Reformation – and would have led church members towards modern science rather than towards faith or orthodoxy. In other words, by then the direction was already that of secularization. In this manner, literary art was introduced and reproduced from the pulpit. Parishioners and preachers were trained in the perception of Art as such in the temple itself in a movement that, although denounced by some, was induced from the very heart of the Catholic church. The experience of listening to and reading sermons allowed for the possibility of “observing” Art, that is, the doubling of reality in terms of “real-reality” and “imaginary or fictitious reality,” already distinct from the doubling seen as a “miracle” produced by “divine grace” – the ancient illumination of the virtuous preacher. What was produced now was appreciated as a “marvel” created by man, which in turn generated “admiration.”10 Both religion and the emerging system of Art deal with something that in principle cannot be understood through language. However, as
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Luhmann points out, Art separates itself from religion because “religious communication is concerned with what is essentially imperceptible, and is marked by this concern.”11 Art, however, is to a degree similar to religion yet different because Art deals with “perception”12 – incommunicable in principle – and with its integration into the context of communication, that is, into society.13 This similarity provided Art with that aura of sacredness that persists to the present. Nonetheless, while artistic works can make a fragment of what is perceived communicable, in the religious realm, although there is a perception of the sacred in images, relics, or books, its condition is to preserve astonishment, mystery, inaccessibility: religion participates in the transcendence for which there is no access. There is, according to Luhmann, “an ambiguity specific to the object.”14 Thus, it is precisely during the seventeenth and part of the eighteenth century that the delimitation of Art was made more evident through the selection of rare forms of language, foreign to religion and to the quotidian, to the point that “artistic possibilities … reached a high degree of evidence and independence … [T]he specific function of art [began taking] hold as an attractor for creating forms that now followed their own dynamic and began to react to their own realization.”15 This period – part of that lengthy and complex process – is identified in this study as the “Baroque.” Here the ancient culture of orality and the modern of print, traditional religion, and emergent modern Art converged in paradoxical terms. It is the cultural space of Italian, French, Hispanic, and Lusitanian Catholicism, which also included, in the case of the latter two, their American viceroyalties. Regarding verbal language, specifically the poetic prose that is the issue at hand, this process culminated in conceptismo, a Baroque literary style that made extensive use of conceits.16 Let us see why. Amplification as an Evolutionary Attractor for Art The conformation of the Art system is a more complex phenomenon than that of other subsystems as it includes changes and specificities for each of the fine arts. Yet this subdivision, from a historiographical point of view, facilitates the analysis of the processes for each one. In this case, another complexity confronts us given that “literature,” on its path towards autonomy, saw within it the emergence of new forms of discourse such as the novel, the revolutionary fictional prose narrative associated with literary modernity. At the same time, it is important to underscore that “literature” had to distinguish itself from other forms which, as such, ended up not belonging properly to literary art, yet at some point of
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this process approached it as part of its “evolutionary attractors.” Such was the case for the sermon, the centre of my analysis. But how did the sermon contribute to the emergence of literary art? I have argued that the need to attract a following in the post-Tridentine Catholic world took preaching to the realm of persuasive rhetoric, which was achieved particularly through amplification.17 However, beyond its rhetorical function, what is important is the communicative role that amplificatio has in regard to revealed truth, given that, as a discursive resource, its function is to hide the locus of enunciation, that is, to hide reiteration and thus the lack of information.18 Seen from this perspective, amplification is the basis for the paradox mentioned above. Initially, when sermons were presented orally, amplification was used to move affections towards a virtuous life. The Jesuits became experts in the construction of extensive and magnificent “compositions of place,” throughout which the members of the Society moved “the heart” of their flock towards moralizing ends. However, once sermons went into print, new amplification strategies were required. Here amplificatio, while it had to avoid the tediousness of repetition, also had to hide the institutional locus of enunciation. To indoctrinate and to moralize no longer held the same sway in the courtly society of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries as it had had immediately after Trent. In fact, the elite began to view the “rhetoric of passions” as a way of persuading the common people, but not the courtiers. From this perspective, conceptismo can be seen as the greatest form of amplification to achieve these goals, yet at the same time, as the form that paradoxically diverted sacred oratory towards Art.19 Thus, in conceptista preaching, this double process in opposite directions is united: on the one hand, the need for amplification would drive the “courtly sermon” towards Art, which, on the other hand, increasingly expressed its independence even within religious space.20 By then it was rather evident, as revealed by conceptismo, that “Art radicalizes the difference between the real and the merely possible.”21 Thereafter, this already modern Art would have to develop “procedures and principles of its own.”22 It is from this perspective that I propose the latent function of the “paratexts” that preceded the printed sermons. Paratexts Supporting my thesis is the emergence and development of “paratexts” legitimate literary genres in their own right – that prefaced the published sermons. These prefacing materials are dedications, licencias (licences), aprobaciones (approvals), sentires (feelings), and pareceres (views). I analyse
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these writings as true proto-rules of Art developed by a proto-community of artists, a republic of letters integrated by lettered preachers who in this context abandoned their function as spiritual guides in order to cultivate their function as literary critics. Licencias and aprobaciones23 were texts that belonged to the legal apparatus with which the church conditioned the printed form, while the dedication, as its name indicates, was a text that appeared randomly when the printed sermon was dedicated to an important individual, usually the patron of the publication. However, sentires24 and pareceres25 – precisely those of the Baroque – appear as two new genres dedicated to valuing the sermon. To my eyes, they represent an incipient “literary criticism.” In a previous work, I carried out a first survey of these paratexts.26 For the purposes of the present study the number of paratexts has been increased, and the survey’s chronology focuses on the period from 1640 to 1720. Comparisons between Jesuit sermons and sermons written by members of other regular orders as well as by the secular clergy have also been expanded. Within these parameters I have found the following: the sentires reveal a dramatic increase in numbers between 1660 and 1690, whereas afterwards there is a decline, equally as drastic, as the eighteenth century progresses. In the case of the pareceres, they became a frequent text as of 1670. During the 1680s, there is a true blossoming of this genre, with fourteen sermons out of nineteen having at least one parecer. Later on, although considerably reduced in number, the paraceres continue to appear until 1760. Regarding the aprobaciones, there is a phenomenon similar to that of the pareceres, appearing consistently from 1660 to 1760. However, it should be noted that already in the 1610s this form of writing was found only sporadically. Censuras (censures) were limited, but constant throughout this period (fig. 12.1). It is worth noting that as the eighteenth century progresses there are numerous cases where a single sermon has two pareceres or two censuras. This phenomenon is found mainly in sermons by very famous preachers, where one kind find two aprobaciones and two pareceres or censuras within a single piece (fig. 12.2). Lastly, it should be noted that the paratexts were written by general members of the entire church body, regardless whether the author of a sermon belonged to a particular order or to the secular clergy. This is one of the factors that allowed me to conclude that this clerical body formed a proto-republic of letters (figs. 12.3 and 12.4). Paratexts allow for the observation of how preaching was articulated, and at the same time contributed to the creation of stylistic canons for the emergent literature.
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Figure 12.1. Cases of admiration, ingenio, novelty, agudeza, and inventiveness, 1630–1770
Figure 12.2. Sermons with several aprobaciones and pareceres in the eighteenth century
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The Form’s Content In the Baroque space that I am demarcating here, it is clear that style began taking shape so that Art could become autonomous, although a selfdescription of Art would still need more than three centuries to be fully realized. Faced then with the yet impossible task of defining what was to be expected of a work of art, or in other words, faced with the impossibility of self-description of Art as such, the category of “novelty” temporarily fulfilled this self-describing function, or at least symptomatically helped hide this void so that the artistic operations could continue reproducing themselves. Conceptismo of the Hispanic Golden Age is one of the most interesting examples of this process. In the case of the printed conceptista sermons and their paratexts, it was less about virtuous examples or theological explanations about the order of the world, and more about metaphors, analogies, and similes that organized themselves under the pressure to produce extensive amplifications, ultimately convincing the public through aesthetic means. This mutation in the religious space is the focus of this work.
Figure 12.3. Author/order, year, sermon, and paratexts
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Figure 12.3. (Continued)
Novelty and Printed Courtly Sermons in New Spain 281
Figure 12.4. Chronological distribution of paratexts
“Admiration” was placed against “novelty” and, given that it was impossible to know exactly what was “new,” obscurity – materialized in “agudeza” (sharpness and acuity) and “ingenio” (wit and ingenuity) – was resorted to, providing some referentiality. These four categories of admiration, novelty, agudeza, and ingenio were articulated to act as a type of “smokescreen” regarding the quality of a discourse in this space of sacred rhetoric. The lack of referentiality can been seen through the formulaic and indefinite use of these concepts, as is evident when observing their semantic fields.27 Consider two examples: • Thus all those who know, know the liveliness of his discourses, the ingenuity of the embellishment, the solidity of judgments, the property of the voices, the figures of rhetoric; however, in this Sermon, where this Peter makes use of the shadows, he recompiled the agudezas of his agudezas, and the ingenioso of the ingenioso, and because of this, the prodigy of the prodigious, and the admiration of the admirations of his Sermons.28 • [I] find that there is more. Of what? Of everything because any extreme that is pondered upon appears to be more: If one considers the ingenio, it appears to be the most ingenious; if the subtileza, it appears
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the most, and finally here, contrary to the common proverb, even the least appears to be the most.29 Both cases reveal more of a play on words than a use of these concepts to describe something in the world. These examples function more as the “smokescreen” referred to previously. One can also observe in some cases an incipient reconstruction of the steps that were followed to achieve the work of Art, which could function as “rules of art.” That these cases are found in the sermons of the most recognized and famous preachers does not seem coincidental. Below are a few examples to demonstrate this: • My God, what strength of the genius, and of the obscure ingenio without intention, and emphatic without artifice, a new enigma in language is here seen.30 • In this sermon I greatly admire the most perfect idea of the thoughts, yet I no less admire, that eloquence says so well what ingenio also knew how to think … as I know the ingenio and the erudition of its Author very well, if by contrast I were to read [a sermon] of Father Vieira without his name, I would assume it was Father Poço’s: that what is similar in one and the other does not come from the study of imitation, but rather from similarity in the ingenios.31 Note in this last example how one passes from the lower value of the imitatio to the praise of ingenio.32 It is interesting to see how the religious adjoins the artistic in these quotes, but it is the latter that is particularly valued. This can be observed in the praise given to the achievements of the piece in terms of its “author” and “talent” rather than the “preacher” and the “grace” that allowed him to create a good sermon: “With willing obedience I have admired it, and admired it greatly as birth of an author of such admirable talent.”33 The use of these four categories in the paratexts that I am analysing is concentrated between 1680 and 1720, which coincides with the development of the genres that are here highlighted, namely, sentires, pareceres, and aprobaciones, all genres that more clearly refer to “Art.” Despite their formulaic use, we can distinguish specific fields for each of the four categories that reveal their diverse functions and their interconnection. Novelty Until the beginning of the sixteenth century what was ancient was considered superior to what was modern, and re-establishing the original was
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important; this was the goal of the Renaissance and of the Reformation itself. However, towards the end of the sixteenth century and especially in the seventeenth century, “novelty” began to increase in value. This is a rather complex phenomenon,34 but for the purposes of this study it is crucial to underscore the effect that printed sermons had on the rejection of reiteration for amplification. From this point on, “information was information only if it was new. It could not be repeated.”35 Consider the following examples: • The subtlety of establishing new directions, in well-known cases … inventor of rarely seen cases, as if newly devised.36 • Well deserved, given the singularity of the matter, the exactness of proofs, the exquisiteness of eruditions, all with ingenio, nothing with redundancy.37 • The novelty of its subject matter …38 Stylistic innovations certainly entered this field, as evident from the following paratext: “Who does not admire the novelty of Studies, the variety of concepts, the sublimity of style[?]”39 However, while in science the contours of what was new were becoming clearer, in Art, as previously mentioned, there was no clear referent in the world to adduce to its being “new” and its goal, the artificialness of artistic creation, was not clearly visible.40 Thus, it was symptomatically assumed that novelty was enjoyable in itself: “Joined to utility, and to sweetness, [is] novelty, that among all things elevates itself with the title of the enjoyable.”41 Finally, a range of attitudes towards novelty can be seen in these paratexts. However, its appreciation always concerns the form, the style, but never the content, which in religious terms was insurmountable. Even Baltasar Gracián thought the new was to be searched within “the familiar rather than falling under the spell of the new and taking a disparaging view of the old.”42 As a contemporary put it, “One and another Doctrine, both marvellously harmonized, perform the credits of the Pulpit and the Lecture, because making them metaphysically so accessible is no less great art than to agudamente [pointedly] elevate moral truths to the heights of scholastic agudezas.”43 Admiratio Since classical antiquity, the meaning of art resided in the stimulation of the feeling of “astonishment” and “admiration,” two sides of the same coin.44 Nevertheless, as Art became removed from imitatio, as it distanced itself from previous meanings, the possibility of surprising
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by deviation from what is known – by novelty – increased, and along with it, admiration increased.45 This admiration was produced from “the occurrence of something ‘new’ as a deviation from expected continuity and repetition. Admiratio is thus conceived of as applying to the exception, as an undifferentiated state (passion) … To generate admiratio, where it does not arise on its own and can then be occasion for religious experience, is a matter for art.46 Once more, it is worthwhile to note the proximity of the religious and artistic experiences.”47 However, for what I want to demonstrate here, it is important to note, as does Luhmann himself, that the “astonishment of wonder” is experienced not only by the spectator who is amazed by the fact that the work of art was achieved but also by the artist who is amazed by the order he achieved through the changing relationship between the steps through which he achieves the work, between provocation and the possible response. It is here where the paratexts would be inserted, produced by the authors of sermons themselves,48 as they moved from one genre to another, from preaching to art, forming a republic of artist-preachers. As seen previously, “admiration” is the most frequently found concept in the paratexts. Given this, the cases below highlight “admiration” (wonder) as that undifferentiated, pre-judgment state, as René Descartes defined it: When the first encounter with some object surprises us, and we judge it to be new, or very different from what we knew in the past or from what we supposed it was going to be, this makes us wonder and be astonished at it. And since this can happen before we know in the least whether this object is suitable to us or not, it seems to me that Wonder is the first of all the passions. It had no opposite, because if the object presented has nothing in it that surprises us, we are not in the least moved by it and regard it without passion.49
Consider then the following cases: With rare novelty as well, Father Lucas del Rincón also discoursed; he offers sweetness that flatters understanding and marvels that bring admiration, effects that are those of a Prayer, which when animated with the liveliness of the ingenio, sweetly usurps the senses without freedom for anything more than applause.50 An idea so ingeniosa and rare that if heard, seized admiration, and if read, astounded the highest level of thinking.51
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The Agudeza and the Ingenio I close the process described in this essay with the use of the concepts of agudeza and ingenio – which in some way includes inventiveness – that function as the most tangible referents for novelty and admiration. Novelty and its respective admiration are obtained through that which is agudo and ingenioso: But, in this Sermon, where this Peter makes use of the shadows, he recompiled agudezas from his agudezas, and the ingenioso from the ingenioso, and therefore the prodigy from the prodigious, and admiration from the admiration of his Sermons.52 And above all, one will admire, that this sermon makes visible in its author an agudo ingenio, with the salt of prudence and modesty.53 It captures my attention in admiration to see how delicate the ingenio of this Wise Speaker is, when with such exquisite novelty he proposes the conjunction of the Heaven of Sunday with Earth.54 [A]dmiring the agudeza, with which this ingeniosissimo (most ingenious) Speaker devised the matter of his Panegyric to Christ …55
However, as can be observed in these examples, ingenio and agudeza have no content within themselves. They only refer to the genius that produces a novel work of art with these qualities. One does not know why these works generate wonder and awe, only that they do. Corollary “Courtly” or “urban” sermons, as religious discourses, returned to their normal course during the eighteenth century. The printing of all sacred oratory pieces decreased with the decline of the ancien régime. However, as I hope to have shown through the analysis of these paratexts, the Baroque sermon contributed to the formation of an audience that began preparing itself to understand Art by identifying “novelty.” NOTES 1 This theme is discussed extensively in Chinchilla Pawling, De la Compositio Loci a la República de las letras.
