Woman and Art in Early Modern Latin America (The Atlantic World)

WOMAN AND ART IN EARLY MODERN LATIN AMERICA

THE ATLANTIC WORLD Europe, Africa and the Americas, 1500-1830

EDITORS

Wim Klooster (Clark University) Benjamin Schmidt (University of Washington)

VOLUME X

WOMAN AND ART IN EARLY MODERN LATIN AMERICA EDITED BY

KELLEN KEE MCINTYRE AND RICHARD E. PHILLIPS

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2007

Cover illustration: Cristóbal de Villalpando, St. Teresa Interceding for Souls in Purgatory. 1708, Church of Santiago, Tuxpan, Michoacán, Mexico.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISSN 1570–0542 ISBN-13: 978-90-04-15392-9 ISBN-10: 90-04-15392-6 © Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ........................................................................ List of Illustrations ......................................................................

ix xi

Introduction Kellen Kee McIntyre ....................................................................

1

PART ONE

RECONNAISSANCE: MARKING AND MAPPING THE NEW WORLD WITH THE FEMALE BODY Chapter One. The Queen of Heaven Reigns in New Spain: The Triumph of Eternity in the Casa del Deán Murals ...................................................................... Penny C. Morrill Chapter Two. Affections of the Heart: Female Imagery and the Notion of Nation in Nineteenth-Century Mexico .................................................................................... Magali M. Carrera

21

47

Chapter Three. The Virgin of the Andes: Inka Queen and Christian Goddess .......................................................... Carol Damian

73

Chapter Four. Women and Men as Cosmic Co-Bearers at Oaxtepec, Mexico, about 1553 ........................................ Richard E. Phillips

99

vi

contents PART TWO

TAKING POSSESSION: APPROPRIATIONS OF THE NEW WORLD/FEMALE BODY Chapter Five. Abused and Battered: Printed Images and the Female Body in Viceregal New Spain .......................... K. Donahue-Wallace

125

Chapter Six. Reclaiming Tlatilco’s Figurines from Biased Analysis ...................................................................... María Elena Bernal-García

149

Chapter Seven. El encuentro de Cortés y Moctezuma: The Betrothal of Two Worlds in Eighteenth-Century New Spain .............................................................................. Ray Hernández-Durán Chapter Eight. Nurture and Inconformity: Arrieta’s Images of Women, Food, and Beverage ............................ Jenny O. Ramírez

181

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PART THREE

CONSOLIDATION: THE QUALIFYING AND TAMING OF THE NEW WORLD/FEMALE BODY WITH SIGNIFIEDS Chapter Nine. Clothing Women: The Female Body in Pre- and Post-Contact Aztec Art .................................... Lori Boornazian Diel Chapter Ten. Savage Breast/Salvaged Breast: Allegory, Colonization, and Wet-Nursing in Peru, 1532–1825 .............................................................................. Carolyn Dean Chapter Eleven. Emblems of Virtue in Eighteenth-Century New Spain ............................................ Michael J. Schreffler

221

247

265

contents Chapter Twelve. The Figure of Mary as the Cloister in Mexican Mendicant Art .................................................. Richard E. Phillips

vii

289

PART FOUR

FULFILLMENT: THE EXTENSION AND EXPRESSION OF THE FEMALE BODY IN THE NEW WORLD Chapter Thirteen. Convents, Art, and Creole Identity in Late Viceregal New Spain .............................................. Elizabeth Perry

321

Chapter Fourteen. The Sweeping of the Way: Rethinking the Mexican Ochpaniztli Festival .................... Catherine R. DiCesare

343

Chapter Fifteen. Exploring a Female Legacy: Beatriz Álvarez de Herrera and the Façade of the Casa de Montejo ................................................................................ C. Cody Barteet Chapter Sixteen. Isabel de Cisneros in Her Own Role ........ A. Lepage Chapter Seventeen. From Mujercilla to Conquistadora: St. Teresa of Ávila’s Missionary Identity in Mexican Colonial Art ............................................................................ Christopher C. Wilson Index ..........................................................................................

367

395

419

443

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I extend my heartfelt thanks to all of our contributors who were prompt, patient, and generous in their support of this project. I am indebted to all of the wonderful people at Brill Academic Publishers who worked so hard to bring this book to press. Among them: Julian Deahl who immediately understood the value of this project; our editors Marcella Mulder, Boris van Gool, Tanja Cowall, and Gera van Bedaf, who were patient and supportive to a fault; and the typesetters and designers who did such a beautiful job with the layout of the book. My writing partner, Richard E. Phillips, has been a delight to work with. The breadth and depth of his knowledge about Viceregal Latin American art and architecture continue to amaze me. And finally, I dedicate this book to my talented, funny, and wonderful husband, Eric F. Lane, whose support in this and everything else that I do is boundless. Kellen Kee McIntyre I would like to thank Dr. Nancy Moyer, Prof. Reynaldo Santiago, and Prof. Richard N. Hyslin, successive Chairs of the Art Department of the University of Texas—Pan American, and Dr. Wallace Tucker, Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities, for their support of my official workload reduction for research purposes. Without this reduction, I could not have contributed to this book. I also thank the Association for Latin American Art and the Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies of the University of Texas at Austin for permitting us to post an announcement calling for contributors in their listserv and their weekly calendar, respectively. I thank the staff of Brill Publishers for their constant guidance and encouragement of our project. I am most grateful to my co-editor Dr. Kellen Kee McIntyre for inventing the concept behind this book, for defining its theme, and for recruiting me to assist her with this project. I also thank Eric Lane for his assistance and encouragement in completing this book. And I am grateful to Canek, Citlalli, and Alicia for their love and support. I dedicate my efforts on this volume to the memory of my parents, Frank and Marguerite Phillips. Richard E. Phillips

