No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Style in 18th Century Mexico*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
Extract
Of the 18th Century, a 19th century critic remarked that it mated decadence with splendor — a poetically conceived evaluation, but one which introduces more than aesthetic judgment. From the time of Sylvester Baxter's pioneer appreciation of art and architecture in colonial Mexico, there have been a great variety of travellers and scholars who have attempted to clarify the stylistic problems of the period. It would be impossible to give any just measure of credit to all those who have contributed; much of the most meaningful interpretation of this period, however, must be based on the brilliant work of the late Manuel Tous-saint and the investigadores of the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas at the University of Mexico.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © University of Miami 1959
Footnotes
*
The material in this article is, in part, based on a paper delivered at the Symposium on Mexican Art held April 17-21, 1958 at the University of Michigan. I would like to express my appreciation to Professor Harold Wethey and Mr. Charles Sawyer for making that paper possible. Justino Fernández has been kind enough to read the present article before publication.
References
1 in Manuel G. Revilla, El Arte en México en la Época Antigua y durante el Gobierno Virreinal, México, Oficina Tipográfica de la Secretaría de Fomento, 1893; also quoted on p. 23 of Baxter (see following note).
2 Sylvester Baxter, Spanish Colonial Architecture in Mexico (Photographs by Henry Peabody and measured drawings by Bertram G. Goodhue), Boston, J. B. Millet, 1901. 1 v. text, 9 v. plates. There is a Spanish translation of Baxter's text, with abridgements, by Manuel Toussaint et al., Mexico, 1934. Baxter's admirably sympathetic and perceptive study was one of the earliest important works in English. His intuitions have, in Some cases, been well justified by fact; indeed, Mexican colonial architecture even now needs such intuitions. Unfortunately, Baxter's knowledge of Spanish architecture was incomplete and some of his general observations seem rather obvious today. His great contribution was in viewing a vast amount of exotic material with a comparative understanding rare in his time — and in making possible Henry Peabody's superb corpus of photographs, from which anyone can learn a great deal.
3 A bibliography of the publications of Manuel Toussaint (1890-1955) was published as supplement no. 1 to number 25 (1957) of the Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas. Justino Fernández published a catalogue of the publications of the Instituto and an index to the Anales as supplement no. 2 to this number (25) which honored Toussaint's extraordinary contributions to Mexican scholarship, and to the Instituto which he founded.
4 As has been often pointed out, it seems impossible to break the stranglehold which this term has on both the popular and the scholarly imagination. R. C. Taylor, “Francisco Hurtado and His School,” Art Bulletin, March, 1950, XXXII, no. 1, p. 28, note 28, suggested that the term Churrigueran be applied to work directly influenced by José de Churriguera the Younger, from whose name the Churrigueresque descends. The most serious drawback of the term Churrigueresque is that it implies an ancestry of eastern and north-western Spain (Barcelona and Salamanca, essentially) for the work of 18th century Mexico. The actual background of late colonial Mexico is Sevilla and Granada, plus an indefinably complex heritage of sources outside Spain; there is an augmented enthusiasm in the colony for formal devices (such as the estípite) which are never so richly developed in Spain. Churrigueresque seems to have appeared in Spain contemporaneous with José de Churriguera the Younger, for Juan Caramuel had pointed out in 1678 that the “Churrigueresque” should be judged by its own laws; only José Caveda (Ensayo sobre la Arquitectura Española, 1848) concurred with this same view-point in the 19th century, which tended to criticize all of 17th and 18th century design. See García y Bellido, “Estudios del barroco español”, Archivo Español de Arte y Arqueología, V, 1929, p. 835, and Elizabeth Wilder Weissmann, Mexico in Sculpture, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard University Press, 1950, pp. 212-213 for further discussions of Churrigueresque.
5 In Spanish, retable — the great screen behind an altar (retrotabula); the principal retable, behind the high altar, is the retablo mayor. In Mexico, retables behind the altars in transepts (which are, of course, often mere reveals rather than the the deep transepts of the medieval period) and in the nave are usually called colaterales; they attain as great a size and are as important foci of design as the retablo mayor. There is confusion possible both in Spanish (since small votive paintings of the 19th and 20th century are called retablos) and in English (since the Anglican church refers to a retable, or shelf, behind the altar).
6 The Salomonic column (supposedly used in Solomon's temple) was popularized by the great Baroque designers; it has, however, a considerable currency from late Roman times through the medieval period. Marqués de Lozoya, Historia del Arte Hispánico, Barcelona, Salvat Editores, 1945, IV, pp. 148 ff., discusses its use in Spain after 1500. The twisted column does not have any importance in Mexico until the very end of the 17th century; there are no Salomonic (or Salomónica) retables in Mexico to compare in splendor with those of Sevilla or those of Churriguera in Salamanca.