286 Perla Chinchilla Pawling 2 For identity and the sermon, see Chinchilla Pawling, Procesos de construcción de las identidades de México. 3 From here on, when referring to modern Art, I capitalize the word to distinguish between the plurality of “the arts” and its own ontological conception. 4 Historiography itself has shown that this was a slow process, in which many religious aspects – above all the existence of God – were not questioned until much later. 5 See Maravall, La cultura del barroco. 6 Gerard Genette has denominated all these productions that present and surround a text as paratexts. His fascinating work presents the literary functions of each paratextual element and offers several examples of each one. It is in this sense that I use the concept of paratext, extending it beyond its literary use. Magda Díaz Morales, “Paratextos,” Apostillas Literarias (blog), 20 January 2006, http://apostillasnotas.blogspot.com/2006/01 /paratextos.html. 7 Luhmann, A Systems Theory of Religion, 158. 8 Ibid. 9 While I use the traditional way of referring to post-Tridentine culture as the era of the “Counter-Reformation,” “Catholic Reformation,” or “Tridentine Reformation,” John O’Malley’s proposal to use “Early Modern Catholicism” is certainly very lucid and should be adopted, as he suggests. He argues that “we need to accept the multiplicity of names as a good thing, for each of them captures an important aspect of the reality … we need to add “Early Modern Catholicism” to the list as a more comprehensive designation than the others, a designation that provides for aspects they let slip through their grasp.” O’Malley, Trent and All That, 5. 10 To the doubling that language and religion previously undertook, and thanks to which the world, in the state in which it is found, was “designated as reality,” Art added a new doubling of objects, visible through imagination. Certainly, this process of increasing extent, astonishment, and complexity beginning in the Baroque would still take another four centuries to develop fully. See Luhmann, Art as a Social System, 142–3. 11 Ibid., 142. 12 Ibid., 141. 13 According to Luhmann, perception is an intra-psychic phenomenon that cannot be transmitted in its entirety in communicative terms, but Art is able to “externalize” a part of this experience, making it communicable. Religion, however, would cease to be what it is if it would claim to communicate “transcendence,” the mystery of God to which the human being has no access. Religion, like Art, doubles the world, but while Art
Novelty and Printed Courtly Sermons in New Spain 287 distinguishes the world from fiction, religion distinguishes it as immanencetranscendence. Luhmann, Art as a Social System, 141. “Religion always deals with a double reality: on one side there is the immanent reality, real, and on the other the transcendent reality, imaginary … [I]t is possible to observe how beside all that can be said there is something undeterminable, unobservable, transcendent. Difference reenters on the observable side and becomes explicit as a unit of difference, mysterious and paradoxical.” (“La religión siempre tiene que ver con una realidad doble: por un lado está la realidad inmanente, real, y por el otro la realidad trascendente, imaginaria … es posible observar cómo al lado de todo de lo que se puede hablar hay algo indeterminable, inobservable, trascendente. La diferencia reentra en el lado observable y se vuelve explícita como unidad de la diferencia, misteriosa y paradójica.”) Corsi et al., Glosario, 139. 14 Luhmann. Theory of Society, 2: 42. 15 Luhmann, Art as a Social System, 140. 16 For Luhmann, this process happened for painting during the mid-sixteenth century, as confirmed by the development of the Italian Renaissance, while for “narrative art” it happened sometime later, which would coincide with the Baroque space that I attempt to explore here. See Luhmann, Art as a Social System, 144. See also the article by Pablo Restrepo Gautier in this volume for a discussion of conceptismo and emblems. 17 Oral communication is accumulative and “copious” or redundant. The rhetorical means of achieving this accumulation and reiteration is known as amplificatio or “amplification.” Luhmann affirms that it becomes problematic if put in terms of truth, whereas if it is seen according to its communicative function, its importance is understood. What was its importance? To a degree, by means of the amplificatio we can penetrate the changes in vetero-European society. Amplification – for some a rhetorical procedure, while for others a figure of speech (rhetorical figure) – always was present in classical rhetoric. It was a widely used device in ancient times to enhance and highlight an idea, or to develop and extend a theme, having an aesthetic as well as an argumentative function, both ornamental and explicative. However, during the Renaissance and especially in the post-Tridentine Catholic sphere, amplification acquired an unprecedented weight. Given this, I believe that interesting connections can be made between society and the communicative function of amplification. The Tridentine church was forced to strengthen “orthodoxy,” but this could not be accomplished through open theological discussion due to the fear of the Reformation. “Divine” truths could not be discussed among the congregation, which had to be catechized without theological complexities. Preaching was in
288 Perla Chinchilla Pawling the eye of the storm needing to catechize the congregation, yet doing so without profundity or questioning, so as not to endanger the faith of the believer. The rhetorical device for this was precisely that of amplification, since it allowed a persuasive text to be elaborated without calling into question revealed truth. See Chinchilla Pawling, “La república de las letras.” 18 I develop this point in Chinchilla Pawling, “La transmisión de la verdad divina.” 19 See Chinchilla Pawling, “La república de las letras.” 20 “The supporting function of objects defined in religious, political, or stratificatory terms diminishes and is eventually cast off as inessential … Common values were not just negated or turned on their head; they were neutralized and rejected as distinctions for the sake of demonstrating possibilities of order that had nothing to do with them.” Luhmann, Art as a Social System, 144. 21 Ibid., 146. 22 Ibid., 145. 23 “LICENCIA: El permisso ó beneplácito que se concede a uno para executar alguna cosa. LICENCIA: Se toma muchas veces por libertad imoderada y facultad de hacer o decir todo quanto a uno se le antoja.” (Licence : The permit or satisfaction that one is granted in order to execute something. Licence : Many times it is taken as immoderate freedom and power to do or say everything one wishes.) Diccionario de Autoridades de la Real Academia Española (1726–1739), s.v. “Licencia,” accessed 20 January 2015, http://web .frl.es/DA.html; italics added. 24 “SENTIR: Vale tambien juzgar, opinar, formar parecer, ó dictamen acerca de alguna cosa. Lat. Iudicare. Existimare. Arbitrari. SENTIR: Se toma tambien por dictamen, parecer.” (Feeling: Also means to judge, to form an opinion, to form a view, or advise about something. Lat. Iudicare. Existimare. Arbitrari. Feeling: Also means judgment, opinion.) Diccionario de Autoridades de la Real Academia Española (1726–1739), s.v. “Sentir,” http://web.frl.es/DA.html; italics added. 25 “PARECER: Dictamen, voto o sentencia que se da o lleva en cualquier materia. Latín. Dictamen. Sententia. Opinio. AMBR. MOR. lib. 8. cap. 12. Porque en sus pareceres mostraban alguna duda y detenimiento, con terrible crueldad los puso fuego. PARECER: Vale también hacer juicio o dictamen acerca de alguna cosa. Usase, este verbo freqüentemente, como passivo y impersonal, significativo que el objeto excíta el juicio o dictamen en la persona que le hace, y correfponde al videor, eris Latino.” (View: Judgment, vote, or decision that is given or taken into account in any matter. Latin. Dictamen. Sententia. Opinio. AMBR. MOR. (Ambrosio de Morales) B. 8. Ch. 12. Because in their views some doubt and hesitation
Novelty and Printed Courtly Sermons in New Spain 289 were shown, with terrible cruelty [he] set them on fire. View: Also refers to judging or evaluating something. This verb is used frequently, passively, and impersonally, signifying that the object motivates the judgment or opinion in the person that makes it, and corresponds to the Latin videor, eris.) Diccionario de Autoridades de la Real Academia Española (1726–1739), s.v. “Parecer.” http://web.frl.es/DA.html; italics added. 26 I reviewed 240 sermons, primarily from New Spain, published between 1600 and 1765, from the Jesuit, Augustinian, Franciscan, Dominican, Carmelite, and Mercedarian orders, as well as from the secular clergy. From this total, I produced a comparative table of 66 sermons from 1660 to 1765, given that in previous years there are few examples of sentires and pareceres, unlike aprobaciones, which are present in almost all the examples, and censuras, which appear occasionally. I do not refer to the licences, which by law were supposed to be included in all publications. These sermons are housed in the National Library of Mexico, the CARSO Centre for the Study of Mexican History, and the special collection of old and rare books from the Francisco Xavier Clavijero Library of the Universidad Iberoamericana. See Chinchilla Perla, “La república de las letras.” 27 See Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators. 28 “Pues saben todos los que saben, lo vivo de sus discursos, lo ingenioso en la exornacion [sic], lo solido en las sentencias, la propriedad en las vozes, las figuras en lo rethorico; pero en este Sermon, en donde se vale este Pedro de las sombras, recopiló las agudezas, de sus agudezas, lo ingenioso, de lo ingenioso, y por esto el prodigio de los prodigios, y la admiración de las admiraciones de sus Sermones.” Aguinaga [Franciscan], “Sentir,” n.p.; italics added. 29 “Hallo que tiene mas. De que? de todo porque qualquiera estremo que se pondere parece lo mas: si se pondera el ingenio: parece lo mas ingenioso: si la subtileza ella parece lo mas: y finalmente aquí contra el vulgar probervio aun lo menos parece lo mas.” Coronado [secular priest], “Censura,” n.p.; italics added. 30 “Valgame Dios lo que es la fuerca del genio, y del ingenio obscuro sin intencion, y enphatico sin artificio, ven aqui otro nuevo enígma en el lenguaje …” Coronado, “Censura,” italics added. 31 “En este sermon mucho me admira la perfectissima idea de lo pensado; pero no me admira menos, que diga tan bien la eloquencia, lo que tambien supo pensar el ingenio … como tengo tan conocido el ingenio, y erudicion de su Autor si leyesse a la contra alguno del Padre Vieira sin nombre, le tuviera por del Padre Poço: que lo parecido en vno y otro no proviene de estudio en la imitacion, sino de similitud en los ingenios.” Sariñana y Cvenca [secular priest], “Sentir,” italics added. 32 Two further examples: And being this transition death to not few Preachers; in this one it is but to reveal the doubled liveliness of his ingenio … The discourses … here
290 Perla Chinchilla Pawling are alive with such dexterity, that following the oratory order, he passes from one concept to another, from one news to another, from one sharpness to another, without his art being shown, in such a way that the beauty of the construction is enjoyed without discovering the joints through which harmony passes through. He delights with what he says; teaches with what he notes; amuses with what he alludes to, and in one so brief sentence says more to attention, than to the ears. (“Y siendo este transito muerte para no pocos Predicadores; en este no es sino mostrar doblada la viveza de su ingenio… los discursos; aqui se avivan con tal destreza, que siguiendo el orden oratorio passa de uno en otro concepto, de una en otra noticia, de una en otra viveza, sin que se le entienda el arte, de modo que se goza en la fabrica toda la hermosura sin descubrir las coiunturas, por donde passa la armonia. Deleita con lo que dice; enseña con lo que apunta; divierte con lo que allude; y en una oracion tan breve dice mas, que á los oydos, á la atencion.”) Martínez de la Parra [Jesuit], “Sentir,” n.p.; italics added. Having attentively read the Sermon, and admiring in it the very concerted invention of its subject matter, so singular, and exquisite, the disposition and order so elucidated and unfettered in such a rush of circumstances; the grave and majestic eloquence of judgments, and of words, with which it beautifies the solidity and finesse of its concepts, and the sacred and profane erudition, so appropriate to the matter … truly it would seem that there was some special assistance from the Lord in the success of the Sermon. (“[A]viendo leido atentamente el Sermon, y admirando en el la invencion tan certada en assumpto, tan singular, y esquisito, la disposicion, y orden tan dilucido y desembarazado en tanto tropel de circunstancias; la grave y magestosidad eloquencia de sentencias, y de palabras, con que hermosea lo solido, y delgado de sus conceptos, y la erudicon sagrada, y profana tan al proposito de su assumpto … verdaderamente parece, que tuvo en el acierto del Sermon especial assistencia del Senor.”) Valtierra [Jesuit], “Parecer,” n.p.; italics added. 33 “Con obediencia gustosa le he admirado, y admirado por grande como parto de Autor de tan admirable talento.” Gutiérrez de Medina [secular priest], “Aprobación,” n.p.; italics added. 34 “It seems that far-reaching changes occurred only in the course of the sixteenth century, despite perpetuation of the notion that the present was an age of decline. One starting point could have been that the technology of the printing press made information available on an unprecedented scale, relatively independently of the traditional controls exercised by the Church or the extensive regional contact networks of nobility and trade.” Luhmann, Theory of Society, 254. 35 Luhmann, Theory of Society, 254.
Novelty and Printed Courtly Sermons in New Spain 291 36 “lo sutil de registrar nuevos rumbos, en trillados assumptos … invencionero de assumptos tan no vistos, como nuevamente ideados.”(Solisa y Haro [Augustinian], “Parecer,” n.p.; italics added. 37 “Bien merecido á lo singular del assumpto, á lo ajustado de las pruebas, a lo exquisito de las erudiciones, todo con ingenio, nada con redundancia.” Robles [Jesuit], “Parecer,” n.p.; italics added. 38 “la novedad de sus assumptos.” Robles, “Parecer,” n.p.; italics added. 39 “Quien no admirara la novedad de los Estudios, la variedad de los conceptos, la sublimidad del estilo.” Boylly [secular priest], “Aprobación,” n.p.; italics added. 40 Luhmann, Theory of Society, 254. 41 “Juntase a la utilidad, y á la dulzura, la novedad, que entre todas las cosas se levanta con el titulo de agradable.” Bocanegra y Cantabrana [Mercedarian], “Parecer,” n.p.; italics added. 42 Luhmann, Theory of Society, 254; italics added. 43 “Una y otra Doctrina maravillosamente hermanadas desempeñan los créditos de Pulpito, y Cathedra, pues hazerlas methafisicas tan familiarmente tratables, no es arte menos grande, que elevar agudamente las verdades morales, a la cumbre de Escolasticas agudezas.” Colodro [secular priest], “Aprobación,” n.p. 44 “The old European tradition used the term admiratio, meaning both admiration [Bewunderung] and surprise/astonishment [Verwunderung].” Luhmann, Theory of Society, 116. 45 From that point on, it began to be clear that Art was starting to no longer allow itself to be included in the pursuit of goals within the world, but rather, that its specificity was “to show through works of its own that even in the realm of possibility there is order after all.” Luhmann, Art as a Social System, 146. 46 Luhmann, Theory of Society, 116. 47 “The best summary is to be found in Art. 53, of “L’admiration” in Descartes’ Les passions de l´âme (in Œuvres et lettres [Paris: Pléiade, 1952], 723–4).” Luhmann, Theory of Society, 388n366. 48 For example, preachers such as Isidro de Sariñana, bishop of Antequera (today Oaxaca), at the end of the seventeenth century. 49 Descartes, “The Order and Enumeration of the Passions,” 52. 50 “Con novedad tambien peregrina tambien discurrió el Padre Lucas del Rincon, ofrece dulςuras, que lisongeen el entendimiento, y maravillas, que se lleven la admiracion, que estos effectos son proprios de una Oracion, que animada con la viveza del ingenio, usurpa dulcemente los sentidos sin permitir libertad al arbitrio para otra cosa, que para el aplauso.” León de Medina [Jesuit], “Aprobación,” n.p.; italics added.
292 Perla Chinchilla Pawling 51 “Pues idea tan ingeniosa, y peregrina si oida, embargaba la admiración, leyda, pasma á el mas elevado pensar.” León de Medina, “Aprobación,” n.p.; italics added). Two further examples: But the paper can well trust my censura, when the whole discourse is godfathered through admiration. And when my censura of the subjects of the kingdom is most often admiration than judgement, in this case, if it is not lost in its abyss, it will at least be suspended in such depth. I listened attentively to him; indeed, when this famous speaker preaches, enjoyment is not in the hands of the listener because his attention is stolen by his teaching, the faculties of the soul are attracted by the sweet positioning of language, and the senses are suspended with the richness of his voice, and the languages of his actions. (“Pero bien se puede fiar de mi censura el papel, cuando todo esta apadrinado de admiracion el discurso. Y cuando mi censura en los sujetos del reino llega las mas veces a ser admiracion, que juicio, en esta ocasión si no se pierde en su abismo, por lo menos se suspende en tanta profundidad. Oile con atencion; si, que cuando predica este orador insigne, no esta en mano de quien le oye el divertirse, porque roba su atencion el magisterio, atrae las potencias la dulce colocacion del lenguaje, y suspende los sentidos lo sonoro de su voz, y lenguajes de sus acciones.”) Morales [secular priest], “Censura,” n.p.; italics added. Thus I see it in this ray of ingenio: upon striking it hits the target, stunning one’s attention. (“Assi lo veo en este rayo de ingenio, que al mesmo salir logra el tiro dejando atonita la atención.”) Martínez de la Parra [Jesuit], “Sentir,” n.p.; italics added. 52 “pero en este Sermon, en donde se vale este Pedro de las sombras, recopiló las agudezas, de sus agudezas, lo ingenioso, de lo ingenioso, y por esto el prodigio de los prodigios, y la admiracion de las admiraciones de sus Sermones.” Aguinaga [Franciscan], “Sentir,” n.p.; italics added. 53 “Y sobre todo admirará, que este sermón haze visible en su autor, un agudo ingenio, con la sal de la prudencia y modestia.” Rodríguez [Jesuit], “Aprobación,” n.p.; italics added. 54 “Me llama la atencion para admirarme veer que es tan delicado el ingenio de este Sabio Orador, cuando con novedad tan primorosa nos propone la conjuncion del Cielo de Domingo con la Tierra.” Aguilar y Pinto [Augustinian], “Aprobación,” n.p.; italics added. 55 “Admirando la agudeza, con que este ingeniosissimo Orador duscurrio por assumpto de su Panegyrico a Chisto.” Eguiara y Eguren [secular priest], “Parecer,” n.p.; italics added.