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Penny C. Morrill Fig. 1.1 Fig. 1.2 Fig. 1.3

The Triumph of Love. Mural painting in the Casa del Deán, Puebla, Mexico. ca. 1580. Photo by Jorge Pérez de Lara. The Triumph of Eternity/Ecclesia. Mural painting in the Casa del Deán, Puebla, Mexico. ca. 1580. Photo by Jorge Pérez de Lara. Juno. An engraving from Francis Pomey, Pantheum mythicum, seu, Fabulosa deorum historia. Amsterdam: Ex Officina Schouteniana; Apud J. J. a Poolsum, 1757. Courtesy of the Chapin Library Collection, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Magali M. Carrera Fig. 2.1

Patricio Súarez de Peredo, Alegoría de las autoridades españolas e indígenas (Allegory of the Spanish and Indigenous Authorities). 1809, oil, approx. 170 × 90 cm. Museo Nacional del Virreinato, Mexico. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Consejo Nacional de la Cultura (CONACULTA.-INAH.-MEX), Mexico. Fig. 2.2 Anon., Alegoría de la Independencia. 1834, oil, approx. 169 × 196 cm., Museo Casa de Hidalgo, Centro INAH-Guanajuato, Dolores Hidalgo, Mexico. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Consejo Nacional de la Cultura (CONACULTA.-INAH.MEX), Mexico. Fig. 2.3 Louis Charles Routte and Jacques-Louis Copia, after LouisMarie Sicardi, La Liberté, Patrone des Français, after LouisSimon Boizot. 1795, etching, S.P. Avery Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations. Fig. 2.4 Petronilo Monroy, Constitución de 1857. Exhibited 1869, oil, approx. 170 × 90 cm., Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico

xii

Fig. 2.5

list of illustrations City. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Consejo Nacional de la Cultura (CONACULTA.-INAH.-MEX), Mexico. Frontispiece. Color lithograph. In Vicente Riva Palacio, ed., México a través de los siglos . . . vol. I (México City: Ballescá, 1887–1889), n.p.

Carol Damian Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2

Fig. 3.3

Fig. 3.4

Fig. 3.5

Anon., School of Cuzco, Coya or Ñusta. 18th c., oil on canvas, 75” × 47”, Museo Arqueológico, Cuzco, Peru. Anon., School of Cuzco, Virgin of the Rosary of Pomata. 18th c., oil on canvas, 78” × 51”, Museo Pedro de Osma, Lima, Peru. Anon., Alto Perú, La Virgen María con el cerro de Potosí (The Virgin Mary with the Mountain of Potasiama). 18th c., oil on canvas, 53” × 41 ½”, Casa Nacional de Moneda, Potosí, Bolivia. Luis Nino, Alto Perú, Our Lady of the Victory of Málaga. Ca. 1735, oil on canvas, 59 ½” × 43 ¾”, Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado. Anon., School of Cuzco, Virgin of the Candlestick of Tenerife with Tunic of Feathers. Ca. 1680–1700, oil on canvas, 61” × 45”, Museo Pedro de Osma, Lima, Peru.

Richard E. Phillips Schematic iconographical diagram, first floor of the cloister, Dominican monastery of Oaxtepec, State of Morelos, Mexico, ca. 1553. Drawing courtesy of Prof. James Dutremaine. Fig. 4.2 Dominican monastery of Oaxtepec, first floor of the cloister. View toward the east down the south cloister walk, with the mural paintings of Sts. Paul and Catherine of Alexandria on the southwest pier. Photo by the author. Fig. 4.3 Christ Blessing the Loaves and the Fishes. Dominican monastery of Oaxtepec, first floor. West end wall of the refectory, south side. Photo by the author. Fig. 4.1

list of illustrations Fig. 4.4

Fig. 4.5

xiii

St. Peter. Dominican monastery of Oaxtepec, first floor of the cloister. First image of the pier cycle. Photo by the author. Blessed Osanna Andreasi. Dominican monastery of Oaxtepec, first floor of the cloister. Ninth pier face of the cloister arcade cycle, south cloister walk. Photo by the author.

K. Donahue-Wallace Fig. 5.1

Fig. 5.2

Fig. 5.3

Fig. 5.4

Fig. 5.5

Manuel López López, Fue muerta y destrozada. . . . 1806, etching. Courtesy of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas, Austin. Photo by the author. José Mota, Madre Gerónima de la Asunción. 1713, engraving. Courtesy of The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. Photo by the author. José Morales, Sor Sebastiana de la Santísima Trinidad. 1765, engraving. Courtesy of The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. Manuel López López, Desalines (sic). 1806, etching. Courtesy of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas, Austin. Photo by the author. José Morales, The Virgin of Guadalupe. 18th c., engraving. Courtesy of the Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico City.

