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Thoughts on Church Architecture in Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Gordon Bodenwein
Gordon Bodenwein*
Affiliation:
Cuernavaca, Morelos, México
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Extract

Nowhere in the western hemisphere is the wealth of monumental architecture of the period of colonization still extant as great as it is in Mexico. Spanish in its derivation, transplanted at first almost bodily from the mother country and modified only in certain details by indigenous labor and by the exigencies of distance and circumstances, it remained for two centuries essentially and romantically Spanish.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , April 1957 , pp. 353 - 359
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1957

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References

1 See Mack, Gerstle and Gibson, Thomas, Architectural Details of Southern Spain for Spanish sources of artistic inspiration.Google Scholar

2 Sanford, Trent Elwood, The Story of Architecture in Mexico (New York, 1947), pp. 147–154.Google Scholar

3 For the progressive architectural development of the Spanish cathedrals see y Romea, Vicente Lampérez, Historia de la arquitectura cristiana española en la edad media (2 vols.; Madrid, 1908).Google Scholar

4 Kubler, George, Mexican Architecture in the Sixteenth Century (New Haven, 1948) II, 314–319 on the genesis of the open chapel.Google Scholar

5 Smith, Earl Baldwin, The Dome—a Study in the History of Ideas.Google Scholar

6 Kubler, op. cit., I, 134–151.

7 Baxter, Silvestre, La arquitectura hispano colonial en Mexico (México, D.F., 1934), pp. 3–9, 16–19 Google Scholar.

8 Sanford, op. cit., p. 11.

9 Sola, Miguel, Historia del arte hispano-americano (Barcelona, 1935), chap. iii.Google Scholar

10 Kelemen, Pál, Baroque and Rococo in Latin America (New York, 1951), pp. 38–39, 96.Google Scholar

11 Revilla quoted by Baxter, op. cit., pp. 32–33.

12 Ibid., pp. 90–92.

13 The late Manuel Toussaint (d. 1955) well known Mexican architect and author, in Notas al Texto introducing Baxter’s famous volume, says that the cathedral of Morelia is not plateresque but baroque and, certainly, he ought to know, but on the other hand, sometimes, it would seem, he protests too much and to no purpose.

14 Bouyer, Louis, Liturgical Piety (Notre Dame, Ind., 1954)Google Scholar, chap, i, “False Conceptions of the Liturgy—Products of the Baroque Period.”

15 [Editor’s note] January, 1956.

16 See Liturgical Arts (May, 1955), pp. 116, 118–120, for some of these awful inventions.

17 Ibid., article entitled “The Colonial Churches “by Leon Mozley, pp. 76–78, makes this point and is well worth reading.

18 Sir Ninian Comper in England offers an outstanding example.