Novelty and Printed Courtly Sermons in New Spain 293 WORKS CITED Aguilar y Pinto, Fr. Gregorio de. “Aprobación.” In Agustín Garedier, Sagrada competencia de las más sublime sabiduria. México: Doña Maria de Ribera, 1748. Aguinaga, Fr. Ioseph Antonio de. “Sentir.” In Pedro Danon, Sombra funebre. México: Herederos de la Viuda de Miguel de Rivera Calderón, 1715. Aguire, Pedro Antonio de. Transito gloriosissimo de N. Sra. La Santissima Virgen Maria. México: Juan Joseph Guillena Carrascoso, 1694. Avila, Alonso de. Sermon que predicó … a la apparicion Milagrosa de nuestra Senora del Pilar. México: Francisco Rodriguez Lupercio, 1679. Baxandall, Michael. Giotto and the Orators: Humanist Observers of Painting and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition, 1350–1450. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. Bocanegra y Cantabrana, Fr. Manuel de. “Parecer.” In P. Fr. Domingo de Ferrufino, Vida de el Glorioso Protomartyr de el Japon. México: Joseph Bernardo de Hogal, 1733. Boylly, Francisco. “Aprobación.” In Pedro Gonzalez Galindo, Sermón Segvndo a la Honoracion annva. Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1640. Carranza, Francisco Xavier. Sermón de la Adoracion de los Reyes. México: Doña Maria de Rivera, 1743. Cavero Alvarez y Geronymo Ignacio Robles. “Aprobación.” In Thomas Maraver, Sermon en Accion de Gracias a el Santissimo Sacramento. Cádiz: D. Pedro Gomez de Requena, 1755. Chinchilla Pawling, Perla. De la Compositio Loci a la República de las letras. La predicación jesuita en el siglo XVII novohispano, México: Universidad Iberoamericana, 2004. – “La república de las letras y la prédica jesuita novohispana del XVII. Los paratextos y la emergencia del arte como sistema.” Estudios de Historia Novohispana 41 (2009): 79–104. – “La transmisión de la verdad divina.” In Escrituras de la Modernidad: Los jesuitas entre cultura retórica y cultura científica, ed. Perla Chinchilla Pawling and Antonella Romano, 355–76. México: Universidad Iberoamericana, 2008. –, ed. Procesos de construcción de las identidades de México, De la historia nacional a la historia de las identidades. Nueva España, siglos XVI-XVIII. México: Universidad Iberoamericana, 2010. Colodro, Francisco Benito. “Aprobación.” In Pedro Nolasco Cabalero, Sermón que predico el Dr. D. Pedro Nolasco Cavallero Lectoral de Sagrada Escritura de la Santa Iglesia Catedral de Siguença. Madrid: Francisco García Fernandez, 1672. Coronado, Alonso. 1679. “Censura.” In Balthasar Mansilla, Sermón al glorioso patriarca San Ignacio de Loyola. México: Juan de Ribera, 1679.
294 Perla Chinchilla Pawling Corsi, Giancarlo, Elena Esposito, Claudio Baraldi, and Niklas Luhmann. Glosario sobre la teoría de Niklas Luhmann. Translated by Miguel Romero Pérez y Carlos Villalobos. México: Universidad Iberoamericana, 1996. Danon, Pedro. Sombra funebre. México: Herederos de la Viuda de Miguel de Rivera Calderón, 1715. Descartes, René. “The Order and Enumeration of the Passions.” In The Passions of the Soul, translated by Stephen Voss. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989. Eguiara y Eguren, Manuel Joachin de. “Parecer.” In Francisco Xavier Carranza, Sermón de la Adoracion de los Reyes. México: Doña Maria de Rivera, 1743. Ferrufino, P. Fr. Domingo de. Vida de el Glorioso Protomartyr de el Japon. México: Joseph Bernardo de Hogal, 1733. Garedier, Agustín. Sagrada competencia de las más sublime sabiduria. México: Doña Maria de Ribera, 1748. Gomez de Solis, Luis. Sermon de la Purificacion de Maria. México: Viuda de Bernal Calderon, 1677. Gonzalez Galindo, Pedro. Sermón Segvndo a la Honoracion annva. Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1640. Gutierrez de Medina, Cristobal. “Aprobación.” In Juan San Miguel, Sermon del Santisimo Sacramento a la fiesta de las Cuarenta Horas. México: Hipolito de Rivera, 1655. León de Medina, P. Pedro. “Aprobación.” In Lucas del Rincón, Oracion panegyrica a glorias de Santa Rosalia. México: Herederos de la Viuda de Francisco Rodriguez Lupercio, 1724. Luhmann, Niklas. Art as a Social System. Translated by Eva M. Knodt. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. – A Systems Theory of Relgion. Edited by André Kieserling. Translated by Adrian Hermann. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013. – Theory of Society. Vol. 2. Translated by Rhodes Barrett. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013. Mansilla, Balthasar. 1679. Sermón al glorioso patriarca San Ignacio de Loyola. México: Juan de Ribera, 1679. Maravall, José Antonio. La cultura del barroco. Barcelona: Ariel, 1998 [1975]. Maraver, Thomas. Sermon en Accion de Gracias a el Santissimo Sacramento. Cádiz: D. Pedro Gomez de Requena, 1755. Martínez de la Parra, Juan. “Sentir.” In Pedro Antonio de Aguirre, Transito gloriosissimo de N. Sra. La Santissima Virgen Maria. México: Juan Joseph Guillena Carrascoso, 1694. Martínez Grimaldo, Juan. Sermon que en el miércoles de ceniza predico a la nobilissima ciudad de San Lucar de Barrameda, en su mayor parrochial iglesia, D. Juan Martínez Grillaldo, cura en ella. Cádiz: Herederos de Cristoval de Requena, 1738.
Novelty and Printed Courtly Sermons in New Spain 295 Morales, P. Marcos de. “Censura.” In Juan San Miguel, Sermon del Santisimo Sacramento a la fiesta de las Cuarenta Horas. México: Hipolito de Rivera, 1655. Nolasco Cabalero, Pedro. Sermón que predico el Dr. D. Pedro Nolasco Cavallero Lectoral de Sagrada Escritura de la Santa Iglesia Catedral de Siguença. Madrid: Francisco García Fernandez, 1672. O’Malley, John W. Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002. Porras, Joseph de. Sermon en accion de gracias por la insigne victoria. México: Juan de Ribera, 1684. Pozo, Juan del. Sermon panegyrico, que en la dedicacion de un altar a los Dolores de Maria SS. México: Francisco Rodriguez Lupercio, 1679. Real Academia Española. Diccionario de la lengua castellana. Madrid: Imprenta de Francisco del Hierro, 1726. Rincón, Lucas de el. Oracion panegyrica a glorias de Santa Rosalia. México: Herederos de la Viuda de Francisco Rodriguez Lupercio, 1724. Robles, Ivan de. “Parecer.” In Alonso de Avila, Sermon que predicó … a la apparicion Milagrosa de nuestra Senora del Pilar. México: Francisco Rodriguez Lupercio, 1679. Rodríguez, M.R.P. Domingo. “Aprobación.” In Juan Martínez Grimaldo, Sermon que en el miércoles de ceniza predico a la nobilissima ciudad de San Lucar de Barrameda, en su mayor parrochial iglesia, D. Juan Martínez Grillaldo, cura en ella. Cádiz: Herederos de Cristoval de Requena, 1738. San Miguel, Juan. Sermon del Santisimo Sacramento a la fiesta de las Cuarenta Horas. México: Hipolito de Rivera, 1655. Sariñana y Cvenca, Isidro de. “Sentir.” In Juan del Pozo, Sermon panegyrico, que en la dedicacion de un altar a los Dolores de Maria SS. México: Francisco Rodriguez Lupercio, 1679. Solisa y Haro, Fr. Marcelino de. “Parecer.” In Luis Gomez de Solis, Sermon de la Purificacion de Maria, by Luis Gomez de Solis. México: Viuda de Bernal Calderon, 1677, n.p.. Valtierra, Fernando I. “Parecer.” In Joseph de Porras, Sermon en accion de gracias por la insigne victoria. México: Juan de Ribera, 1684.
13 The Literary Dream in Querétaro: A Baroque Genre and Enlightenment Ideals in New Spain beatriz de alba - koch
Literary dreams penned during the Enlightenment in New Spain exemplify the malleability of Baroque genres. Emptied of all their original content, the recognizable form of the seventeenth-century Baroque narrative dream was repurposed over the course of a century and a half to address challenging circumstances. But can these later narrative dreams be considered Baroque? When the Baroque is circumscribed to the art of the seventeenth century, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century manifestations of the same style have looked to be anomalous. From this perspective, the long-lived Ibero-American Baroque exemplifies cultural belatedness. Yet as José Lezama Lima claims in his classic essay La expresión americana, the New World Baroque did not lag behind the European Baroque. To the contrary, it can be seen as having anticipated the Enlightenment: “That Baroque of ours, which we situate toward the late seventeenth and through the entire eighteenth century, is closely related to the Enlightenment … On occasion, in its reliance on Cartesian scientism, it anticipates the Enlightenment,” argues Lezama Lima, referring to Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Sueño and the astronomical works of Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora, her compatriot and contemporary.1 Sigüenza and Sor Juana were novatores, participants in a proto-Enlightenment intellectual movement that Jesús Pérez-Magallón and Russell Sebold argue began in Iberia around 1675 and was linked to the support provided by Don Juan José de Austria to scientific pursuits, eventually becoming the “conscience” of a Hispanic world in crisis.2 As discussed in a number of studies in this volume, in Ibero-America the relationship between the Baroque and the Enlightenment was one of continuity rather than rupture. As such, a variety of discursive modes that flourished in the seventeenth century such as emblems, enigmas, the picaresque, quixotic novels, and literary dreams were also popular in late eighteenth-century New Spain and early independent Mexico. Paradoxically, these modes of
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expression were adopted by writers that favoured neoclassical aesthetics and espoused Enlightenment values. Confronting the reader with unsettling, chiaroscuro views of places, events, and peoples not accessible under normal circumstances, literary dreams are first-person narratives that blur the distinctions between the real and the unreal. They are “morning after” reports of the visions and fantasies that purportedly appeared or happened to the dreamer while sleeping. Dreams were an attractive means to veil political or social criticisms during periods of turmoil, allowing authors to abrogate some of the responsibility for their writings under the guise of unconsciousness. Enrique Fernández argues that in seventeenth-century Spain dreams “were instrumentalized in the arts to convey the anxiety that daytime consciousness could be as unreal as dreams.”3 Two famous Golden Age characters embody this anxiety: “Segismundo, the protagonist of Calderón’s emblematic play Life Is a Dream, could not establish whether he was dreaming or awake; Don Quixote lived in a dreamlike world of fantasy induced by his excessive reading. For them, a cave could metamorphose into a palace and windmills into giants as easily as in a dream.”4 Despite dreams being one of the most characteristic expressions of the Baroque, virtually no literary dreams have survived from seventeenthcentury New Spain. The notable exception is Sor Juana’s El sueño, written around 1685. As one of the most complex poems in Hispanic letters, this daring exploration of the limits of knowledge has often been seen as exemplifying modern scepticism rather than Baroque desengaño or disillusionment. Sor Juana’s Sueño, however, departs from the conventions of the narrative dream genre, as it is written in verse instead of prose and is devoid of a guide; it is also the only dream written by a woman. Because of its exceptionality, the dream written by Sor Juana did not inspire imitations. However, over a dozen dreams were written by Sor Juana’s compatriots between 1796 and 1827, a tumultuous period that saw the transformation of the viceroyalty into an independent nation. Francisco Eduardo Tresguerras (1745–1833), José Mariano Acosta Enríquez (1751–1818), and José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi (1776– 1827) were criollos – descendants of Europeans born in the New World – that availed themselves of the Golden Age literary dream in order to criticize the ancien régime. They wrote in a period that spans the rule of nine viceroys and eleven years of insurgent violence that began in 1810. In this period Mexico emerged as an independent nation with the short-lived regency and empire of Agustín de Iturbide, from 1821 to 1823, followed by the proclamation of a republican government in 1824. These political transformations were not unrelated to the economic and social crisis that affected New Spain in the late eighteenth century, worsening
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as of 1789. The Bourbon administration, which came to power in 1700, from 1759 steadily undermined the political consensus that the Habsburgs had established with local elites in New Spain during the previous centuries. Despite New Spain’s significant contributions to the crown’s coffers, novohispanos were marginalized from positions of power and influence in their patria or homeland, a situation that they resented. The dreams of Tresguerras and Acosta that circulated in manuscript form in the city of Querétaro, and those printed by Lizardi in Mexico City, reveal a sense of alienation and, particularly for Lizardi, a strong tension between belonging to a metropolitan Spanish culture yet feeling oppressed by the Spanish monarchy’s policies towards its overseas possessions. However, all expressed a sense of belonging to Hispanic culture; all three claimed that they were writing in imitation of the Spanish writers they admired, particularly Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547–1616), Francisco de Quevedo (1580–1645) – the most accomplished Golden Age author of dreams – and Diego de Torres Villarroel (1693–1770). Like other novohispanos, Tresguerras, Acosta, and Lizardi considered these writers’ works as pinnacles of their own literary tradition. The direct references to them and their intertextuality bridged transatlantic and chronological gaps that separated the New World from the Old, while anchoring the oneiric genre in the reality of their novohispano patria. When Tresguerras, Acosta, and Lizardi include Quevedo, Torres Villarroel, and Cervantes as fictional characters in their dreams, these writers become privileged interlocutors to whom the criollos express their disaffections and through whom the criollos make their views more authoritative. I focus here on the texts of Tresguerras and Acosta. They knew one another, resided in the same provincial city, shared similar points of view, and their texts, unlike Lizardi’s, remained unpublished until the twentieth century.5 Tresguerras’s “Sueño verdadero” and “El autómata Pasquino” Tresguerras was an architect, engraver, painter, sculptor, musician, and writer from Celaya, a city in what is now the state of Guanajuato, in the prosperous central area of Mexico known as the Bajío. Inmaculada Rodríguez Moya labels him “un artista total.”6 In 1796, Tresguerras penned “Sueño verdadero” (True Dream), illustrating his text with a remarkable ink drawing. When Tresguerras wrote this dream he was residing in Querétaro, on commission by the city council to design the Fountain of Neptune.7 Completed in 1797, it was the first neoclassical structure of Querétaro (fig. 13.1).8 Tresguerras’s fountain is also
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Figure 13.1. Francisco Eduardo Tresguerras, Fountain of Neptune, Querétaro, Mexico. Photo by author.
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the most elaborate and one of the few still standing of the twenty-two that distributed the water brought into the city by Querétaro’s aqueduct. Not everyone, however, approved of the works of Tresguerras. His rivals penned their criticisms in a manuscript entitled “Ensaladilla” (Little Salad). Quotes from this text are provided by Tresguerras in his protracted satirical rebuttal, consisting of a number of literary pieces and ink drawings posthumously published as Ocios literarios (Literary Otium). “Sueño verdadero” is a subsection of the piece entitled “Ensayo prosaico, sobre un libelo infamatorio, que gracias a el diablo ha escrito un ingenio queretano, que llaman Suás” (Prosaic Essay, about an Inflammatory Libel, That Thanks to the Devil a Genius from Querétaro, Called Suás, Has Written). Paradoxically, Tresguerras availed himself here of the Baroque dream genre to document how he lived the tensions between those who still favoured Baroque aesthetics and those, like himself, who preferred neoclassicism. Surrounded by a Baroque architectural landscape, one that he attempted to change, his “Ensayo prosaico” offers erudite commentary on issues of taste amid protracted personal attacks stemming from professional jealousies. Querétaro, located some two hundred kilometres to the northeast of Mexico City, had a strategic position in the consolidation of New Spain’s territory. The conquest of the “Gran Chichimeca,” the vast expanse to the centre-north of the viceroyalty containing great mineral riches, was spearheaded from Querétaro. The city marked the beginning of the camino de la plata (silver road) towards the mines of Guanajuato, San Luis Potosí, Zacatecas, Chihuahua, and beyond, which were to provide two-thirds of the revenue of the Spanish empire in the eighteenth century. As the “passage for all the interior,”9 Querétaro became an economically vibrant city, and since the seventeenth century this wealth has been reflected in its exuberant architecture and its openness to stylistic innovations. In Querétaro, some of the earliest polygonal arches and estípite columns – trademarks of novohispano Baroque – appeared long before they were adopted in the viceroyalty’s capital (fig. 13.2).10 When Tresguerras and Acosta resided in Querétaro, the city had approximately fifty thousand inhabitants and boasted more than fifteen churches, two colleges, a hospice, a hospital, ten convents, six piazzas, and a new Alameda (park). Querétaro’s spiritual landscape was particularly famous. By 1739, the Jesuit Francisco Antonio de Navarrete proposed that Querétaro’s architecture be examined with some “prolixity and time.”11 In the twentieth century, art historian Sacheverell Sitwell, erroneously attributing the churches of Santa Rosa de Viterbo and Santa Clara to Tresguerras, labels them as “the most perfect and complete examples of the Churriguerresque to be found anywhere in the world.”12 These architectural gems are the work of Ignacio Mariano de las Casas (1719–1771), Francisco Martínez Gudiño
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(1708–1775), and Pedro José de Rojas (?–1773), whom José Rodolfo Anaya Larios calls “the great triad of the Querétaro Baroque.”13 Las Casas designed the churches of Santo Domingo and Santa Rosa de Viterbo; he designed a number of magnificently elaborate altars in Santa Rosa as well as in the Church of Santa Clara. Martínez Gudiño also designed altars for Santa Rosa as well as its remarkable pulpit. In addition, he provided throughout Santa Rosa’s interior a unique petatillo, or woven-like gilded background, that unifies the altars (fig. 13.3). Rojas designed images and altars for the churches of Saint Anthony, the Congregation of Guadalupe, and the Church of the Augustinians.14 Tresguerras, however, identifying himself as “an aficionado of good taste,” judged Baroque works as lacking refinement and restraint.15 He saw Baroque artifice, intended to give rise to astonishment and wonder, as deceptive. For him, the Solomonic column – an essential element of the Baroque architectural idiom – was a “symbol of falsehood.”16 Tresguerras dedicates several pages of his “Ensayo prosaico” to a discussion of
Figure 13.2. Church of the Congregation of Guadalupe, Querétaro, Mexico. Photo by author. Note the polygonal arch and the estípite columns.