María Elena Bernal-García Fig. 6.1

Fig. 6.2

Fig. 6.3

Diego Rivera. The Theatre in Mexico, a Popular History. Mosaic, 12.85 × 42.79 m., 1951–1953, Teatro de los Insurgentes, Mexico City. Detail. Drawing by the author at the site. Tlatilco. Type D1 Female and Male Figurines. Clay with paint, 1500–300 B.C.E. Drawing by the author after Thomson (1971), Fig. 14. Tlatilco. Pair of Female Figurines. Clay, 15.5 cm. high, 1500–300 B.C.E. Drawing by the author from the originals in the Museo Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.

xiv Fig. 6.4

Fig. 6.5

list of illustrations Tlatilco. Whirling Type D1 Female Figurine. Clay with red, white, and yellow paint, ca. 11 cm. high. Drawing by the author from the original in the Museo Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City. Zacatenco. Burial 19. Drawing by the author after George C. Vaillant (1931) “Excavations at Zacatenco,” Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 32 (New York: 1931) 189.

Ray Hernández-Durán Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2

Fig. 7.3

Anon., El encuentro de Cortés y Moctezuma, fragment. 18th c., oil on canvas, Priv. Col. Sebastián López de Arteaga, Los desposorios de la Virgen, 17th c., oil on canvas, Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City. Luis de Mena, Cuadro de Castas con la Virgen de Guadalupe. Ca. 1750, oil on canvas, Museo de América de Madrid.

Lori Boornazian Diel Fig. 9.1 Fig. 9.2

Fig. 9.3

Fig. 9.4 Fig. 9.5

Capture and Sacrifice of Huitzilihuitl and his Daughter, Tira de Tepechpan (after Aubin 1848–1851). Capture of Huitzilihuitl and his Daughters, Codex Azcatitlán. Photo courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. Presentation of Huitzilihuitl and his Daughters, Codex Azcatitlán. Photo courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. Cihuateteo (Pasztory 1998: plate 186). The Cihuateteo on the Day 1 Eagle, Florentine Codex (after Sahagún 1950–82 4: Figs. 78–82).

Carolyn Dean Fig. 10.1

Anon., An Allegory of America Suckling Foreigners (called An Allegory of Spain and Her Treatment of Her South American

list of illustrations

xv

Colonies). Ca. 1780, oil on canvas, 32” by 23 ½”, Cuzco, Peru. Priv. Col. Photo courtesy of the Frick Art Reference Library. Fig. 10.2 Johannus Stradanus. Discovery of America: Vespucci Landing in America. 16th c., pen and ink on paper. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art [Gift of the Estate of James Hazen Hyde, 1959 (1974.205)]. Fig. 10.3 Anon., (circle of Mauricio García), The Virgin of Mercy with Three Saints (Francis of Paola, Anthony of Padua, Gertrudis). Mid-18th c., oil on canvas, 37 ⅝” × 26 ⅝”, Cuzco, Peru. Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum [41.1275.181]. Fig. 10.4 Anon., La Virgen de la Leche. Sculpture for sale in Cuzco, Peru, 2001. Photo by the author.

Michael J. Schreffler NOTE:

Fig. 11.1

Fig. 11.2

Fig. 11.3 Fig. 11.4 Fig. 11.5

Figures 11.1.–11.5. are photographs of sections of “The Richmond Screen,” a folding screen or biombo from New Spain, late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. These sections of the original screen are in the Virginia Historical Society Collection, Richmond, catalogue number 1948.W.1108. The plates are provided as a courtesy by the Virginia Historical Society. Section with the emblems “Love Virtue for Itself ” (Ama la virtud por si misma) and “Virtue is Steadfast” (La virtud es immovible [sic]). Section with the emblems “Virtue Consists in the Mean” (La virtud consiste en el medio) and “Virtue is the Target of Envy” (La virtud es el blanco de la emvidia [sic]). Detail: The emblem “Love Virtue for Itself ” (Ama la virtud por si misma). Detail: The emblem “Virtue is Steadfast” (La virtud es immovible [sic]). Detail: The emblem “Virtue Consists in the Mean” (La virtud consiste en el medio).

xvi

list of illustrations Richard E. Phillips

Fig. 12.1

Fig. 12.2

Fig. 12.3

Fig. 12.4

Fig. 12.5

The Annunciation. 1570s or ’80s, mural painting, first floor, cloister of the Franciscan monastery of Cuauhtinchán, Puebla. Photo by the author. The Death and Coronation of the Virgin. Ca. 1563, mural painting, first floor, cloister of the Augustinian monastery of Epazoyucan, Hidalgo. Photo by the author. The Immaculate Conception of the Litanies with Saints Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. Ca. 1558, mural painting, first floor, cloister of the Franciscan monastery of Huejotzingo, Puebla. Photo by the author. Schematic iconographical diagram of the first cloister of the Augustinian monastery of Acolman, State of Mexico, built after 1539, mural painted ca. 1560. Drawing courtesy of Prof. Reynaldo Santiago. The Annunciation Witnessed by Sts. Augustine and John of Sahagún. Highly damaged mural painted ca. 1560, first cloister, Augustinian monastery of Acolman, State of Mexico. Photo by the author.