7 A Mannerist-inspired columnar or pilaster form made up of a special group of parts (an inverted obelisk, various blocks and medalhons, a Corinthianesque capital, etc.), making the estípite a new “order”. The word is apparently derived from the Latin: stipes, stipitis. Although there are significant pioto-estipites that occur in much of 16th century Italian and Northern Mannerist design, the developed estípite is a peculiarly southern Spanish and Mexican phenomenon. See Joseph Baird, “The 18th Century Retables of the Bajío, Mexico: The Querétaro Style”, Art Bulletin, September, 1953, XXXV, no. 3, p. 196, note 6. Victor Manuel Villegas, E¡ Gran Signo Formal del Barroco; Ensayo Histórico del Apoyo Estípite, México, Imprenta Universitaria, 1956, is a monumental pictorial summation of the estípite in history, although it tends to include examples that are irrelevant to Spain and Mexico in the 18th Century.
8 A term which I have coined in order to describe the non-tectonic character of late 18th century design, when the formal articulation of twisted column or estípite is superseded by articulation with an elaborately ornamented niche which assumes the character of a pseudo-pilaster; see Joseph Baird, “The Ornamental Niche-Pilaster in the Hispanic World”, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, March, 1956, XV, no. 1, pp. 5-11. Diego Ángulo Iñiguez calls them iatei-esttpites; this term, however, means less when there are no estípites present, as in certain late 18th century works; Francisco de la Maza prefers the term anastilos (without columns) to describe the predominantly ornamental articulation of the period after 1775.
9 George Santayana, The Middle Span (v. II of Persons and Places), New York, Charles Scribner's, 1945, pp. 2-3.
10 Gerónimo or Jerónimo Balbás or Balbáz; see Baird, “Querétaro Style,” note 5.
11 Popularly called the Altar de los Reyes, it is more exactly a Retablo; begun in 1718 and finished in 1737, it was not gilded until 1743. cf. Justino Fernández, El Retablo de los Reyes: Estética del Arte de la Nueva España, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, Universidad N. A. de México, in print (part of series: Estudios de Arte y Estética); this has a complete summation of the place of this great work in critical and aesthetic history.
12 See Baird, “Querétaro Style”, note 15. Margaret Collier is currently completing a doctoral dissertation for Yale University on the work of Rodriguez.
13 Aside from the diverse pre-Renaissance sources of Hispanic and Mexican design, there were, of course, a prodigal variety of sources possible both from the classicist and the mannerist sides of Renaissance and Baroque design; to compound this, there was an odd assortment of itinerant German, French and Italian artisans in Spain during the 18th century, who certainly added to the heritage of Mexico; see Marqués de Lozoya, op. cit., IV, pp. 413-449.
14 cf. John McAndrew in collaboration with Manuel Toussaint “Tecali, Zacatlán, and the Renacimento Purista”, Art Bulletin, December, 1942, XXIV, no. 4, pp. 311-325.
15 Manuel Toussaint, Arte Mudéjar en América, México, Porrúa, 1946, pp. 25-48; cf. also Diego Ángulo Iñiguez, “The Mudejar in Mexico”, Ars Islámica, II, no. 2, pp. 225-230.
16 Historia del Arte Hispanoamericano, Barcelona, Salvat Editores, 1950, II, chapters XIH-XX.
17 Kelemen, Pal, Baroque and Rococo in Latin America, New York, Macmillan, 1951, pp. 85–104 Google Scholar; Wilder Weissman, op. cit., pp. 115, 144-149.
18 George Kubler, Arquitectura de los Sighs XVII Y XVIII (Ars Hispaniae XIV), Madrid, Editorial Plus-Ultra, 1957.
19 A mudéjar feature; it consists usually of a stepped rectilinear molding (occasionally with new world modifications — as at Huejotzingo, where the Franciscan cord is used in place of an architectural molding for the purpose) that outlines a portal and limits the decoration around that portal to a distinct right-angled area of enclosure.
20 That is, pilasters which are placed one on top of the other to create a stepped surface increasing in width toward the back of a wall; they appear on the top storey of the cortile of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, and are a common device in the later 16th century for modifying the strict classicism of the High Renaissance in preparation for the reduplications of the Baroque. See Baird, “Ornamental Niche-Pilaster”, p. 8 and note 15.
21 Francisco de la Maza, “El Arte en la Ciudad de Nuestra Señora de los Zacatecas”, México en él Arte, no. 7, pp. 11-13, dates the reconstruction to 1730-1760.
22 The cathedral of Durango was begun in 1645 by Bishop Legaspi and finished under Bishop Tapiz in 1713. The Cathedral of Chihuahua was constructed between 1726 and 1789. The fagade of the cathedral of Saltillo (the cathedral was begun in 1745 and finished in 1800), as befits its generally later period of construction, combines the Salomónica with the estípite, popular in the north after 1750.