Figure 13.3. Interior, Santa Rosa de Viterbo, Querétaro, Mexico. Photo by author.
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Solomonic and Tuscan columns; the latter is presented as a superior symbol of fortitude. In support of his view he quotes treatises by renowned seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Spanish and Italian architects such as Tomás Vicente Tosca, José (Giovanni) Branca, Escamocio (Vicenzo Scamozzi), and Leonardo de Vegni, thus providing information on the sources available to him. Tresguerras’s comparison of the columns is intertwined with moral commentaries on the expressions of loyalty to the Spanish monarchy from the cities of Querétaro and Celaya. In 1791 all major cities in New Spain swore their allegiance to the monarch by erecting a column surmounted by a statue of Charles IV. Querétaro erected a Solomonic column; Tresguerras, however, designed a composite column for the city of Celaya, a monument that, unlike that of Querétaro, still stands today.17 Tresguerras affirms that the Solomonic column of Querétaro symbolizes only an apparent fidelity because it sustains the statue of the king falsely and “fugitively” through the helical shape of the column’s curves. By contrast, Tresguerras claims, his cylindrical column offers a uniform and rotund support for its statue, expressing a loyalty to the monarch that could not be toppled by “the winds of rebellion, nor by political clashes and sugar-coated pretexts of liberty and independence.”18 In the “Ensaladilla,” the friends and pupils of Las Casas refuted Tresguerras’s views, questioned the value of his works, and cast doubt over his authority as an architect. For reasons that remain unclear, the Real Academia de San Carlos de las Nobles Artes, Mexico City’s School of Fine Arts, denied Tresguerras the title of “meritorious academic.”19 Notwithstanding, Tresguerras received many important commissions in Celaya and throughout the Bajío. His impact in this region was considerable. A number of churches have been attributed to him or are believed to have been constructed under his direction, even at such early points in his career as 1786 for the camarín of San Miguel de Allende’s parish church and for the 1792 camarín for the Church of San Diego in Aguascalientes.20 In 1802 he began his most important work, the reconstruction of the El Carmen church in Celaya, transforming it into one of the first neoclassical churches in New Spain. Tresguerras has not achieved the same recognition for introducing neoclassicism in New Spain as the Valencian Manuel Tolsá. However, Tresguerras’s Fountain of Neptune, while less imposing than Tolsá’s 1803 equestrian statue of Charles IV, nonetheless precedes it by five years. The work of Tresguerras in Celaya antedates Tolsá’s most important commissions, the 1810 Cabañas Hospice in Guadalajara and the 1813 Palace of the Royal Seminar of Mines in Mexico City. Tresguerras was not the first novohispano in the Bajío to introduce stylistic novelties before a Spanish artist brought them to Mexico City. In 1680, in Querétaro’s Church of
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Figure 13.4. Church of El Carmen, Celaya, Mexico. Photo by author.
the Congregation of Guadalupe, the novohispano José de Bayas Delgado used for the first time in New Spain the polygonal arch and the estípite or inverted column, two defining characteristics of the novohispano Baroque (fig. 13.2). Nonetheless, the introduction of the estípite is usually attributed to the Castilian Jerónimo de Balbás, who used them prominently in his 1737 Altar of the Kings in Mexico City’s cathedral.21 El Carmen, whose façade is not conceived as a retable, as is characteristic of Hispanic baroque churches, is the first of a handful of churches in México provided with a central bell tower (fig. 13.4).22 Tresguerras designed the retables and statuary for this handsome edifice, and painted the frescoes for its Chapel of the Final Judgment, thus providing a uniformity of style that is infrequent in Mexican churches.23 The civil constructions of Tresguerras include the 1806 bridge over the Laja River in Celaya and the 1825 Alarcón Theatre in San Luis Potosí as well as mansions in San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato. In 1807, Celaya named Tresguerras maestro mayor of public works, authorizing him to
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direct, revise, destroy, or amend present and future constructions. Francisco de la Maza indicates that Tresguerras availed himself of this title to clear Celaya of Baroque façades and altars; he also replaced Baroque altars with neoclassical ones in San Luis Potosí.24 While Tresguerras’s Ocios literarios and his later activities as maestro mayor at Celaya provide evidence of his aversion for the Baroque, some of his paintings and drawings reveal a different point of view. As his 1794 selfportrait demonstrates, Tresguerras was not only well acquainted with the visual registers of the Baroque but also found them effective. Depicting himself as a stylish man of thirty-five years of age, he framed the medallion that contains his bust with inscriptions that provide his name, city of birth, title, and other identifying information. In the foreground, he depicted the symbols of his trades, including books, a painter’s palette, an architect’s blueprint, and a drawing resembling the Neptune of his fountain. This staged and symbolic self-portrait, considered by Rodríguez Moya as one of his most interesting emblems,25 contrasts with Tresguerras’s 1797 portrait of his wife, María Guadalupe Ramírez, at age nineteen (fig. 13.5). This portrait, devoid of any symbolic element, has been seen as anticipating the more intimate painting that would develop in the nineteenth century. Guadalupe, depicted as a housewife standing at the doorway of her home, “by the fiction of art, has been ‘surprised’ in a moment of her daily life.”26 But the portrait of Guadalupe, while lacking the minutiae of quotidian experience that characterize seventeenth-century Dutch interior home scenes, can also be seen as rooted in the portraiture tradition of masters such as Johannes Vermeer. Guadalupe’s gaze is not dissimilar to that of Vermeer’s subjects in his 1665 paintings A Lady Writing and The Pearl Earring. Tresguerras also created adaptations of Baroque emblems.27 In his Ocios, in the setting of a triplex emblem, he drew Envy as a reclining, semi-nude, flaccid-breasted old woman who eats her own heart and is accompanied by a dog (fig. 13.6). Here Tresguerras is following the iconography developed by Andrea Alciatus, and later supplemented by Otto Vaenius, who added Envy’s mascot to the scene.28 The frontispiece that Tresguerras prepared for his “Sueño verdadero” is also noteworthy for its indebtedness to Baroque emblems, while announcing a modern perspective on dreams (fig. 13.7). This composite image includes a self-portrait, a scene from his dream, and a poem. Tresguerras portrays himself leaning on one elbow over his desk, dreaming. To the right, as if a curtain had collapsed or ripped to reveal a stage, are four male figures appearing to address the dreamer; Envy towers over the ensemble. The verse explains how the mind functions while we sleep, a common feature in the dream genre, as well as the content of the author’s dream. The poet laments that writing dreams separates him from more desirable and lofty literary inspirations: Thalia, the muse
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Figure 13.5. Francisco Eduardo Tresguerras, Portrait of His Wife (1797). Museo Nacional de Historia, CONACULTA-INBA.
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Figure 13.6. Francisco Eduardo Tresguerras, Envy (1796). Museo Nacional de Historia, CONACULTA-INBA.
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Figure 13.7. Francisco Eduardo Tresguerras, frontispiece, El sueño verdadero (1796). Fondo Reservado de la Bilblioteca Nacional. UNAM.
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of comedy and idyllic poetry, is inactive while he reports his nocturnal fantasy in satirical terms. The poem explains why he nonetheless chose for the moment this relatively modest genre: Our fantasy presents in dreams, the most rare and distant objects; yet the events we see in daytime it repeats amid inconstant shadows. Thus I as I dreamt against my will a throng of slanderers and whistlers. These puppets I paint in sad prose while my Thalia rests a bit.29
As Jaime Cuadriello notes, this drawing by Tresguerras reworks the frontispiece of the 1699 edition of Quevedo’s Sueños, where the Spanish author is depicted asleep at his desk.30 Quevedo’s frontispiece for his Sueños was also reworked by Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828) in his famous Capricho 43, entitled “El sueño de la razón produce monstruos” (“The Sleep/Dream of Reason Produces Monsters”), a series that was originally to be called Dreams.31 In Goya’s phantasmagorical setting, the dreamer, a painter who has fallen asleep, occupies the foreground. The dreamer’s face, resting on his arms, is not visible to the viewer, yet as Victor Stoichita and Anna Maria Coderch have observed, the “thematization of the dream” is one of the main differences between Goya’s etching and the frontispiece of Quevedo’s text. They note that while the frontispiece relies on the smile of the sleeping Quevedo to indicate that he is dreaming, the owls, bats, and lynx in Capricho 43 suggest the content of the painter’s fantasy in an emblematic fashion.32 Working independently of Goya, Tresguerras also thematized the content of the dream, albeit more explicitly, because the characters that appear in Tresguerras’s dream text can be identified in the drawing. On both sides of the Atlantic, then, a Golden Age text and its frontispiece resonated for two Enlightenment artists. Although little known, Tresguerras’s representation of himself as a dreamer precedes Goya’s much-disseminated illustration by three years. That Tresguerras, an artist removed from the centre of power of the viceroyalty, and Goya, the court painter of the Spanish crown, had the same access to a cultural referent and were both concerned to appropriate it, speaks of a commonality in preferences and views that could transcend spatial and hierarchical differences. In addition to Envy as depicted in books of emblems, the first-person narrator of “Sueño verdadero” also alludes to other early modern European referents, including an episode from Don Quixote, the dreams of Quevedo, and the fantastic figures of Hieronymus Bosch. Tresguerras’s
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narrator begins by describing the situation in which he fell asleep: he was lulled by the monotonous rain of a warm summer night. The vision of Tresguerras is not the result of travelling in time or space with a guide, as often happens in dreams: it appears to the narrator in the same way that Quevedo presented Sueño de la muerte (Dream of Death) as a mental theatrical spectacle.33 Tresguerras, however, identifies his theatrical spectacle not with Quevedo’s text, but with a specific episode in Don Quixote: “I dreamt (I could swear) that the puppets following my fantasy, publicly appeared in the Stage of Marvels without Maese Pedro being there, and without me knowing how and from where a crowd of ghosts, chimeras, and little goblins, guided by two large fauns, appeared on stage.”34 Significantly, Tresguerras did not feel the need to explain that the Cervantine character, Maese Pedro, is an itinerant puppeteer traversing La Mancha, or that when Don Quixote sees the play he takes fiction for reality and, in his attempt to rescue the lady in distress, destroys the puppets. Tresguerras considered this episode from Don Quixote to be common knowledge; by alluding to the work of Cervantes he assumed that his readers had the necessary literary competencies to understand the fictionality of his dream. Thus, availing himself of an Enlightenment understanding of the novel of Cervantes, which saw the text not as entertainment but as one that probes deeper into the complexities and paradoxes of the real and the fictional, Tresguerras undermines the literal sense of Quevedo’s works. In Tresguerras’s drawing for “Sueño verdadero,” one of his enemies is depicted playing the trumpet while another appears with papers and a bloodied quill in hand; in the text Tresguerras indicates that they follow ghosts and goblins on stage. This “infeliz turba” (unhappy throng) as the narrator calls them, is in “desconcierto general” (general disarray) when Alecto, “a sooty, scrawny, and fierce old hag” that personifies Envy, tears off one of her poisonous snake-hairs and directs the mob towards the narrator, “pointing to him as the object of their fury.”35 Tresguerras affirms that in his 1796 drawing (fig. 13.6) he depicted Envy according to how she had presented herself to him in a dream in the fashion of Quevedo.36 However, what is similar to Quevedo is not the depiction of this allegorical figure, but the dream narrative itself: Envy appears in Quevedo’s Dream of Death as a widowed dueña, but not as the old woman that Tresguerras drew.37 The narrator of “Sueño verdadero” now sees “a legion of spectres similar to the diabolic and capricious inventions of the great Bosch, all armed with spiked sticks and heavy clubs,” that approach him yelling “death, death”; this “terrible and Judaizing voice was disseminated ad infinitum.”38 Suddenly, downpour and thunder awaken the dreamer from his nightmare. In the Baroque dream genre, the awakening that leads to the penning of the night vision is typically depicted as a moment of desengaño,
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or disillusionment, and the dream is seen as having educational value.39 However, Tresguerras parodies this serious moment of reckoning and didacticism by hyperbolizing expressions of devotion: upon waking, the narrator indicates that he did not only “the sign of the cross but three thousand Stations of the Cross, praying the same amount of incantations,” while preparing himself some remedies to avoid dreaming again.40 Tresguerras closes his text with the arrival the next morning of a friend who brings to him copies of the libellous accounts that his enemies were circulating in Querétaro. The friend urges him to respond. The narrator says, “I told my friend the dream and we admired the appropriateness of the paper with its circumstances, yet it is natural to dream at night what is imagined in daytime.”41 Despite the narrator’s affirmation that dreams are a natural reworking of daytime actions, the text does not present this sequence of events. The premonitory dream of Tresguerras, then, retains a typically early modern character. In 1797 Tresguerras composed another dream episode, entitled “El autómata Pasquino” (Pasquino, the Automaton). Written in romance or ballad form, this poem echoes Don Quixote’s descent into the Cave of Montesinos. While parodying the dream genre, Cervantes nonetheless used this episode to mark a change in the perspective of the narrator towards the protagonist.42 The fictional “first author” of Cervantes’s novel, Cide Hamete Benengeli, considers this adventure to be totally lacking in verisimilitude, and therefore apocryphal, claiming that on his deathbed Don Quixote repudiated the story. No such retraction occurs, but henceforth the blurring of the real and the fictional acquires more significance in the novel.43 Tresguerras’s first-person narrator agrees to accompany a friend on an expedition in search of a silver deposit, believed to be as rich as the source of La Valenciana, the richest mine in Guanajuato. While scouting, they encounter the “horrifying cave of Pasquino and the hermit Guastrerres.”44 Tresguerras’s frontispiece drawing for “El autómata” depicts the narrator about to descend into the cave while his friend rides away in search of the silver deposit. The narrator does not know if what he saw in the cave was real or not. He says: “I went in, this I remember; / I do not know if I saw or dreamt; / I heard a strange event.”45 Tresguerras openly refers to the episode of Don Quixote when he describes the hermit encountered in the cave as a new Montesinos. In the frontispiece drawing for this work, this hermit is identified as Guastrerres, an anagram for Tresguerras. The author, then, projects himself onto the narrator as well as onto the hermit. Guastrerres has fled the world, remaining content in his solitude, reading Latin and Hispanic authors including Quevedo and Cervantes. Applying his knowledge of physics, he built an automaton that, unlike
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those using a wind-up spring mechanism or those powered by water or wind, uses elasticity, barometric pressure, and fluid weight to move. The hermit boasts that “Alberto” (Leon Battista Alberti) would admire Pasquino.46 Housed in grottoes or associated with them, particularly in Mannerist and Baroque Italian gardens, automatons were not only meant to astonish but to emphasize the liminality between the natural and the artificial qualities of these spaces, inviting the visitors to engage in spiritual or intellectual reflections.47 In “El autómata Pasquino” astonishment and liminality are also important, but Tresguerras follows Cervantes’s parodic intent, as seen when the characters in the Cave of Montesinos undercut their lofty pursuits with trivial questionings, money borrowing, and mechanical behaviour. Similarly, Tresguerras’s text is parodic. The cave is an art gallery containing portraits of his enemies; Pasquino laughs as he points to them.48 In addition, by presenting the dream in the context of an expedition in search of silver mines, Tresguerras underlines the irrational aspect of both activities, perhaps revealing a physiocratic inclination common among many Enlightenment thinkers. Acosta Enríquez’s Sueño de sueños Around 1802, when Tresguerras was beginning to work on El Carmen, his friend José Mariano Acosta Enríquez finished a first-person manuscript entitled Sueño de sueños (Dream of Dreams), one of the many texts he wrote between 1779 and 1816. Much of what Acosta wrote has remained in manuscript form and little is known about him. His death certificate of 28 January 1818 identifies him as a Spaniard of forty-six years of age who died of hydropsy, a widower with nothing to bequeath.49 The anonymous Acuerdos curiosos (Curious Remembrances), an important source for Queretano culture of this period, confirms Acosta’s date of death, corrects his age to sixty-seven, and indicates that he was born in the “villa de Córdoba.”50 The author of the Acuerdos sketches Acosta’s character, stating that he was talented, inquisitive, jovial, kind, and prudent. He identifies Acosta’s passion as poetry, confirmed by the four manuscript tomes of verses that Acosta composed. His style is judged as “obscure, confused, and slipshod,” these defects being attributed to his “little knowledge of art, bad choice of models and infrequent exercise of criticism” because, satisfied with his inventiveness, he “let himself be taken with it and thus pleased himself and not persons of taste and intelligence.”51 This view of Acosta’s models and taste exemplifies again the tensions between modernity and tradition, between those who continued to be attached to the Baroque and those that applauded the neoclassical style introduced by the Academy of