Elizabeth Perry Fig, 13.1

Fig. 13.2

Fig. 13.3

Unknown Mexican artist, Virgin and Child with Saints. 17th c., Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Dr. Robert H. Lamborn Collection. Unknown Mexican artist, Coronation of the Virgin with Saints. Ca. 1770–90, Denver Art Museum, Collection of Jan and Frederick R. Mayer. Andrés López, Sister Pudenciana. 1782, Olana State Historic Site, New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation.

Catherine R. DiCesare Fig. 14.1

Ochpaniztli, fol. 21r, Codex Tudela. Reproduction by permission of the Museo de América de Madrid.

list of illustrations Fig. 14.2

Fig. 14.3 Fig. 14.4

Fig. 14.5

xvii

Ochpaniztli. Reprinted from Elizabeth Hill Boone, The Codex Magliabechiano and the Lost Prototype of the Magliabechiano Group (Berkeley: 1983), fol. 39r, by permission of the University of California Press. Ochpaniztli, fol. 3r, Codex Telleriano-Remensis. Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Ochpaniztli. Reprinted from Diego Durán, Book of the Gods and Rites of the Ancient Calendar, eds. Fernando Horcasitas and Doris Heyden (Norman: 1971) Pl. 24. © 1971 by the University of Oklahoma Press. Ochpaniztli, plate IX of the Tovar Calendar. Reproduced by permission of The John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.

C. Cody Barteet Fig. 15.1 Fig. 15.2 Fig. 15.3 Fig. 15.4 Fig. 15.5

Casa de Montejo, Mérida, Yucatán. Ca. 1542–1549. Photo by the author. Detail: Right Tondo Bust, Lower Façade, Casa de Montejo, Mérida, Yucatán. Ca. 1542–1549. Photo by the author. Detail: Coat of Arms, Upper Façade, Casa de Montejo, Mérida, Yucatán. Ca. 1542–1549. Photo by the author. Detail: Left Jamb Bust, Lower Façade, Casa de Montejo, Mérida, Yucatán. Ca. 1542–1549. Photo by the author. Detail: Left Jamb Bust, Lower Façade, Casa de Montejo, Mérida, Yucatán. Ca. 1542–1549. Photo by the author.

A. Lepage Fig. 16.1

Fig. 16.2

Fig. 16.3

[Copy of ] Portrait of Juana de Jesús, original: Isabel de Cisneros. Ca. 1703, Convent of Santa Clara, Quito, Eduador. Miguel de Santiago, Castigo de la Virgen a Francisco Romo y su hijo. Ca. 1699–1706, Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guápulo, Quito, Ecuador. Detail of the retable of La Virgen de la Nube. Previously attributed to Isabel de Cisneros and currently attributed

xviii

Fig. 16.4

list of illustrations to Miguel de Santiago. Late 17th c., Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guápulo, Quito, Ecuador. Archangel St Michael. Previously attributed to Isabel de Cisneros and presently without attribution. Early 18th c., Monastery of San Agustín, Quito, Ecuador.

Christopher C. Wilson Fig. 17.1

Fig. 17.2

Fig. 17.3

Fig. 17.4

Fig. 17.5

Luis Juárez, St. Teresa Praying for the Release of a Soul from Purgatory. First half 17th c., Museo Nacional del Virreinato, Tepotzotlán, Mexico. Cristóbal de Villalpando, St. Teresa Interceding for Souls in Purgatory. 1708, Church of Santiago, Tuxpan, Michoacán, Mexico. Cristóbal de Villalpando, St. Teresa in Penitence. Late 17th–early 18th c., Sacristy of former Discalced Carmelite Monastery (today Museo de El Carmen), San Ángel, Mexico. Adriaen Collaert and Cornelis Galle, St. Teresa in Penitence. 1613, The Carmelitana Collection of Whitefriars Hall, Washington, D.C. Andrés López, Emblematic Portrayal of St. Teresa of Ávila. Second half 18th c.

INTRODUCTION Kellen Kee McIntyre

The impetus for the present volume developed out of basic need. Several years ago, armed with a broad background in both feminist and viceregal1 period art historical theory and practice, I determined to construct a graduate seminar on the representation of women in early modern Latin American art. At first I believed materials appropriate for the course would be relatively easy to come by, but I was seriously mistaken. Fortunately, I had recently heard a lecture by Richard E. Phillips in which he analyzed images of female saints on the piers of the sixteenth-century cloister at Oaxtepec, Morelos.2 Over the next couple of years, Richard and I shared insights into the topic and I was finally able to offer the course for the first time. Our collaboration resulted in a College Art Association Conference session titled “Image, Icon, Identity: Constructions of Femininity in Viceregal Latin American Art and Architecture,” held in Los Angeles in 1999. Reception by audience members suggested to us that there were other early modern Latin Americanists who were also interested in the subject. Since that time, we have made a concerted