23 The church of San Sebastián y Santa Prisca at Taxco was built between 1751 and 1758, under the direction of Diego Duran and Juan Caballero; Ángulo Iñiguez, Historia del Arte Hispanoamericano, II, p. 550, identifies the architect Duran, mentioned in a document discovered by Toussaint at Taxco, as Diego Duran Berruecos, registered as a Spaniard in Mexico City in 1753; Juan Caballero was “maestro de la obra”.
24 Manuel Toussaint et al., Iglesias de México, México, Secretaría de la Hacienda, 1924 ff., VI, p. 92, attributes this orientalizing tendency to Pueblan influence; there are, to my knowledge, no other such Salomónicas in any part of Mexico, including Puebla. The knobbed portal-head is echoed at Guanajuato in the main door of San Diego, which is apparently much later in date; cf. Marmolejo, Efemérides Guanajuatenses, Guanajuato, Francisco Diaz, 1907, p. 233: “1784, 27 de Junio. Se concluye y estrena el Templo de San Diego magníficamente re-edificado después de la catástrofe ocasionada por la inundación de 1780.”
25 In 1749 permission was granted for the erection of a Sagrario to the east of the Cathedral of Mexico, and on February 4, 1749, the plan of Lorenzo Rodriguez was accepted. The Sagrario was dedicated on February 6th, 1768. The interior was damaged by fire twice towards the end of the 18th century; severe earthquake damage occurred in 1858 and 1895. The Sagrario has long been closed for repairs, which apparently are about completed.
26 La Santísima Trinidad — begun 1755 and dedicated in 1783.
27 The standard monograph on the great Jesuit seminary church of San Francisco Xavier at Tepozotlán is Rafael Heliodoro Valle, El Convento de Tepozotlán, México, Talleres gráficos del museo nacional, 1924; concise and well illustrated is von Wuthenau, Tepozotlán, México, 1940. The most recent monograph is Pablo C. de Gante, Tepozotlán: su historia y sus tesoros artísticos, México, Editorial Porrúa, S. A. (Colección de Libros de Arte), 1958. There are numerous documentary problems associated with work at Tepozotlán.
28 From Valle, Tepozotlán, p. 70; “Nov. 13, 1757. En este día en el colegio de Tepozotlán… extrenándose dos bellísimos retablos a la moderna, etc., que en el tiempo de seis años ha hecho el rector R. P. M. rector Pedro Ríos… el costo de éstos, las alhajas y ornamentos que en el referido Tepozotlán se han hecho, el de 110,000 pesos.” Valle corrects the author of this statement, José Manuel de Casto Santa-Anna, in the detail that Ríos’ name was actually Reales.
29 Angulo Iñigez, Historia del Arte Hispanoamericano, II, pp. 644-648, describes the façade in some detail, without suggesting any specific date or master.
30 The construction of the church dates from 1712 to 1778; the facade must date, on stylistic evidence, at the very end of this period.
31 George Kubler, op. cit., p. 310.
32 cf. Antonio Sancho Corbacho, Jerez y los Puertos, Cuadernos de Arte: II, Madrid, Instituto de Cultura Hispánica, 1947.
33 Francisco de la Maza and Víctor Manuel Villegas have “discovered” the very fine transept retables of the church at Chamacuero to add to the group studied in Baird, “Queretaro Style”.
34 The first stone of this church was laid in 1779; the latest, in the facade tower, in 1799.
35 The best monograph is Antonio Cortés, La Valenciana, México, Secretaría de Educación Pública, 1933.
36 cf. H. G. Ward, Mexico in 1827, London, Henry Colburn, 1828, II, p. 426: ”… Valenciana (where the population amounted to 7,000 souls).“
37 The use of crimped shells and other motifs characteristic of the international Rococo are particularly obvious in north-central Mexico, where most of the building comes toward the end of the 18th century — a time when the vogue for the Rococo is complemented by a tremendous outpouring of mineral wealth.
38 The retables at Valenciana have inscriptions that date them to 1778; it is interesting that the costs of these late 18th century retables were much greater than those of the early 18th century (40,000 pesos for the retablo mayor at La Valenciana — Cortés, Valenciana, p. 44 — as compared to the approximately 18,000 pesos for the Retablo de los Reyes in Mexico City). A gradual increase in cost over a fifty year period reflects the inflationary effect of vastly increased silver production and a general rise in agricultural prosperity throughout the country.
39 Kubler, op. cit, p. 300.
40 John McAndrew, “The Relationship of Mexican Architecture to Europe: Problems in the Field of Colonial Studies”, Studies in Latin American Art (Proceedings of a Conference Held in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 28-31 May 1945), edited by Elizabeth Wilder, American Council of Learned Societies, Washington, 1949, pp. 27-33.