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Letters.52 This preference, however, does not mean that Acosta also espoused the conservative perspective and values that Baroque dreams typically embodied. In Sueño de sueños, Quevedo, Cervantes, and Torres Villarroel appear to the narrator in order to guide him into the underworld. Acosta explains what triggered his writing: “The chance arrival in my hands of a little volume, recently edited, containing the Sueños by don Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas, excited my desire to read them again because, in truth, the first milk that nurtured me was his works, those of Cervantes, those of Torres, and those of the glorious chorus of poets that have made the Spanish Parnassus commendable.”53 In all likelihood, he alludes to the 1791 re-edition of Quevedo’s Sueños of 1622, providing evidence of their reception in New Spain during the Enlightenment.54 Acosta’s Sueño de sueños is also an imitation of Torres Villarroel’s 1727–8 Visiones y visitas de Torres con Quevedo por la corte (Visions and Visits of Torres with Quevedo to the Court), itself an imitation of Quevedo’s Sueños. Joaquín Álvarez Barrientos explains that Torres Villarroel’s imitation can be understood as a process of culturization because he does not create “a new approach to reality, but makes use of instruments that carry themselves a specific perspective on reality.”55 Russell Sebbold argues that this perspective was the “nostalgia for a spiritual patria that for Torres was the Golden Age.”56 For Acosta, however, the imitation of the Spanish masters is not motivated by nostalgia for the past; rather it serves to acknowledge the transformations that were unfolding in his patria. The presence of the Spanish masters as characters in Sueño de sueños allows the narrator to discuss with them important synchronic and diachronic differences between the seventeenth century and the present, as well as between New Spain and its imperial metropolis. The topics range from fashion to medicine to new vocabulary and the impact of French on the Spanish language. In keeping with Enlightenment ideals, empirical knowledge is given great importance; the narrator tells the fictional trio of authors that people are now analytical and calculating. A scene traditionally found in Golden Age narrative dreams is an encounter with one or more personifications of death in some underworld setting. In Sueño de sueños this scene contains a forceful social critique. In addition to the traditional personifications of death by starvation and by cold, the novohispano offers a personification that does not appear in Quevedo’s dreams: death by poverty. Acosta lists the many euphemisms which reference paucity in Spanish, and in particular in novohispano colloquial speech, offering his readers a rich register of expressions. More important, however, is the definition of this type of death as “the civil death of man and the origin
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of his death.”57 That the fictional Cervantes defines death by poverty reveals that Acosta read Don Quixote carefully, noting how Cervantes addressed material needs. Poverty is indeed among the disquieting situations that the knight encounters in the Cave of Montesinos, where his lady Dulcinea borrows money from him. In addition, when Don Quixote visits the dukes he finds himself too poor to replace his torn stockings, a condition that he anxiously realizes is not fitting for the knight he believes himself to be. Love of patria is central to Acosta’s work and appears throughout the text in a number of ways. In the opening of Sueño de sueños, the narrator dreams that he has fallen asleep on a bench in the recently established Alameda of Querétaro; it is here that he meets Quevedo, Cervantes, and Torres Villarroel, who have returned from death to visit him. Despite the narrator’s pride in Querétaro, they do not explore the city, heading instead for the outlying Cimatario Hill, where they find the entrance to the underworld. The remote Cimatario, described as an “andurrial” or wasteland, synecdochically stands for the roughness of the New World, which for some makes it unsuitable for erudite disquisitions. Thus the narrator is concerned that no one will believe that the illustrious Spanish writers have visited him. He asks: Will it not be held as the greatest nonsense in the world to believe that on a moonlit night you climbed the rough slope of the Cimatario Hill (despite being the watchtower of one of the most beautiful cities in the Kingdom of Mexico), tripping over clods and stones between cactuses, granejos, garambullos, maguey plants, pindicuas, and other shrubs of which you have had no news in all your life?58
The passage reveals a disassociation between rough wasteland and urban beauty as two characteristics that simultaneously yet contradictorily define Querétaro and its surroundings. By opposing an itemized list of local flora to Querétaro’s unspecified architectural beauty, as no particular building or construction is mentioned, a sense of alienation becomes apparent. This opposition corresponds to an exoticization of the New World, perhaps the least pernicious aspect of the detraction of the Americas by the European Enlightenment. The creation of an otherness of insufficiency weighed heavily on the members of Spanish America’s lettered cities as it disqualified the contributions of its members as well as their reach for cultural and political capital. However, the fictional Quevedo, hailing from the “region of truth,” responds to the narrator’s question with a desengaño that exemplifies well the secularization of memento mori in the “Age of Reason.” The
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enlightened person will seek political justice in the here and now. The Enlightenment Quevedo says: Know you not that Earth is but one due to its roundness? That the airs that blow are the same? That the same sun shines? Well we [the dead] … lie in a place … where passions do not rule, and thus we are not moved by love of patria, nor are we swept by the zeal of nation, nor does homeland form partisanships, nor do we attend to the privileges of nobility, nor are we swelled by right of blood… You will see that in our region … the dead we are all one, and for us all the living are one; thus your fears have been unfounded and vainly believed.59
This dream of an unequivocal affirmation of equality and fraternity as true conditions of humanity stems from the political marginalization felt by novohispanos like Acosta. In the reality of the text, equality and fraternity between the narrator and the fictional Cervantes, Quevedo, and Torres Villarroel authorize a discourse in which features of the Old and the New World, while different, are valued without hierarchical distinctions. But allusions to the missing element of the French Revolution’s motto “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” can also be inferred from this rejection of the ancien régime’s privileges of blood. The author of Acuerdos curiosos notes that in June of 1810 Acosta belonged to a short-lived tertulia, or literary salon, whose members decided to no longer meet because their doing so raised suspicions in regard to the “issue of disloyalty.”60 This era was indeed disquieting for the local learned elite, as Mexico’s independence movement, planned in a tertulia in Querétaro, began on 15 September of that same year. The texts of Acosta and Tresguerras are much more than curious literary artefacts flavoured with the particularities of New Spain. They are important markers of the durability of Baroque genres in a moment of cultural transition. In their emulation of the dreams of Quevedo and Torres Villarroel, as well as in allusions to episodes from Don Quixote, Tresguerras and Acosta provide textual evidence of a phenomenon that is also found in eighteenth-century novohispano architecture. In this “Age of Reason,” when the new architectural registers of neoclassicism were already available, some of the most remarkable Baroque churches were nonetheless being constructed in New Spain. Using a “surpassed” European style, but acclimatizing it to local materials, these edifices speak of a long-standing artistic preference for the Baroque, seen by some as defining a national essence or soul.61 But if Querétaro was New Spain’s Baroque gem, it was also Mexico’s cradle of independence. Here those dreams of national sovereignty and cultural recognition, as well as those
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of rebirth of a classical taste, paradoxically were expressed through Baroque literary dreams. NOTES 1 Lezama Lima, “Baroque Curiosity,” 216. 2 Pérez-Magallón and Sebold, “Introducción,” 38. 3 Fernández, “Dream (Spain),” 99. 4 Ibid. 5 For a brief overview of the nine dreams published by Lizardi, and their changing tone as he lived the transition from the viceroyalty to early independent Mexico. See Alba-Koch, “Dream (Spanish America),” 103–4. 6 Rodríguez Moya, El retrato en México, 224. 7 That year Tresguerras also carved the choir stalls for the Church of Saint Francis in Querétaro. See Katzman, Arquitectura religiosa en México, 82. 8 Juan Izguerra chiselled the statue of Neptune following a design by Tresguerras (Acuerdos curiosos, 4:152). According to José Rodolfo Anaya Larios, Tresguerras’s Neptune looks more like Christ at the Column than the Roman god (El arte virreinal de Querétaro, 78). 9 “paso para toda la Tierradentro.” Zeláa e Hidalgo, Glorias de Querétaro, 5. All translations are mine unless otherwise attributed. 10 See Alba-Koch, “Novedad y modernidad,” 400–1. 11 “prolixidad y tardanza.” Navarrete, Relación peregrina de la agua corriente, 24. 12 Sitwell, Southern Baroque Art, 226. Sitwell’s enthusiasm for novohispano churches, particularly the astonishment produced by the “gorgeous and flashing” camarines in Tepotzotlán and Ocotlán, is noteworthy. He sees them as the most enduring embodiments of the values of the Golden Age: “The imagination of Gracián or Góngora,” he claims, “would be satisfied with these transcendental qualities built into and over the mortal fabric of stone, for they realise in the most permanent form those superstructures that these authors had attempted out of ordinary words, above the printed line and the cut page of a book” (242). For a discussion of the camarín in Tepotzotlán see the article by Ricardo Castro in this volume. 13 Anaya Larios, Ensayos iconográficos, 11. 14 See Anaya Larios, El arte virreinal de Querétaro, 17–20, 27, 38–9. 15 “un aficionado del buen gusto.” Tresguerras, Ocios literarios, 42. 16 “símbolo de la falsedad.” Tresguerras, Ocios literarios, 164. 17 Querétaro’s column was entrusted to Tresguerras’s principal rival, Felipe Suasnávar y Aguirre, referred to in the Ocios literarios as Suás, Suasnabo, and Soez-nabar. The bulk of the Ocios is a diatribe against him. 18 “los vientos de la rebelión, ni los choques políticos y almibarados pretextos de libertad e independencia.” Tresguerras, Ocios literarios, 163.
The Literary Dream in Querétaro 317 For a discussion of columns see ibid., 162–5. Ironically, in 1822 this monument was transformed into Mexico’s first “Column of Independence.” Tresguerras’s rendition of the allegorical elements of Mexico’s coat of arms, an eagle devouring a serpent, replaced his statue of Charles IV. 19 “académico de mérito.” Cuadriello, “Los umbrales de la nación,” 34. 20 Katzman, Arquitectura religiosa, 54, 72. 21 Ramírez Montes, “José de Bayas Delgado,” 88–9. For a discussion of the Solomonic and estípite Baroque in New Spain see Cortés Rocha, El clasicismo en la arquitectura mexicana, 300–11; and González Galván, Trazo, proporción y símbolo, 123–6, 212–13. 22 The bell tower of El Carmen is somewhat reminiscent of the work of Stephen Gibbs. However, at El Carmen the bell tower becomes an integral and thus more dominating feature of the façade. Unlike the slender steeples of Gibbs, culminating in an elongated spire, the massive belfry and bell-shaped lantern of Tresguerras are topped by a metal cross; they echo the colossal bell-shaped tower lanterns of Mexico City’s cathedral. 23 The retables of Taxco’s Santa Prisca are a notable example of stylistic unity. Sitwell identifies this church as a masterpiece of the Baroque. 24 Maza, “Prólogo,” 13; and Katzman, Arquitectura religiosa en México, 195. 25 Rodríguez Moya, El retrato en México, 228. 26 García Sáiz, “Portraiture in Viceregal America,” 81. 27 For a discussion of emblems as a fundamental idiom of the Baroque see the article by Pablo Restrepo Gautier in this volume. 28 Jaime Cuadriello affirms that Tresguerras repurposed emblems to portray himself and his contemporaries ironically. He also used them as entertainment, subverting their moralizing content. Cuadriello, “Un epígono de la tradición,” 264. 29 “Presenta en sueños, nuestra fantasía / objetos, los más raros y distantes; / mas sucesos que vemos en el día / los repite entre sombras inconstantes. / Así yo: pues soñaba en contra mía, / turba de maldicientes y chiflantes. / Estos títeres pinto en triste prosa, / mientras un tanto, mi Thalía reposa.” Tresguerras, Ocios literarios, figure 9. 30 See Tresguerras, Ocios literarios, 109–16. The modest attire and Spartan setting of Tresguerras’s colonial dreamer contrast with Quevedo’s elegant attire and his lavish library opening onto a large manicured garden. Tresguerras’s drawing points to the more humble, “home-grown” quality of novohispano dreams. Quevedo’s frontispiece is reproduced in Fernández, “Dream,” 98. 31 Pérez-Sánchez and Sayre, Goya and the Spirit of Enlightenment, 111. 32 Stoichita and Coderch, Goya, 166–8. 33 Quevedo describes what happened to him when he fell asleep: “Luego que, desembarazada, el alma se vio ociosa sin la traba de los sentidos exteriores,
318 Beatriz de Alba-Koch me embistió de esta manera la comedia siguiente, y así la recitaron mis potencias a escuras siendo yo para mis fantasías auditorio y teatro.” Los sueños, 312. (“So soon as my Soul felt herself in Liberty, she gave me the Entertainment of the following Comedy, my Fancy supplying both the Stage and the Company.”) Quevedo, Six Visions of Hell, 19. 34 “Soñaba pues (podría jurarlo) que siguiendo los títeres mi fantasía, puso en público el Retablo de las Maravillas sin que por allí se apareciese el Maese Pedro y sin saber cómo ni por dónde salieron a las tablas muchedumbre de fantasmas, quimeras y duendecillos, guiados por dos faunotes.” Tresguerras, Ocios literarios, 59. 35 “una vieja renegrida, enjuta y feroz … señalándolo por objeto de sus iras.” Ibid., 60. 36 See Cuadriello, “Francisco Eduardo Tresguerras,” 222. 37 Quevedo, Los sueños, 333. 38 “una legión de espectros semejantes a las diabólicas y caprichosas invenciones del gran Bosco, todos armados con chuzos y pesadas cachiporras” … “muera, muera” … “terrible y judaizante voz se difundía por infinito.” Tresguerras, Ocios literarios, 60. 39 Quevedo ends his Sueño de la muerte alluding to the Horatian goal of teaching while entertaining: “Con todo esto, me pareció no desperdiciar del todo esta visión y darle algún crédito, pareciéndome que los muertos pocas veces se burlan, y que gente sin pretensión y desengañada, más atiende a enseñar que a entretener.” Los sueños, 405. (“I began, then, to reflect upon the Particulars of my Dream, and consider what Advantages I might draw from it; for the Dead are past fooling, and those are the soundest Counsels, which we receive from such as advise us without either Passion or Interest.”) Quevedo, Six Visions of Hell, 55. 40 “haciendo no una cruz, sino trescientos mil Calvarios, rezando otros tantos ensalmos.” Tresguerras, Ocios literarios, 60–1. Despite the hyperbole, Tresguerras was profoundly Catholic. He published a novena on the sorrows of Mary and a set of prayers for the Stations of the Cross. For the importance of devotional practices related to the Stations of the Cross see the article by Alena Robin in this volume. 41 “Contéle a mi amigo el sueño y admiramos la conveniencia del papel con sus circunstancias, pero es natural soñar de noche, lo que se imagina en el día.” Ibid., 61. 42 See Gómez Trueba, El sueño literario en España, 276–81. 43 This episode is found in chapters 22–4 of the second volume of Don Quixote. Cervantes, El ingenioso hidalgo, 205–25. 44 “La horrorosa Cueva de Pasquino y el Hermitaño Guastrerras.” Tresguerras, Ocios literarios, figure 20.
The Literary Dream in Querétaro 319 45 “Entré; hasta aquí me acuerdo; / no sé si vi o lo soñé; / oí un extraño suceso.” Tresguerras, Ocios literarios, 136. 46 Indeed, the Renaissance architect and scholar was “a proficient amateur of technological pursuits.” Grafton, “The Devil as Automaton,” 57. See Enrique Fernández’s article on automatons and relics in this volume. 47 Careri, Baroques, 179. 48 That the name of the automaton is the same as that of the Roman “talking statue” on which libels were anonymously posted is no coincidence. 49 “Se sepultó en el campo Santo a Dn Mariano Acosta, español de 46 años de edad, viudo de Dª María, vecino de esta en la calle de San Juan, recibió los santos sacramentos, no tubo q testar, murió de hidropesía.” Parroquia de la Divina Pastora, Querétaro, Entierros españoles, 1814–23, E-73: 37. I thank Father Francisco Herrera Martínez for allowing me to consult this archive. 50 Acosta’s exact date of birth is unknown. He is not listed in the volumes of the “Bautismos de españoles y gente de razón” (Baptisms of Spaniards and People of Reason) for Córdoba, Veracruz, housed at that city’s Catedral de la Inmaculada Concepción, which are complete for the years from 1756 to 1777. Earlier baptismal records for Córdoba have not survived. I thank Father René Cesa Cantón for allowing me to consult the archive of the cathedral. 51 “obscuro, confuso y poco correcto … poco conocimiento del arte, mala elección de modelos y poco ejercicio de la crítica … se dejó llevar de él y así se agradó a sí mismo, aunque no a las personas de gusto e inteligencia.” Acuerdos curiosos, 4:374. 52 Acosta’s preference for Baroque forms is seen clearly in his 1798 “Enigmas o adivinanzas ingeniosas” (Enigmas or Ingenious Riddles), a collection of one hundred questions in verse, twelve of his own invention, which he explains to the reader are “nudos que se representan al entendimiento para que los desate” (knots that are represented to reason to be untied). Acosta Enríquez, Enigmas o adivinanzas ingeniosas, f. 48. 53 “La ocasión de llegar a mis manos un tomito de nueva edición que contiene los Sueños del señor don Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas, me excitó la gana de darles nuevo repaso, porque a la verdad, la primera leche con que yo me nutrí fueron sus obras, las de Cervantes, las de Torres, y las de todo el glorioso coro de poetas que ha hecho recomendable el Parnaso español.” Acosta, Sueño de sueños, 113. 54 Goic, “La novela hispanoamericana colonial,” 399. 55 “método nuevo de acercamiento a la realidad, sino que se sirve de unos instrumentos que, en sí mismos, llevan una específica perspectiva de la realidad.” Álvarez Barrientos, La novela del siglo XVIII, 76–7. 56 “nostalgia de una patria espiritual, que para Torres es el Siglo de Oro.” Sebold, “Introducción,” lix.