1 The editors of this book have avoided the terms “Spanish colonial” or “colonial” art. These terms pre-condition the spectator to expect that the artistic and social forms of the colonized countries are largely derivative or imposed with regard to those of the colonizing polity. This is not the case with the tremendous creativity of local traditions developed by the regions subjected to Spanish control in the New World. The cultural contributions of Spain and the rest of Western Civilization to Latin America were of course fundamental, but they were not slavishly imitated nor monolithically imposed without great originality in their reinterpretation, negotiation, and redirection by the New World inhabitants. So instead of the outmoded terms “Spanish Colonial” or “colonial,” we follow the example of the great scholar of Mexican architectural history Robert Mullen, who titled his seminal 1997 book Architecture and its Sculpture in Viceregal Mexico without further elaborating on his choice of the word “viceregal” in his text. The adjective “viceregal” refers to the viceroys appointed by the Spanish kings to rule over their New World dominions and is therefore a preferable and historically correct substitute for such terms as “Spanish Colonial.” 2 See Ch. 4 in the present volume.

kellen kee mcintyre

2

effort to seek out research and collect essays that deal with various facets of the topic; our efforts are revealed in this volume. As we worked on the project, we noted with some surprise that although feminist art history had expanded exponentially from its inception in the 1970s with regard to ancient and European artistic traditions, not a single essay on the art and architecture of the early modern period in Latin America had made its way into the many feminist art historical publications on the period. The various essays in this publication, selected from a variety of sources, begin to correct that omission. They combine feminist approaches with interdisciplinary methodologies to expand our contemporary understanding of the art and architecture of the viceregal epoch. Feminist art historians have identified five basic methodologies, called ‘feminist interventions,’ with which to reappraise traditional art historical practice.3 I begin with the first four interventions and defer the fifth to a later position in this introduction. Of primary importance over the past three decades has been the reconstruction of the contributions of both (1) female artists and (2) patrons, and (3) the inclusion of a significant number of both in the standard art history survey texts. The feminist approach also (4) seeks to identify the institutionalized strictures that have traditionally hindered the ability of women artists to become professionals as they were historically limited or denied access to the artistically and economically nurturing environments of art guilds and academies. These four feminist interventions were identified by conventionally trained art historians with primary expertise in Western European traditions. The arts of the past century or so aside, these four approaches have not been applied systematically to the historical visual art production of cultures outside or on the periphery of this tradition. The example of Latin America, particularly during the early modern or viceregal period, is a case in point. This exclusion of viceregal Latin America from the feminist art historical discourse—that is, the identification of women artists and patrons, their inclusion in standard art historical texts, and their limited or denied access to training—runs counter to Latin American scholarship in other humanist disciplines. Groundbreaking work by researchers such as Silvia

3

Pollock (1988) 1ff.

introduction

3

Marina Arrom, Luis Martín, Elizabeth Salas, Verónica Salles-Reese and Irene Silverblatt, to name only a few, in the disciplines of viceregal history, literature, and anthropology, have produced significant feminist texts over the last twenty years.4 Many of these scholars, especially the historians, have begun to reconstruct the contributions of specific women to viceregal history and culture, yet no art historian—with the important exception of those concerned with convents of nuns throughout Latin America5 and some forms of portraiture— had published a text on the contribution of women to the development of viceregal art. It is probable that the contribution of women in general and women artists in particular during the viceregal period will never be understood fully due to the dearth of direct archival material. Indeed, as A. Lepage argues in the present volume, it is equally impossible at this stage to tease out the individual contributions of artists, male or female, in many parts of Latin America—in her study, Quito—due to the collective corporate practices of period artists. Nevertheless, few studies have combed the archival material for encoded words and practices that suggest institutionalized artistic bias toward women. The work by Kelly Donahue-Wallace in the area of women and prints remains one of the notable exceptions. As has been clearly shown in studies of Dutch, Italian, and English guild and workshop records, these documents can be as telling for what they do not say as for what they do. In addition, research into women as patrons of the arts in the viceregal period has been scant save for the studies on conventual nuns, as in Elizabeth Perry’s essay on the Mexico City Conceptionists in this volume. Historical research by Martín and others has shown, however, that individual wealthy women with considerable control over vast estates were influential in the development of other aspects of viceregal culture, such as animal husbandry and agriculture. The essay in the present volume by Cody Barteet begins to address the artistic leverage of high status female patrons, while that of Phillips on the monastery at Oaxtepec suggests that powerful native women, too, could affect period practice. Still, a more complete picture remains to be written.

