Praying in the Shadow of Death: Religious Art and Architecture in Colonial Mexico

Religious Conversion

• encomenderos technically responsible for pushing Christianity, more interested in money

• Crown quickly decided that friars are better suited to the task

• friars

  • like monks but allowed to leave cloisters, preach to the masses, highly educated, educated the sons of Indigenous nobility, did a lot of architecture, translation

Architecture

• architecturally, friars were very on trend

  • Coixtlahuaca, Oaxaca

    • Plateresque facades, common in Spain 15th-16thC

  • Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca

    • later Renaissance facade, less embellishment, more ‘sombre’, later 16thC

Indigenous Labour

• all churches constructed by Indigenous people

• Yanhuitlan church, Oaxaca

  • on any given day, 600 persons were working on the Church, construction ongoing for 25 years

• run like tax/tribute, required labour

• accomplished stone masons

  • quickly mastered European architectural techniques and principles

Innovations

• open air chapels

  • required to provide a sheltered space for an altar and hold mass outdoors

• atria

  • large outdoor gathering space in front of a church where masses and other religious activities take place

  • ‘Ideal Atria’ in Rhetorica Christiana, 1572

• Posa Chapels

  • Calpan, Puebla

    • elaborate carvings of religious events

  • ‘pause chapels’, breaks from processions

• atrial crosses

  • carved stone crosses in the centre of atria

  • Tequitqui, comes from Nahuatl word for tribute

    • used to describe Mexican stone carving showing a mix of Spanish and Indigenous influences

    • sometimes called ‘Indo-Christian’

  • sometimes recessed space at cross junction

    • obsidian disc set in centre

Building in the Shadow of Death

• church construction spiked in central Mexico in 1550s

• 1540s massive wave of epidemic disease called Huey Cocolixti/Great Pestilence

• killed between 5-15 million. ~80% of population

• traumatic rupture for Indigenous societies, put massive strain on collective labour

• building at least partially voluntary

Cabacerca

• ‘Head Town’

• communities with monasteries, with friars eligible 

• able to govern your own internal financial affairs, measure of control over smaller town

• path to limited economic autonomy

• partially explains spike in church building following epidemic

Murals

• Inside churches and convents

• Malinalco, Augustinian convent, central Mexico

  • depicts Garden of Eden including indigenous plant species like cacti, chocolate

Featherworks

• precious feathers and natural adhesives

  • feathers natural or dyed

• no existing analogue in Europe, enchanted Europeans

• a number of featherworks commissioned

  • Coyote Feather Shield, Welt Museum, Vienna

• specific indigenous significance

  • Tonalli: sacred energy of life/animacy

  • comes from tona, meaning to shine or to give off heat

  • bright colour or iridescence indicant tonalli

  • feathers perfect example of tonalli, also gold and jewels

  • persons/things could be made more sacred by being clad in feathers

    • sacrificial victims often given feathers

  • religious images (e.g. Christ) made from feathers, specific meaning to indigenous peoples

Hybridity and Catholicism

• feathered garb for priests

• portable altars often made with obsidian

  • strong meaning in indigenous cultures

• hybrid Indigenous art after 1600

  • Indigenous population now 10% of original number

  • very few hybrid artistic practices continue

• ‘The Black Legend’: emphasising cruelties carried out

• or, emphasising Indigenous survival and resistance

• as always, balance

• Vincent Brown: the history of their social and political lives lies between resistance and oblivion