320 Beatriz de Alba-Koch 7 “es muerte civil del hombre y origen de su muerte,” Acosta, Sueño de sueños, 165. 5 58 “¿No tendrán por mayor disparate del mundo creer que anduvisteis por la escabrosa falda del cerro Cimatario (aunque atalaya famosa de una de las más bellas ciudades del reino de México) una noche de luna tropezando por entre terrones y guijarros con nopales, granejos, garambullos, magueyes, pindicuas y otros arbustos de que ni siquiera tendríais noticia en toda vuestra vida?” Acosta, Sueño de sueños, 136. 59 “¿No sabes que es una misma la tierra por su redondez? ¿Que los mismos aires soplan? ¿Que un mismo sol alumbra? Pues nosotros [los muertos] … yacemos en una parte … donde no reinan las pasiones, y por eso no nos mueve el amor a la patria, ni nos arrastra el celo de la nación, ni forma partidos el paisanaje, ni atendemos a los fueros de la nobleza, ni nos estiran los derechos de la sangre …; ya verás en nuestra región que … los muertos todos somos unos y para nosotros todos son unos los vivos, así que tus temores han sido mal fundados y vanamente creídos.” Acosta, Sueño de sueños, 138. 60 “el asunto de infidencia.” Acuerdos curiosos, 4:235. 61 Even Tresguerras is seen as having a “Baroque soul” despite his aversion to this style. Katzman, Arquitectura religiosa, 171. WORKS CITED Acosta Enríquez, José Mariano. Enigmas o adivinanzas ingeniosas. Querétaro, 1798. – Sueño de sueños. Mexico City: Imprenta Universitaria, 1945. Acuerdos curiosos. Edited by Rubén Lozano et al. 4 vols. Querétaro: Gobierno del Estado de Querétaro, 1988–9. Alba-Koch, Beatriz de. “Dream (Spanish America).” In Lexikon of the Hispanic Baroque: Transatlantic Exchange and Transformation, edited by Evonne Levy and Kenneth Mills, 102–5. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013. – “Novedad y modernidad en las Glorias de Querétaro de Sigüenza y Góngora.” In Hacia la Modernidad: La creación de un nuevo orden teórico literario entre Barroco y Neoclasicismo (1651–1750), edited by Alain Bègue and Carlos Mata Induráin, 391–403. Vigo: Academia del Hispanismo, 2018. Álvarez Barrientos, Joaquín. La novela del siglo XVIII. Madrid: Júcar, 1991. Anaya Larios, José Rodolfo. El arte virreinal de Querétaro. Querétaro: Gobierno del Estado de Querétaro, 1998. – Ensayos iconográficos e históricos de Querétaro. Querétaro: Gobierno del Estado de Querétaro and Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro, 2006. Bautismos de españoles y gente de razón de 1756 hasta 1777. Vols. 2, 4–6. Córdoba, Veracruz: Catedral de la Inmaculada Concepción. Careri, Giovanni. Baroques. Translated by Alexandra Bonfante-Warren. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.
The Literary Dream in Querétaro 321 Cervantes, Miguel de. El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha. Vol 2. Edited by Luis Andrés Murillo. Madrid: Cátedra, 1978. Cortés Rocha, Xavier. El clasicismo en la arquitectura mexicana, 1524–1784. Mexico City: UNAM-Porrúa, 2007. Cuadriello, Jaime. “Francisco Eduardo Tresguerras (1759–1833), La Envidia, 1796.” In Juegos de ingenio y agudeza: La pintura emblemática de la Nueva España, edited by Jaime Cuadriello, 222–3. Mexico City: Museo Nacional de Arte, 1994. – “Tresguerras: El sueño y la melancolía.” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 73 (1998): 87–124. – “Los umbrales de la nación y la modernidad de sus artes: Criollismo, ilustración y academia.” In Hacia otra historia del arte de México. Vol. 1, De la estructuración colonial a la exigencia nacional (1780–1860), edited by Esther Acevedo, 17–35. Mexico City: CONACULTA, 2001. – “Un epígono de la tradición: Los emblemas en los manuscritos de Francisco Eduardo Tresguerras.” In Las dimensiones del arte emblemático, edited by Bárbara Skinfill Nogal and Eloy Gómez Bravo, 263–87. Zamora: El Colegio de Michoacán, 2002. Entierros españoles: 1814–1823. E-73. Querétaro: Parroquia de la Divina Pastora. Fernández, Enrique. “Dream (Spain).” In Lexikon of the Hispanic Baroque: Transatlantic Exchange and Transformation, edited by Evonne Levy and Kenneth Mills, 98–101. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013. García Sáiz, María Concepción. “Portraiture in Viceregal America.” In Retratos: 2000 Years of Latin American Portraits, edited by Dru Dowdy, 74–101. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Goic, Cedomil. “La novela hispanoamericana colonial.” In Historia de la literatura hispanoamericana, vol. 1, edited by Luis Íñigo Madrigal, 369–406. Madrid: Cátedra, 1992. Gómez Trueba, Teresa. El sueño literario en España: Consolidación y desarrollo del género. Madrid: Cátedra, 1999. González Galván, Manuel. Trazo, proporción y símbolo en el arte virreinal. Mexico City: UNAM, 2006. Grafton, Anthony. “The Devil as Automaton: Giovanni Fontana and the Meanings of a Fifteenth- Century Machine.” In Genesis Redux: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Artificial Life, 46–63. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. Katzman, Israel. Arquitectura religiosa en México (1780–1830). Mexico City: UNAM-FCE, 2002. Lezama Lima, José. “Baroque Curiosity.” In Baroque New Worlds: Representation, Transculturation, Counterconquest, edited by Lois Parkinson Zamora and Monika Kaup, translated by María Pérez and Anke Birkenmaier, 212–43. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010.
322 Beatriz de Alba-Koch Maza, Francisco de la. “Prólogo.” In Ocios literarios, by Francisco Eduardo Tresguerras, edited by Francisco de la Maza, 7–31. Mexico City: Imprenta Universitaria, 1962. Navarrete, Francisco Antonio de. Relación peregrina de la agua corriente que para beber y vivir goza la muy noble, leal y florida ciudad de Santiago de Querétaro/ compuesta por el Muy R. Padre Mro. Francisco Antonio Navarrete. Mexico City: José Bernardo de Hogal, 1739. Pérez-Magallón, Jesús, and Russell P. Sebold. “Introducción: El conde de Fernán Núñez y su obra.” In El hombre práctico, o discursos varios sobre su conocimiento y enseñanza, by Francisco Gutiérrez de los Ríos y Córdoba, edited by Jesús Pérez-Magallón and Russel P. Sebold, 9–108. Córdoba: CajaSur, 2000. Pérez-Sánchez, Alfonso E., and Eleanor A. Sayre. Goya and the Spirit of Enlightenment. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts and Little, Brown, 1989. Quevedo, Francisco de. Six Visions of Hell. Translated by “Mr. Nunez.” London, 1750. – Los sueños. Edited by Ignacio Arellano. Madrid: Cátedra, 1991. Ramírez Montes, Mina, “José de Bayas Delgado: Artífice de Querétaro, Siglo XVII.” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 14, no. 56 (1986): 77–90. Rodríguez Moya, Inmaculada. El retrato en México, 1781–1867: Héroes, ciudadanos y emperadores para una nueva nación. Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, 2006. Sebold, Russell. “Introducción: Diego de Torres Villarroel.” In Visiones y visitas de Torres con don Francisco de Quevedo por la corte. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1976. i–xcviii. Sitwell, Sacheverell. Southern Baroque Art: A Study of Painting, Architecture and Music in Italy and Spain of the 17th and 18th Centuries. London: Grant Richards, 1924. Stoichita, Victor, and Anna Maria Coderch. Goya: The Last Carnival. London: Reaktion, 2000. Tresguerras, Francisco Eduardo. Ocios literarios. Edited by Francisco de la Maza. Mexico City: Imprenta Universitaria, 1962. Zeláa e Hidalgo, Joseph María. Glorias de Querétaro y sus Adiciones. Edited by Jaime Septién. Querétaro: Gobierno del Estado de Querétaro, 2009.
Contributors
Beatriz de Alba-Koch (PhD Princeton) is an associate professor in the Department of History at the University of Victoria and founding director of the Latin American Studies Program. She is the author of Ilustrando la Nueva España: El Periquillo Sarniento de Fernández de Lizardi (1999) and has published on Indigenous and mestizo accounts of the Spanish Conquest, utopian thought, female spirituality, and Ibero-American as well as Ibero-Asian Baroque culture. She coordinated the interdisciplinary line of research on technologies of culture for the SSHRCC-funded MCRI project on the Hispanic Baroque. She is currently working on early modern atrium and roadside crosses erected in the Iberian metropolitan and overseas world as vehicles of conversion and resistance. Clara Bargellini (PhD Harvard), a member of the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México since 1980, was awarded the National University Prize for Research in the Arts in 2005. She has published many books and articles on the art and architecture of northern New Spain, including La arquitectura de la plata: Iglesias monumentales del centro-norte de México, 1640–1750 (1991), and the 2009 exhibition catalogue The Art of the Missions of Northern New Spain in collaboration with several colleagues. She has also published on the reception, historiography, and collecting of Mexican colonial art, as well as on sculptures and paintings in New Spain and their interface with European art. A long-standing interest in the material aspects of art and its conservation has led to her current participation in the establishment of technical art history studies in Mexico. Ricardo Castro (MArch, MA Ore.) is an associate professor of architecture at McGill University, where he has taught since 1982. He has been the recipient of several grants from the Graham Foundation for
324 Contributors
Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Canada Council to document and interpret photographically the work of architects Rogelio Salmona and Arthur Erickson. In 2010 he was chosen as a Resident Fellow in the McGill Institute for Public Arts and Ideas. He has participated in photographic exhibitions in Canada, Colombia, and the United States, and contributes architectural criticism and photographs to local and international architectural publications. He is the author of numerous articles, essays, and three books: Rogelio Salmona (1998); Arthur Erickson: Critical Works (2006), co-authored with Nicholas Olsberg; and Rogelio Salmona: A Tribute (2008). He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) in 2010 and chosen as a member of the Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA) in 2016. Perla Chinchilla Pawling (PhD Iberoamericana) is a professor of history at the Universidad Iberoamericana. Her main areas of expertise are historiography and discourse analysis from the perspective of rhetoric and social history, particularly in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sermons from New Spain. She is the author of De la compostio loci a la república de letras (2004) and editor of Michel De Certeau: Un pensador de la diferencia (2009), El sermón de misión y su tipología: Antología de sermones en español, náhuatl e italiano (2013), and Lexicón de formas discursivas cultivadas por la Compañía de Jesús (2018). Lucero Enríquez Rubio (PhD UNAM) is a composer, professor of music, and full-time senior researcher in the area of colonial art at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México’s Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas. She has published internationally on historical musicology. Since 2001, she coordinates Musicat, an international and interdisciplinary seminar of specialists and students working on the music of New Spain and Mexico from 1521 to 1858. In 2014, she received the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Distinction and in 2016, the National University Prize for Research in Arts, both granted by UNAM. Her 2012 monograph Un almacén de secretos: Pintura, farmacia, Ilustración: Puebla, 1797 was awarded in 2013 a National Chamber of the Mexican Editorial Industry (CANIEM) Prize for Editorial Art. Her compositions include music for the film Adiós Indio (Noche de Muertos) as well as for the plays Adivina hay pantomime and Ricardo III. Enrique Fernández (PhD Princeton) is a professor of Spanish at the University of Manitoba. He specializes in early modern Spanish literature and culture, and is the author of many articles on the subject. His book Anxiety of Interiority and Dissection in Early Modern Spain (2015) won
Contributors 325
the Canadian Association of Hispanists’ Best Book Award in 2016. He is also the director of Celestina Visual (www.celestinavisual.org), an online database that contains over a thousand images of the visual culture of Celestina from its publication until today. Evonne Levy (PhD Princeton) is a professor of Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Toronto (Mississauga). Her research focuses on Baroque art and architecture, especially of the Jesuit order, the work and biographical legacy of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and the history of art history. She is the author of Propaganda and the Jesuit Baroque (2004) and co-editor of Bernini and His Biographies: Critical Essays (2006), The Sculpture Journal (2011), and Lexicon of the Hispanic Baroque: Technologies of a Transatlantic Culture (2014). Maria Beatriz de Mello e Souza (PhD Paris I) is an associate professor in the Department of History at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Her publications on Christian iconography focus on the circulation of images in the Portuguese empire from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, with particular attention to the history of the images of the Virgin Mary. She currently coordinates a team of researchers working on the project “Arte e Devoção: Quatro Séculos de História do Livro Ilustrado.” The project is devoted to the study of the illuminated manuscripts, engravings, and illustrated books from the Royal Library of Portugal and their copies in public repositories in Rio de Janeiro. Luís de Moura Sobral (PhD Louvain) was a professor emeritus of art history at the Université de Montréal, where he also held a Chaire sur la culture portugaise. He published extensively on surrealism, emblematics, and the arts of the Baroque period in Spain, Portugal, and Latin America. He authored or edited a number of books, including Pintura e Poesia na Época Barroca (1994), Bento Coelho (1620–1708) e a Cultura do seu Tempo (1998), Struggle for Synthesis: The Total Work of Art in the 17th and 18th Centuries (1999), and Pintura Portuguesa do Século XVII: Histórias, Lendas, Narrativas (2004). He also directed the award-winning documentary film Azulejos: Une utopie céramique (2013). He was Académico Correspondente Nacional of the National Academy of Fine Arts of Portugal; in 2001 he became Grande-Oficial of the Order of the Infante D. Enrique. Piotr Nawrot (DMA, CUA) is a professor of sacred music at the Adam Mickiewicz University and an internationally renowned musicologist specializing in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century compositions from the Jesuit missions of what is now Bolivia. He has contributed as historian,
326 Contributors
musical director, and conductor to a number of multi-volume publications and recordings, including Florilegium’s Bolivian Baroque, the series Música Renacentista y Barroca Americana: Misiones de Chiquitos, and Baroque Music from the Bolivian Rainforest. He contributed to the foundation and has directed for the past twenty-six years the musical festival “Festival Internacional de Música Renacentista y Barroca Americana, Misiones de Chiquitos,” and has been honoured with a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996, as well as with the Science Award of the Polish Ministry of National Education in 2005, the Queen Sofía Award in 2011, the Cross of Merit of the Republic of Poland in 2015, and the Benedict of Poland Award in 2016. Pablo Restrepo Gautier (PhD UBC) is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies at the University of Victoria. His main area of research is Spanish Golden Age literature. He is the author of La imaginación emblemática en el teatro de Tirso de Molina (2001) and is currently editing a group of plays whose main characters are women working in traditionally male occupations. He is translating and editing, with Robin Inglis, Captain Esteban José Martínez’ 1789 logbook of his voyage to Nootka Sound. He was featured with Inglis in “Los primero hispanos,” a documentary for TLN on the Spanish presence in the coast of British Columbia during the late 1700s. He has also published a number of essays on early modern and contemporary Hispanic letters in journals such as Bulletin of the Comediantes, Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, Anales Cervantinos, Hispanic Journal, and Chasqui. Alena Robin (PhD, UNAM) is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Western Ontario. Her research focuses on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century representations of the Passion of Christ in New Spain. She authored Las capillas del Vía Crucis de la ciudad de México: Arte, patrocinio y sacralización del espacio (2014) and has published articles in journals such as RACAR, Goya, Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, Atrio: Revista de historia del arte, and Via Spiritus: Revista de História da Espiritualidade e do Sentimento Religioso. Other fields of specialization are theories of art and artistic literature in Spain and Latin America, historiography of painting in New Spain, issues of conservation and restoration of cultural heritage, and Latin American art in Canada. Aurelio Tello is an award-winning composer and musicologist at the National Musical Research, Documentation and Information Centre (CENEDIM), in Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA).
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He has published on the music of New Spain: his books on the subject include volumes 3, 4, 7, 8, and 10 of the Tesoro de la Música Polifónica en México (1983–2001, CENIDIM), as well as El Archivo Musical de la Catedral de Oaxaca (1990, CENIDIM) and Cancionero Musical de Gaspar Fernandes (2001, CENIDIM). His other books are 50 Años de música en el Palacio de Bellas Artes (1985, INBA), Salvador Contreras – Vida y obra (1987, CENIDIM), and Música barroca del Perú, Siglos XVII–XVIII (1998, AFI Integra). Among his honours are the first prize in the choral competition of the Banco Central de Reserva del Perú (1987, for Poema 9), the INBA 1994 Premio de Investigación, the 1999 Premio de Musicología Casa de las Américas in Cuba for Cancionero Musical de Gaspar Fernandes, the INBA 1999 Premio al Desempeño Académico en Investigación, and the INBA 2001 Premio de Excelencia Académica. In 2016 he was granted the Personalidad Meritoria de la Cultura by the Peruvian Ministry of Culture.