4 Arrom (1985); Martín (1989); Morant (2006); Salas (1995); Salles-Reese; and Silverblatt (1987). 5 For an introduction to the literature on this topic, consult the bibliography by E. Perry, ch. 13, this volume.

kellen kee mcintyre

4

Why has viceregal art history lagged so far behind comparable humanistic disciplines in the adoption of feminist methodologies? Part of the reason lies in the bias against ‘peripheral’ art by feminist art historians trained in the Western European tradition, as mentioned above. A second factor is the comparatively tardy development of a general feminist consciousness in many contemporary Latin American countries. This is apparent yet today, where the reappraisal of the artistic contribution of women even in this past century is only beginning to emerge. And third, as Cecilia F. Klein noted just a few years ago, there had been reluctance on the part of Latin American art historians, no matter their country of origin, to apply contemporary theory purposefully to the study of viceregal art.6 Klein mentioned resistance theory and semiotics, to name only two; to her list I add most feminist art historical theory. (The situation has improved markedly since her observation, as is clearly evinced in this anthology in which feminist concerns merge with other critical theoretical methodologies.) I intentionally qualify that statement with the word ‘most,’ for it is only with the fifth feminist intervention that one can find some exception to the general observation that Latin American art historians had, until the last five years or so, tended to ignore feminist theory in the analysis of viceregal art. This fifth intervention centers on the visual representation of woman: the social and cultural construction and definition of female identity through the art document. For the sake of argument and due to the paucity of research to the contrary, let us assume that a good number of representations of women in the viceregal period were created by male artists primarily under male patronage. Yet, what can these primarily male artistic productions say about the status of women in viceregal Latin America? The editors of the present volume take the position, and it is borne out in many of the essays included herein, that Latin American artists in this period were collectively aware of a vocabulary of gender that could be tailored to deliver varying messages about the position of women vis-à-vis viceregal culture and society. Viceregal images of women can be divided into two broad categories: Secular and religious. In the secular realm are allegory and history painting, portraiture, and various forms of genre. In the reli-

6

Klein (1999).

introduction

5

gious realm are Marian devotions, depictions of female saints, and several types of portraits of nuns. Marian devotions arrived in the New World with Columbus.7 He was a devotee of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe at a monastery near Cáceres in the province of Extremadura, Spain (not to be confused with the sixteenth-century Mexican Guadalupe). This monastery was a favored pilgrimage site and place of retreat for the Crown of Castile. Many early conquistadors, most notably Cortés and several of his followers, who arrived on the Mexican coast in 1519, were from Extremadura. As such, they were adherents of the Extremaduran Guadalupe, which by that time was a popular image venerated throughout the Crown of Castille. This eleventh or twelfth-century(?), 18” high wooden statue, attributed with many miracles, depicts a fully frontal seated Virgin who holds the Christ child on her right and a scepter in her left hand. She is dark skinned. There are a number of these in Spain, and they will multiply in the Spanish colonies; most are credited with miraculous, often healing, powers. This particular image is among the most, if not the most, potent of the type in Spain. Besides the devotion to the Extremaduran Guadalupe, Cortés brought at least two more Marian devotions with him to New Spain. He introduced the military processional banner, a medieval survival, in two variants: One displayed an image of the Crowned Virgin, the Cross on its reverse. A second banner offered an image of the Virgin, identified by Manuel Toussaint as an abbreviated image of the Immaculate Conception, an avocation of the Virgin popularized in the late fifteenth century and the one championed by the Franciscans.8 Through them this guise of the Virgin became a special Crown devotion. It was thus politically advantageous for Cortés and his followers to devote themselves to the Immaculate Conception (he made the formal request that would bring the Franciscans, the first friars, to Mexico) and to the Extremaduran Guadalupe, devotions both favored by the Crown. The third image, the Virgen de los Remedios, brought by one of Cortés’s men, became the one most closely associated with the Spanish 7 This paragraph and the next build upon research by Brading (2001); Taylor (1999); Poole (1995); Peterson (1992); Rodríguez (1995); and Dunnington (1999). 8 Cortés’s banner is mentioned by Díaz del Castillo (1956), Ch. 27, and reproduced in Toussaint (1965), pl. 14.

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conquest of Mexico. This small, sculpted Virgin, which stands about 10 1/2” high, sustains a scepter in one hand. In the other she holds an infant Christ, an obvious reference to her role as peaceful nurturer. Spanish conquistadors credited an apparition of this miraculous image with the final vanquishing of the Mexica (or Aztecs) in 1521.9 That the Virgen de los Remedios is associated with war is not unusual in Catholic devotion. From at least the sixth century, if not before, the Virgin Militant functioned as one of the most important protectors of Christian armies claiming triumph under her care. By the late 1400s, as Rose Demir convincingly argues, various images of the Virgin that stand on the crescent moon functioned as “protagonist and protector against foreign Islamic presence in Spain. Considering the anti-Muslim sentiments throughout Spain in the fifteenth century . . . the crescent moon, which by then had become a well-recognized symbol of Islam, beneath the feet of the Virgin, was seen as a . . . sign of the conquest [of Christian Spain over] Islam.”10 For the Spaniards in the New World in the following century, the Virgin continued in her dual role as patroness of both war and peace. At the same time, for many native populations she assumed the principal divine position over a pantheon of pre-contact female deities with similar dual natures. The most frequently cited example of the dual nature of Mary in Latin America is, of course, the Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe. She shares this name with the Extremaduran Guadalupe. The reasons for this coincidence have long been the subject of conjecture. Many scholars believe that soon after conquest of the Valley of Mexico, Spaniards, perhaps Cortés himself, attached the name “Guadalupe” to a hill, called Tepeyacac in the pre-contact period (now Tepeyac), just three miles northwest of the main plaza in Mexico City. It was a crucial pre-contact entry point into the Valley, sited at the crossing of three major causeways into the city, and it continued as an important entry under Spanish rule. That it was Cortés or his followers who renamed the site “Guadalupe” is plausible; it could only have served to curry royal favor. Viceroys and other Spanish author-

9 10

Salazar Monroy (1973). Demir (2005) 20.

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ities entering the city for the first time traditionally stopped here to refresh and to apprise local authorities of their imminent entrance into the city. Tepeyac also had pre-contact ritual significance: an important female earth deity, Tonantzín, was associated with the site. She was both a war goddess and an earth mother figure, a nurturer.11 With the Extremaduran Guadalupe, the Tepeyac Guadalupe shares her miraculous appearance. Unlike the former, however, the Tepeyac Guadalupe, a painted image nearly five feet high, does not hold the Christ child. Her body sways in an s-curve, her head bends to the right and, like the Apocalyptic Woman of Revelation 12:1, the Tepeyac Guadalupe is “clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.” She stands on an upturned crescent moon; the sun’s rays frame her in an almond-shaped mandorla. Surrounding her head are the twelve stars; they multiply and scatter over her blue mantle. An angel (a later addition), a reference to the Virgin’s Assumption, upholds the composition. In European images of the Virgin of the Apocalypse, she often stands on the vanquished apocalyptic serpent, a metaphor for the ultimate glorious victory in the battle of good over evil, the holy war. In the Tepeyac Guadalupe the serpent is absent, which on the surface might suggest that this Virgin does not refer to Mary as patroness of war. But in pre-contact cultures, especially in the Valley of Mexico, the serpent, venerated as a deity, was associated with the moon, depicted beneath the Virgin of Guadalupe’s feet. Perhaps the moon was enough for native devotees to recognize the Tepeyac Guadalupe as triumphant over the serpent. In that case, this Virgin symbolizes both the conquest in general, but also specifically the Valley of Mexico: its pre-contact insignia was an eagle with a serpent in its talons or beak, perched atop a nopal cactus, as depicted in the often-reproduced frontispiece from the Codex Mendoza of the 1540s. This emblem became the coat of arms of Cortés’s Mexico City. In a print from the seventeenth century, the Tepeyac Guadalupe actually stands atop the coat of arms.12 If she is the personification of victory in war, the Tepeyac Guadalupe is also the purveyor of peace and humility. Her head tilts right, her

11 The information in this paragraph is the result of my interpretation of research contained in Taylor (1999) and Brading (2001). 12 Peterson (1992) 39–47.

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eyes cast down, her hands press together in prayer. She is submissive and obedient, the perfect woman as defined by medieval mendicant texts. Marina Warner, in Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary, writes: Although Jesus and Mary exemplified the virtues of poverty, humility and obedience in equal measure, and although Christians of both sexes were exhorted to imitate them, the characteristics of these virtues— gentleness, docility, forbearance—are immediately classifiable as feminine, especially in Mediterranean countries. The more fervently religious the country—Spain, for instance—the more men folk swagger and command, the more women submit and withdraw and are praised for their Christian goodness. Machismo, ironically enough, is the sweet and gentle Virgin’s other face.13

Since, like her Extremaduran counterpart, the Tepeyac Guadalupe is dark skinned, and because her physiognomy has commonly been characterized as Indian, she entreats native women to submit to the will of their husbands while admonishing the indigenous peoples to surrender, like good wives, to the will of Spanish religious and secular authorities. The Tepeyac Guadalupe and the Virgen de los Remedios, as historian William B. Taylor has pointed out, are but two of the more than sixty images of the Virgin venerated in the Valley of Mexico alone; there are hundreds of revered images scattered throughout Mexico in both Spanish villas and native villages.14 Many of these have probable connections with pre-contact goddesses and all speak to the position of women in viceregal society. Images of the Virgin with dual natures were also pervasive in the Andean region. A case in point, as Carol Damian describes in this volume, is the Virgin in the bell-shaped gown, an image intimately linked with the landscape and with concepts of fecundity and maternity, but also with war.15 Let us now turn to depictions of female saints in early modern Latin America, specifically as they are posed in Mexican retablos, or altarpieces, intended for mission churches in native villages, the pueblos. Retablos intended for main altars were famous for their elaborately carved, gilded frames and complex hagiographic programs. Characteristically, they rise to the height of the church and fill the 13 14 15

Warner (1976) 183. Taylor (1999). Damian (1995) 51–2.