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Index
Acosta Enríquez, José Mariano, 16, 297 – 8, 300, 312 – 15, 319 – 20 admiration, 18, 86, 274, 278, 281, 283 – 5, 291 – 2 Aesop, 32 aesthetic, 4, 10, 14, 139, 219, 279, 287; aesthetics, 3 – 5, 210, 223, 297, 300, 332 Aguascalientes, 167, 170, 303 agudeza (wit), 15, 248 – 67, 281 – 5 Aguinaga, Fr. Ioseph Antonio de, 289n28, 292n52 Alberti, Leon Batista, 56, 312 Alciatus, Andreas, 247 – 8, 251 – 67, 268n5, 268n6, 268n21, 269n28, 269n33, 270n40, 270n45, 270n47, 270n48, 270n52, 270n55, 270n58, 270n61, 270n63, 270n66, 270n69, 271n72, 305 Aleijadinho (António Francisco Lisboa), 7, 11, 20n17, 25, 26 – 8, 34, 40 Altamirano, Manuel Ignacio, 18n4 America, 4, 36, 50n5, 98, 101, 144, 183 – 4, 220n8; Americas, 3, 6, 9, 16 – 17, 19n14, 52, 55, 62 – 3, 114, 225, 267, 314 amplification, 15, 275 – 6, 283, 287 – 8 Andean, 7, 63 – 5, 68, 71n37; Andes, 55, 62 – 3
angels, 10, 27, 29, 35 – 6, 38 – 40, 59, 113 – 15, 129, 134n58, 144, 148, 150, 191 Antigua, 11, 115, 163, 169, 175n27, 176n36 antiphon, 27 – 9, 40, 42, 183, 189 – 90, 194, 205, 214, 221 Antwerp, 34, 40, 43, 60, 71n29 Arcadia, 201, 208n21 Argentina, 10, 123, 129 art and modernity, 273 – 5, 279 Asia, 4 – 5, 16, 20n16, 107; Asian, 101, 107n16, 107n18 Atlantic, 6, 7, 152, 156n14, 267, 309 Atotonilco, 123, 138, 176, 178 automata, 7, 9, 16, 71n32, 77 – 94, 310 – 12; and eternal life, 89; and liminality, 88, 312; and magic, 87 – 8, 92n22; and modernity, 77 Ayacucho, 124 azulejos (tilework), 7, 36, 38, 44, 46 – 7 Bacadéhuachi, 120, 122, 125, 127 – 8 Baja California, 120, 126, 134n58, 134n59, 134n60 Balbás, Jerónimo de, 304 Barcelona, 227, 231 Baroque: adaptability, 243; as cultural patterns and transfers, 4 – 5, 7, 16, 251, 266 – 7; gardens, 150, 312;
330 Index global, 3 – 4, 14, 17n1, 18n2, 19n16; High Mexican, 140; identity, 3 – 6, 14, 17, 20n19, 59, 125, 286n2; inclusiveness 6, 13; and mobilization, 139; and modernity, 4, 6, 9, 15 – 16, 77, 210, 219, 273, 275, 312; as technology of culture, 5, 160, 210 – 11, 213, 215 – 16, 219, 248, 265 – 7, 273, 290n34 Bautista Zappa, Juan, 10, 116, 126 Baxandall, Michael, 68, 72n49, 104, 107n18, 107n20, 108n21, 109n31, 219, 222n45, 289n27, 293 Bayas Delgado, José de, 304 bel composto. See total work of art Belting, Hans, 59 – 60, 71n26, 104, 107n20, 108n23 Benedictines, 101, 106 Bernini, Gian Lorenzo, 160 Bogotá, 225 Bolivia, 12, 19n14, 124, 133n50, 183, 189, 202, 205, 205n1, 206n4 Borja, Juan de, 91n11, 250, 266, 271 Borrominesque churches, 25 Bosch, Hieronymus, 309 – 10 Bosco, 318n38 Brassanelli, José, 130 Brazil, 5 – 7, 9 – 12, 17n1, 19n14, 26 – 8, 30, 34, 36 – 8, 41 – 2, 44, 46, 48 – 9, 52, 95 – 8, 101, 103, 106n1, 107n16, 107n17, 110, 123 – 4, 176n35 Brito, Francisco Xavier de, 46 Brito, José António de, 26, 28 Brito, Manuel de, 46 brocateado (brocade patterns), 65, 72n46 Brueghel, Pieter, 60, 64 Buddha, 107n18 Burgos, Juan de, 115 – 16, 127 – 8, 131n11, 133n54, 134n61, 134n64, 134n68, 134n71 Byzantine, 65, 78 Cádiz, 211 – 12 California, 122, 126, 133n56, 134n58, 134n59, 134n60, 136, 158
camarín, 62; definition, 155n7; at Aguascalientes, 303; at San Miguel de Allende, 303; at Tepotzotlán, 10, 116, 127 – 8, 131n19, 132n20, 139 – 58, 316n12 Caramuel y Lobkowitz, Juan, 149, 156n15 Caravaggio, 56 – 7, 60, 70n18, 70n19 Cardiel, José, 189, 191, 206n6, 207n8, 208n22, 208n23, 297n9 Carpentier, Alejo, 3, 4, 18n8 Carvallo, Luis Alfonso de, 249, 268n12 Casas, Ignacio Mariano de las, 300 – 1, 303 Catullus, 265 – 6 Celaya, 298, 303 – 5 Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de, 87, 113, 130n1, 226, 298, 310 – 15, 318n43, 319n53 chiaroscuro, 148, 297 Chichimeca, 300; Chichimecas, 116 Chihuahua, 10, 118, 127, 300 Chínipas, 118, 126 – 7 Chiquinquirá, 68, 73 Chiquitos 12, 14, 17n1, 124, 127, 183 – 208 chiriperono (march), 204 Christ, 9, 11, 27, 39, 60, 62 – 4, 72n47, 83 – 4, 95, 97, 101, 103, 106, 120, 150, 156n12, 159, 161, 168 – 9, 172 – 3, 189, 206n6, 228 – 9, 266, 285, 316n8; Passion of Christ, 11, 159, 161– 2, 171 – 4 Christendom, 79, 89 Christian, 4, 34, 69n13, 78, 80, 82, 90n4, 104, 116, 126, 183, 194, 221n26; Christians, 78 – 9, 87, 159; Christianity, 78, 80, 83, 90n7, 95, 266; Christianization, 17 Churriguerresque architecture, 300 Cistercian, 97, 106, 108, 228 – 9 Colombia, 267; Colombian, 155n4 Columbus, Christopher, 17, 106n1 composition of place, 15 conceits, 15, 16, 251, 254, 266, 275
Index 331 conceptismo, 15, 248 – 52, 254, 265, 269, 272, 275 – 6, 279 conversion, 9, 17, 96, 107n10, 125 – 7, 184, 323 Cordero, Cristobal, 120, 128 Costa Ataíde, Manuel de, 7, 26, 29 – 30, 32, 34, 36, 38 – 41, 44 Counter-Reformation, 9, 77, 79, 85, 105, 173, 221n26, 286n9 Covarrubias, Sebastián de, 29, 31, 247, 266, 271 – 2 Croatia, 114 – 15, 144 Cruz, Sor Juana Inés de la, 14, 18n4, 225 – 6, 227 – 36, 238, 240 – 3, 243n2, 243n3, 243n5, 243n6, 243n8, 243n9, 244n10, 267, 271, 296 – 7 Cuenca, 226 – 7, 231 – 3, 241 – 2 cultural transfers, 7, 13 – 14 Cusco, 7, 55, 65, 71n37, 72n44, 72n46, 76, 124, 133n49, 184, 201; Cusco School of Painting, 53, 62, 65 – 8, 72n47 Deleuze, Gilles, 154n2, 158 Descartes, René, 284, 291n47 devotional books, 162 – 3, 170 dreams (literary), 16, 105, 296 – 300, 305, 309 – 16; definition of, 297; Baroque, 310 – 11; and criollo identity, 297 – 8; modern, 305, 300; and patriotism, 314 – 15 emblems, 15, 29, 31, 36, 247 – 71, 305; in Agudeza y arte de ingenio, 251 – 65; Baroque, 247 – 8, 305; and conceit, 248 – 65; and device, 250 – 1; and enigmas, 249 – 50, 296; by Francisco Eduardo Tresguerras, 305; self-portrait as, 305 encarnação (polychrome wood), 101 – 3 engravings, circulation of, 7, 30, 32, 34, 55, 103 – 4 Enlightenment ideals, 15 – 16, 212, 235, 244, 296 – 7, 309 – 10, 312 – 15
Ephesus, 144, 155n10, 157n25 Eros, 260, 262 Escorial, 89, 91 – 3, 227 estatuas de vestir. See imágenes de vestir estípite column, 300, 301, 304, 317n21 estofado (polychrome wood), 65, 83, 98 ethos, 4 Europe, 11, 33, 60, 63, 68, 96 – 7, 101, 105, 114 – 15, 140, 144, 149, 184, 267; European, 3, 6 – 7, 12, 14, 16, 52, 55 – 6, 60, 62 – 3, 65, 68n1, 88, 104, 114, 127, 174n2, 184, 190, 206n4, 216, 219n1, 267, 287n17, 291n43, 296, 309, 314 – 15 evangelization, 95, 156n22, 161, 183. See also conversion Evora (Évora), 44 – 5, 96, 109 ex votos, 55 – 6, 69n14, 113 faith, 11, 30, 46, 87, 127, 184 – 5, 204 – 5, 226, 232, 239, 274, 288; faithful, 11, 29, 78, 80, 97, 105, 108, 127, 144, 159, 161 – 2, 173 Fernández de Lizardi, José Joaquín, 297 – 8, 316n5, 323 Florencia, Francisco de, 115, 128, 131n9, 134n64, 134n67, 134n69, 136 Florilegium, 206, 325 France, 97, 265, 268; French, 150, 154n2, 176n35, 222n43, 270n42, 275, 313, 315; French Baroque, 150 Franciscan, 7, 25 – 6, 36, 44 – 7, 122, 160 – 2, 166, 289n26, 289n28, 292n52; Franciscans, 6, 11, 15, 50, 120, 122, 160, 161; Third Order, 6, 25 – 6, 36, 42, 44, 46, 162, 175n26 galant, 14; definition of, 210; interchangeability of features, 212, 240, 241; music, 210, 219n4, 240;
332 Index style, 14, 210, 212, 216, 219n2, 241, 244n15 Gama, Vasco da, 106n1, 107n16 German, 32, 90n8, 91n10, 101, 153; German music, 235; German Renaissance, 68; German sculpture, 110; Germany, 61 Gheyn, Jacques de, 33 – 4 Goa, 5, 8 – 9, 101, 105 Golden Age: literature, 16; painting, 55 Góngora, Luis de, 226, 316n12 Goya y Lucientes, Francisco José de, 309, 317n31, 317n32 Gracián, Baltasar, 15, 247 – 9, 251 – 2, 254, 258, 260, 262, 265 – 7, 283, 316n12 Guadalajara, 118 – 20, 122, 124 – 7, 132n25, 303 Guanajuato, 116, 298, 300, 304, 311 Guaraní, 25, 133n44, 137, 194, 200; Guaranis, 13 Guatemala, 11, 115, 163, 169, 175n27, 176n35, 176n36, 231, 241; Guatemala City, 184 Hercules, 260 Herodotus, 32 Herrera, Francisco Paula, 167, 171, 176 herure. See jerure Hispanic, 9, 15, 19n15, 78, 84, 101, 131n4, 219, 241, 243, 247, 267, 275, 279, 296 – 8, 311 Hispanic Baroque, 5, 13 – 15, 19n14, 20n19, 153, 154, 157n28, 226, 247, 267, 304 hommo bula (man as bubble), 33 Horace, 265; Horatian, 318n39 Horozco y Covarrubias, Juan de, 250, 268n15 House of Loreto, 9, 10, 114 – 38; in New Spain, 114 – 23; in South America, 123 – 5; at Tepotzotlán, 116 – 17, 144 – 9 Huejotzingo, 161, 175n15
Ibarra, José de, 118 Iberia, 14, 17, 229, 296; Iberian, 3 – 4, 7, 55, 69n13, 96, 185, 225 – 6, 229, 235, 241 Ibero-America, 3, 4, 9, 12, 18n1, 28, 113, 129, 156n10, 174n3, 296; Ibero-American, 3, 5, 7, 16, 17, 19n14, 19n15, 130, 225, 296 illusionistic perspective, 149 image-corps (image-body), 105 – 6 imágenes de vestir (dressed images), 7, 52, 62, 71n32, 71n33, 84 – 5, 122 Inca, 63 – 4, 68, 71n33, 71n40, 72n42; Incan, 7, 64 India, 7 – 8, 19n16, 106n1, 107n16 Indian, 201; Indians, 125, 128, 156n12, 201, 207n19, 208n20 Indigenous: craftmanship, 146, 148, 156n12, 183; dances, 194, 201, 204 – 5; garments, 63, 68; languages, 17, 185, 194, 202, 204; music, 14, 200 – 2; musical instruments, 202 – 3; practices, 55; schools for, 155n6; textiles, 7, 62 – 8 infinite, experience of, 150 – 2 Inquisition, 106n3; Inquisitorial case, 96 intimate presence: in camarín at Tepotzotlán, 148; and idea of limit, 148, 152; spatial representational strategies of, 139, 152 – 3 Istanbul, 18, 21 Italian, 10, 14, 16, 55, 56, 60, 69n14, 85, 116, 123, 128, 129, 131n7, 133n54, 149, 156n14, 210, 234, 235, 266, 267, 275, 287n16, 303, 312 Italy, 55 – 8, 64, 72n48, 97, 105, 114, 116, 125 – 6, 128, 144, 184, 212, 240 ivory sculptures, 9, 98, 101, 103 Japan, 148, 157n22; Japanese, 148; Martyrs of Japan, 46 jerure (panpipe), 202 – 3
Index 333 Jerusalem, Ignacio, 14, 210 – 11, 217 – 18, 220n16, 221n36, 244n15, 293 – 4, 300, 322; as Ignazio Gerusalemme, 211 Jesuit, 10, 12 – 13, 15, 17n1, 19n16, 82, 96, 101, 104, 115 – 18, 120, 122, 124 – 8, 130, 132n33, 139, 149 – 50, 152, 155n6, 156n14, 156n16, 183, 189 – 90, 202, 204, 205, 277, 289n26, 290n32, 291n37, 291n50, 292n51, 292n53, 300; Jesuits, 6, 9 – 10, 12, 14 – 15, 96, 114, 116, 120, 122 – 3, 125, 129, 148, 156n14, 156n21, 200 – 2, 276; Society of Jesus, 6, 9, 125, 139, 149, 152, 190, 274 Jesus, Agostinho de, 101 Kubler, George, 144, 155n8 Latin America, 4, 17n1, 20n16, 69n5, 114, 131n4, 175n18, 267; Latin American, 3, 6, 16, 69n13, 72n44, 123, 157n28, 174n2 Latin, 32, 38, 46, 78, 101, 106, 184 – 5, 190 – 1, 204 – 5, 212, 225 – 6, 242, 269n33, 311 Le Notre, André, 150 Lezama Lima, José, 3 – 4, 18n6, 296, 316n1 Lima, Perú, 53, 125, 133n54, 163 – 4, 184; Lima School, 55 Lisbon, 36, 44, 82, 84, 106n1, 107n7, 109 – 10, 178 liturgy, 29, 106, 109, 211 – 12, 219; liturgical, 14, 40, 78 – 9, 81, 84, 97, 107, 130, 146, 178, 184, 190, 202, 204, 211, 213 – 16, 220 – 1, 223 López, Andrés, 167, 170, 175n29 López de Valencia, Diego, 248, 268n5 López Jiménez, Melchor, 227, 235 – 8, 240 – 3 Loreto, 9 – 10, 28, 60, 69n14, 70n18, 70n19, 70n21, 113 – 30, 131n4,
131n5, 131n7, 133n49, 133n55, 133n56, 134n58, 134n59, 134n60, 134n67, 134n72, 140 – 1, 144, 156n10, 156n13, 174n3; Loretan, 56, 70n18; Loretito, 116 Luhmann, Niklas, 273 – 5, 284, 286 – 8, 290 – 1, 294 lusophone, 9, 11, 16, 97; lusophone authors, 97; lusophone Baroque, 6, 15; Luso-Brazilian world, 5, 16, 25, 46 Luther, Martin, 79 Macao, 19n16 Macheteros. See chiriperono Mannheim musical principles, 235 – 6, 241 Maravall, José Antonio, 19n13, 286n5 marches, 185, 189, 200 – 1, 204 – 5 Marian devotion, 7, 9 – 10, 27 – 8, 37 – 42, 50, 96 – 8, 113 – 38 matins: definition, 211; responsories for the matins of Saint Joseph by Ignacio de Jerusalem, 215 – 19; villancicos for, 225 Matosinhos, Bom Jesus de, 11 – 12 medieval, 32, 87, 90n7, 105, 107n20, 108n25, 116, 144, 247, 265; postmedieval, 104 memento mori, 16, 32, 34 – 5, 314 Mexican, 17n1, 18n4, 105, 116, 140, 146, 156n12, 228, 289n26, 304 Mexico City, 10 – 11, 14, 19n15, 115, 116, 118, 126, 157n28, 163, 167, 176n35, 206n5, 211, 212, 215, 219n5, 220n19, 221n33, 222n38, 227, 231, 244n15, 267, 298, 300, 303, 304, 317n22 Mexico, 18n2, 18n4, 19n14, 68, 116, 118, 125, 129, 134n73, 155n6, 157n28, 166, 167, 168, 170 – 2, 212, 215, 220n12, 225, 289, 296 – 8, 304, 314 – 15, 316n5, 317n18 Minas Gerais, 6, 25 – 8, 30, 34, 41 – 2, 50n3, 106, 108n28
334 Index missionaries, 123, 127 – 8, 150, 161, 183 – 4, 190, 194, 198, 200, 202, 205 missions, 6, 10, 19, 20, 122 – 7, 157, 183 – 5, 190 – 1, 200, 202, 205, 323, 325; missionary art and architecture, 6, 10, 125 – 7; music, 14, 156n22, 185 – 209; orchestra, 185 Moxos, 12 – 14, 124, 127, 174n6, 183 – 4, 189 – 91, 202, 204, 205n1, 206n4, 208n25; language, 204 Nazareth, 114, 116, 118, 130 Neapolitan, 14, 210 – 13, 215, 219; Neapolitan musical patterns, 210 Nebrija, Antonio de, 17 neoclassical architecture, 128, 297 – 8, 303, 305; literature, 312 neoclassicism, 300, 303, 315 Neptune, 254, 258, 267, 272, 298 – 9, 303, 305, 316 New Spain, 5, 9, 10, 14 – 16, 55, 114 – 16, 118, 120, 122 – 3, 125, 127, 128 – 9, 131n8, 133n54, 155n6, 159 – 63, 170, 174, 215, 219, 219n5, 226, 231, 244n14, 267, 273, 289, 296 – 8, 303 – 4, 313, 315, 317n21 Newton, Isaac, 150 novatores, 296 Nueva Galicia, 120, 132n25 Oaxaca, 14, 231, 291n48 office of matins. See matins Order of Saint Francis. See Franciscans Ouro Preto, 6 – 7, 25 – 6, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36 – 8, 40, 41 – 2, 44, 46, 50, 108n28 Paraguay, 10, 13, 19n16, 123 – 4, 129, 207n7, 207n8, 207n13 paratexts, 273, 276 – 8 Pasquino, 298, 311 – 12, 318n44
Pátzcuaro, 115 performance, 11; definition, 159 – 60 Peru, 5, 7, 10, 17, 19, 52 – 3, 59, 62, 71n34, 164, 184; Peruvian, 55, 63, 68, 71n35 Philippines, 19n16, 133n54, 225; Philippine archipelago, 4 picaresque novels, 296 Piedade, Agostinho da, 101, 106 pilgrims and pilgrimages, 11, 56, 60, 70n19, 97, 104, 113 – 14, 123, 125, 127 – 30, 144, 156, 159, 185 Plutarch, 266 plutonism, 3 Portugal, 5, 7, 13, 17n1, 27, 44 – 7, 82, 84, 96 – 7, 104, 107n16, 108n28, 131n19, 144, 155n8, 184, 220n19, 226; Portuguese, 3 – 6, 17, 25, 46, 95 – 8, 101, 105, 107n16, 109, 176n35; Portuguese America, 9, 16, 95, 96, 98, 104 Potosí, 54, 120 – 1, 124 – 5, 127 – 9, 132n28, 167, 171, 300, 304 – 5 Pozzo, Andrea, 149 – 51 processions, 11 – 12, 98, 116, 124, 146, 156n14, 161, 174n6; Corpus Christi, 191 – 4; with dances, 191, 194, 200, 201, 204 – 6; doctrinal, 194; for field work, 200; with music, 184 – 9; for new missionaries and authorities, 200; for new missions, 194 – 200; simple, 189 – 90; solemn, 189; before travelling, 201 quadratura, 7, 26, 36 – 40, 46 Querétaro, 16, 122, 125, 175n27, 296, 298 – 9, 300 – 1, 302, 303, 311, 314, 315, 316n7, 316n8, 316n9, 316n14, 319n49, 305, 307, 309, 311, 313 – 17, 319 – 22; Queretano, 300; Queretano culture, 312 Quevedo, Francisco de, 298, 309 – 11, 313 – 15, 317n33, 318n37, 318n39, 319n53
Index 335 Quito, 124, 184, 206n7 Quixote, 87, 297, 309 – 11, 314 – 15, 318n43; quixotic, 296 Rarámuri, 127 Recife, 46, 48 reducciones, 12 – 13; in Bolivia (Moxos and Chiquitos), 183 – 209 relics, 7, 9, 105, 115 – 16, 134n71, 275; and Corpus Christi, 79; and resurrection, 78 reliquaries, 78 – 94, anthropomorphic, 81 – 3, 105; box, 80 – 1 Renaissance, 15, 19n16, 20n18, 56, 60, 68, 87, 92n22, 108n23, 128, 149, 247 – 9, 251, 266 – 7, 274, 283, 287n16, 319n46 responsories: concerted, 14; structure and function, 213 – 14; by Ignacio de Jerusalem, 215 – 19; as metagenre, 215, 219 Rio de Janeiro, 9, 25, 38, 46, 49, 99 – 103, 325 Rococo, 11, 25, 27, 29, 50n2 Roman, 114, 132n26, 170, 211, 316n8, 319n48 Rome, 13, 17n1, 57, 69, 70n15, 79, 91n11, 104, 108n23, 149 – 51, 160, 219n5 sacred infinity, 10 Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, 96, 106, 109, 216, 227 – 31, 244 Saint Francis Borgia, 91n11 Saint Francis of Assisi, 8, 27, 36, 37, 44, 46, 70n14, 316n7; Church of the Third Order of, 25, 26, 30, 34, 40, 41, 42, 45, 46, 49, 175n26 Saint Francis of Penance, 6, 25, 49 Saint Francis Xavier, 116, 125, 139, 141, 155n6, 189 Saint Ignatius of Loyola, 139, 200, 207; Guazú, 123
Saint Isidore, the Farmer, 187, 208n20 Saint Jacques, 108 Saint John Chrysostom, 96 Saint Rose of Lima, 225 Salmona, Rogelio, 154n2, 155n4, 156n11, 156n18, 157n28 Salvatierra, Juan María, 10, 116, 118, 120, 122, 125 – 7, 134n58 San Diego de Alcalá, 85 – 6, 91n16 San Ignacio, Bolivia, 205n1 San Ignacio del Paraná, 207n16 San Luis de la Paz, 116, 123, 131n16, 134n73 San Miguel de Allende, 122, 128, 303 – 4 Santa María, Agostinho de, 97 Santa Rosa de Viterbo, 300 – 2 Santa Rosa, Paraguay, 123 – 5, 129 – 30 Santiago de Compostela, 227, 235 – 6, 240 – 2 São Francisco, 25 – 9, 32, 36 – 8, 44 São Roque, 82, 91n11 Saraceni, Carlo, 55, 69n14, 70n15 sculptures as cult images, 105, 120, 122, 128 secularization, 14 sermons, 11, 15 – 16, 273 – 95 shrine paintings, 7, 52 – 76; as cult object, 55 – 60 Sigüenza y Góngora, Carlos de, 296, 320 Simões Ribeiro, António, 36, 38 Sinaloa, 10, 118 Society of Jesus. See Jesuits Solominic column, 16, 301, 303, 317n21 Sonora, 10, 120, 122, 126 – 7 South America, 12, 62, 123, 124, 125, 128, 129, 184, 241; South American, 5, 125 Spain, 9, 14, 52, 55, 62, 69n13, 84, 91n14, 91n17, 97, 105, 120, 131n4, 131n19, 144, 155n8,
336 Index 175n18, 184, 205, 226, 231, 238, 250, 266 – 7, 268n5, 268n6, 297; Spaniards, 97, 184 – 5, 200, 319n50 Spanish, 3 – 6, 9, 14, 16 – 17, 19n14, 20n18, 52, 55 – 6, 59 – 60, 63, 65, 68n2, 69n3, 69n11, 69n13, 70n16, 71n33, 71n37, 72n46, 105, 130, 144, 146, 155n7, 184, 191, 194, 200, 204 – 5, 225 – 6, 235, 248 – 9, 266 – 7, 268n16, 270n42, 298, 300, 303, 309, 313 – 14, 316n5 Spanish American, 3, 52, 55, 56, 59, 69n3, 205 spatial representational strategies. See intimate presence Stations of the Cross, 11, 15 – 16, 159 – 74, 323 syndesis, 154n2 tableaux vivants, 11 Tarahumara, 127 Tepotzotlán, 10, 116 – 18, 122, 126 – 8, 131n17, 131n18, 134n64, 139 – 50, 152, 157n28, 172, 316n12 textilic imagination, 7, 62 – 5, 72n44 tilework. See azulejos Toledo, 87, 92n21, 105, 184 tontochis. See chiriperono Torres Villarroel, Diego de, 298, 313 – 15 total work of art, 6, 18 – 19, 25 – 6, 159, 241. See also quadratura transatlantic, 16, 19n14, 20n19, 103, 267, 298 Trent, Council of, 90n5, 96, 107n5, 276, 286n9 Tresguerras, Francisco Eduardo, 16, 128, 297 – 301, 303 – 12, 315 Tridentine, 286n9, 287n17; postTridentine, 34, 36, 44, 274, 276, 286n9, 287n17; Tridentini, 40, 43
trompe l’oeil, 52, 70n16 Turriano, Juanelo, 85, 87 – 9, 91n15 Ugarte, Juan de, 126 – 7, 134n58 Vanitas, 7, 29 – 37, 40, 50 Varallo, 129 – 30, 134n72 Vega, Lope de, 226 Veracruz, 114 – 15, 131n8, 319n50 Vieira, Antonio, 96, 282, 289n31 villancicos, 14, 183, 184, 191, 194, 205, 212, 221n32, 225 – 44; in matins, 226; by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, 226 – 44; their use in Latin America, 225 – 6 Virgin of Copacabana, 63, 225 Virgin of Guadalupe, 68, 69n11, 105, 219n5, 225, 231 Virgin of Loreto, 9 – 10, 55 – 8, 60, 69n14, 70n14, 70n15, 70n18, 71n24, 113, 114 – 15, 118, 120, 122, 123, 125, 126 – 9, 130n1, 132n35, 132n27, 132n28, 139 – 40, 144, 146, 148, 156n13 Virgin Mary: churches devoted to, 95; sculptures of, 96, 98 – 101, 104 – 6 Virgin of Rosary of Pomata, 53, 63, 69n9, 71n36 Way of the Cross, 159 – 74; chapels; 163 – 6; paintings, 167 – 9; as performance, 170 – 3 Xarque, Francisco, 200 – 1, 207n10, 207n12, 208n24, 297n17 Zappa, Juan Bautista, 10, 116, 126 Zevi, Bruno, 157n23 Zipoli, Domenico, 13, 184, 190
Toronto Iberic CO-EDITORS: Robert Davidson (Toronto) and Frederick A. de Armas (Chicago) EDITORIAL BOARD: Josiah Blackmore (Harvard); Marina Brownlee (Princeton); Anthony J. Cascardi (Berkeley); Justin Crumbaugh (Mt Holyoke); Emily Francomano (Georgetown); Jordana Mendelson (NYU); Joan Ramon Resina (Stanford); Enrique García Santo-Tomás (U Michigan); H. Rosi Song (Durham); Kathleen Vernon (SUNY Stony Brook) 1 Anthony J. Cascardi, Cervantes, Literature, and the Discourse of Politics 2 Jessica A. Boon, The Mystical Science of the Soul: Medieval Cognition in Bernardino de Laredo’s Recollection Method 3 Susan Byrne, Law and History in Cervantes’ Don Quixote 4 Mary E. Barnard and Frederick A. de Armas (eds), Objects of Culture in the Literature of Imperial Spain 5 Nil Santiáñez, Topographies of Fascism: Habitus, Space, and Writing in Twentieth-Century Spain 6 Nelson Orringer, Lorca in Tune with Falla: Literary and Musical Interludes 7 Ana M. Gómez-Bravo, Textual Agency: Writing Culture and Social Networks in Fifteenth-Century Spain 8 Javier Irigoyen-García, The Spanish Arcadia: Sheep Herding, Pastoral Discourse, and Ethnicity in Early Modern Spain 9 Stephanie Sieburth, Survival Songs: Conchita Piquer’s Coplas and Franco’s Regime of Terror 10 Christine Arkinstall, Spanish Female Writers and the Freethinking Press, 1879–1926 11 Margaret Boyle, Unruly Women: Performance, Penitence, and Punishment in Early Modern Spain 12 Evelina Gužauskyte˙, Christopher Columbus’s Naming in the diarios of the Four Voyages (1492–1504): A Discourse of Negotiation 13 Mary E. Barnard, Garcilaso de la Vega and the Material Culture of Renaissance Europe 14 William Viestenz, By the Grace of God: Francoist Spain and the Sacred Roots of Political Imagination 15 Michael Scham, Lector Ludens: The Representation of Games and Play in Cervantes
16 Stephen Rupp, Heroic Forms: Cervantes and the Literature of War 17 Enrique Fernandez, Anxieties of Interiority and Dissection in Early Modern Spain 18 Susan Byrne, Ficino in Spain 19 Patricia M. Keller, Ghostly Landscapes: Film, Photography, and the Aesthetics of Haunting in Contemporary Spanish Culture 20 Carolyn A. Nadeau, Food Matters: Alonso Quijano’s Diet and the Discourse of Food in Early Modern Spain 21 Cristian Berco, From Body to Community: Venereal Disease and Society in Baroque Spain 22 Elizabeth R. Wright, The Epic of Juan Latino: Dilemmas of Race and Religion in Renaissance Spain 23 Ryan D. Giles, Inscribed Power: Amulets and Magic in Early Spanish Literature 24 Jorge Pérez, Confessional Cinema: Religion, Film, and Modernity in Spain’s Development Years, 1960–1975 25 Joan Ramon Resina, Josep Pla: Seeing the World in the Form of Articles 26 Javier Irigoyen-García, “Moors Dressed as Moors”: Clothing, Social Distinction, and Ethnicity in Early Modern Iberia 27 Jean Dangler, Edging toward Iberia 28 Ryan D. Giles and Steven Wagschal (eds), Beyond Sight: Engaging the Senses in Iberian Literatures and Cultures, 1200–1750 29 Silvia Bermúdez, Rocking the Boat: Migration and Race in Contemporary Spanish Music 30 Hilaire Kallendorf, Ambiguous Antidotes: Virtue as Vaccine for Vice in Early Modern Spain 31 Leslie Harkema, Spanish Modernism and the Poetics of Youth: From Miguel de Unamuno to La Joven Literatura 32 Benjamin Fraser, Cognitive Disability Aesthetics: Visual Culture, Disability Representations, and the (In)Visibility of Cognitive Difference 33 Robert Patrick Newcomb, Iberianism and Crisis: Spain and Portugal at the Turn of the Twentieth Century 34 Sara J. Brenneis, Spaniards in Mauthausen: Representations of a Nazi Concentration Camp, 1940-2015 35 Silvia Bermúdez and Roberta Johnson (eds), A New History of Iberian Feminisms 36 Steven Wagschal, Minding Animals In the Old and New Worlds: A Cognitive Historical Analysis 37 Heather Bamford, Cultures of the Fragment: Uses of the Iberian Manuscript, 1100–1600 38 Enrique García Santo-Tomás (ed), Science on Stage in Early Modern Spain
39 Marina Brownlee (ed), Cervantes’ Persiles and the Travails of Romance 40 Sarah Thomas, Inhabiting the In-Between: Childhood and Cinema in Spain’s Long Transition 41 David A. Wacks, Medieval Iberian Crusade Fiction and the Mediterranean World 42 Rosilie Hernández, Immaculate Conceptions: The Power of the Religious Imagination in Early Modern Spain 43 Mary Coffey and Margot Versteeg (eds), Imagined Truths: Realism in Modern Spanish Literature and Culture 44 Diana Aramburu, Resisting Invisibility: Detecting the Female Body in Spanish Crime Fiction 45 Samuel Amago and Matthew J. Marr (eds), Consequential Art: Comics Culture in Contemporary Spain 46 Richard P. Kinkade, Dawn of a Dynasty: The Life and Times of Infante Manuel of Castile 47 Jill Robbins, Poetry and Crisis: Cultural Politics and Citizenship in the Wake of the Madrid Bombings 48 Ana María Laguna and John Beusterien (eds), Goodbye Eros: Recasting Forms and Norms of Love in the Age of Cervantes 49 Sara J. Brenneis and Gina Herrmann (eds), Spain, World War II, and the Holocaust: History and Representation 50 Francisco Fernández de Alba, Sex, Drugs, and Fashion in 1970s Madrid 51 Daniel Aguirre-Oteiza, This Ghostly Poetry: Reading Spanish Republican Exiles between Literary History and Poetic Memory 52 Lara Anderson, Control and Resistance: Food Discourse in Franco Spain 53 Faith Harden, Arms and Letters: Military Life Writing in Early Modern Spain 54 Erin Alice Cowling, Tania de Miguel Magro, Mina García Jordán, and Glenda Y. Nieto-Cuebas (eds), Social Justice in Spanish Golden Age Theatre 55 Paul Michael Johnson, Affective Geographies: Cervantes, Emotion, and the Literary Mediterranean 56 Justin Crumbaugh and Nil Santiáñez (eds), Spanish Fascist Writing: An Anthology 57 Margaret E. Boyle and Sarah E. Owens (eds), Health and Healing in the Early Modern Iberian World: A Gendered Perspective 58 Leticia Álvarez-Recio (ed), Iberian Chivalric Romance: Translations and Cultural Transmission in Early Modern England 59 Henry Berlin, Alone Together: Poetics of the Passions in Late Medieval Iberia 60 Adrian Shubert, The Sword of Luchana: Baldomero Espartero and the Making of Modern Spain, 1793–1879
61 Jorge Pérez, Fashioning Spanish Cinema: Costume, Identity, and Stardom 62 Enriqueta Zafra, Lazarillo de Tormes: A Graphic Novel 63 Erin Alice Cowling, Chocolate: How a New World Commodity Conquered Spanish Literature 64 Mary E. Barnard, A Poetry of Things: The Material Lyric in Habsburg Spain 65 Frederick A. de Armas and James Mandrell (eds), The Gastronomical Arts in Spain: Food and Etiquette 66 Catherine Infante, The Arts of Encounter: Christians, Muslims, and the Power of Images in Early Modern Spain 67 Robert Richmond Ellis, Bibliophiles, Murderous Bookmen, and Mad Librarians: The Story of Books in Modern Spain 68 Beatriz de Alba-Koch (ed), The Ibero-American Baroque