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apse wall. No sixteenth-century missions were dedicated to female saints, therefore none turn up in the central and most prominent position of the retablo, although the image of the Virgin Mary usually assumes an important place. Images of male saints, including groups of apostles, dominate retablo iconography; less than twenty percent of the images found on late-sixteenth and seventeenth-century apse altarpieces are of female saints. Each retablo employs images of female saints for specific purposes, but there seems to be no standard placement of them. Yet, they more commonly show up in positions of lesser import—at the sides or base or as diminutive images—and are thus marginalized, rarely assuming prominence over male saints. No female saint ever stands alone; each is paired on the opposite side of the retablo with another female saint of similar legend or mystical quality, or less commonly, with a male saint who shares certain traits.16 The main retablo of St. Dominic at Yanhuitlán, in Oaxaca, is a case in point. Originally constructed in 1575, its paintings are attributed to the important Spanish painter Andrés de la Concha, active in Mexico from 1568 to 1612. This fifty-foot-high, screen-fold retablo was updated in the late seventeenth century with baroque spiraling columns. In this construction, women appear at two levels. Small round panels of the Dominican St. Catherine of Siena (left) and the martyr Catherine of Alexandria (right) flank the center depiction of Christ’s Descent from the Cross on the upper level. They are predictably paired: the fourth-century Alexandrian Catherine was the namesake of the Sienese Catherine, who died in 1380. Both virgins were known for their piety, wisdom, and physical suffering; both experienced mystical marriages to Christ. The intent of their placement here high in the retablo was to inspire piety and devotion in worshippers, particularly women.17 Their relative small size, however, diminishes their import. In addition, both of these female saints were proselytizers of the faith. Catherine of Alexandria, of royal birth, was a converted Christian, highly educated and erudite. In debate she converted to Christianity fifty pagan philosophers; for this she was eventually beheaded. She was the perfect model for native women from the cacique class, the Indian petty nobility. Friars educated cacique children,

16 17

May (1996) 16. Ibid., 10.

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primarily boys, but there are references to the education of caciqueclass girls as well, for whom the Alexandrian Catherine would have been the perfect model.18 Catherine of Siena, on the other hand, was a Christian mystic who devoted her life to the care of the sick and needy. She served as an exemplar for native women of all classes who were shouldered with the burden of caring for the many sick and dying Indians—primarily children, the aged, and men—who succumbed to the waves of disease brought by Europeans to the New World in the sixteenth century. Below, in the banco or predella of this Dominican retablo, the fifthcentury ascetic Mary of Egypt, dressed in a white robe, reclines, her hands clasped to her breast. She pairs with St. Jerome; both saints were recognized for penitence, bodily mortification, and worldly renunciation. In the right panel next to him is Mary Magdalene. She and Mary of Egypt were revered as penitent whores. They were often paired together in retablos intended for native churches at a time when the mendicant friars battled what they considered the wanton sexuality of the Indians: It was key in the spiritual conquest of the New World to discourage sex outside marriage. At the same time, mendicant orders from the medieval period onward viewed woman as seductress—Eve—but through penance and prayer, she could be reborn in grace. The message is clear. The penitent Marys below represent redemption, the best of reality, the virginal Catherines above the ideal. Any native woman viewing this retablo was reassured that she could achieve an intimate spiritual association with Christ no matter what her situation or social position. The third and final type of religious female image from the viceregal period is the nun’s portrait. The two presentational modalities for the nuns’ likenesses—the feminine and the masculine—have been defined by Kirsten Hammer. Mexican artists developed the first type, collectively called monjas coronadas (crowned nuns), in the eighteenth century. While the type has no direct European antecedent, its sources are found in Spanish practice, in death portraits of nuns who sometimes wear crowns that symbolize their spiritual marriage to Christ and their profession, and in the established iconography of the Virgin

18

A famed illustration by the Franciscan Fray Diego de Valadés depicts Franciscans teaching catechism to four groups of Indians separated by gender and age in the four posas of a convento atrio, Rhetórica Christiana (1989 [1579]).

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Mary, especially as the Immaculate Conception and the Queen of Heaven.19 In addition, these portraits depict young women who are the cream of creole society, daughters of wealthy European families at the top of the viceregal ladder. These feminized images of the monjas coronadas contrast with the ‘masculine-style’ portraits of nuns who have distinguished themselves through work accomplishments. “Writers, performers, mystics, abbesses: their images were commissioned not because an accident of birth unites them to Mary but because their strength of will makes them more like men in the framework of colonial culture.”20 This type of nuns’ portrait derives from the portraits of accomplished men, both secular and religious, who are depicted surrounded by references to worldly and spiritual accomplishments—books, symbols of military prowess, familial lineage . . . This brief overview of three types of religious images of women provides evidence that colonial artists were collectively aware of a lexicon of gender. The representations of the Virgin, the most pervasive female type in viceregal art, could be read simultaneously by both Spaniard and Indian as the goddess of war and peace, of conquest and nature. She represented the unattainable ideal. Effigies of female saints, particularly those included in retablos intended for indigenous worship, icons marginalized by virtue of their placement and their relatively infrequent inclusion in the retablo, offered practical role models for Indian women in their communities. The two types of nun’s portraits—the ‘masculine’ and the ‘feminine’— provided specific messages about the character of the individual creole sitter. “When fortitude, education, and accomplishment through determination and labor were called for, a masculine model was employed . . .; while purity, virginity, and privilege were formulated as female.”21 The present volume, which expands our understanding of the religious constructs of women in this period and also addresses women’s position in the religious and domestic realms, will revamp our contemporary understanding of the role of women in the society and culture of early modern Latin America. At this point it is necessary to explain why the title of our anthology ends . . . in Early Modern Latin America. Why was the term “early 19 20 21

Hammer (1999). Ibid. Ibid.

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modern” chosen instead of the word “viceregal”? The editors of this anthology wanted to enhance its breadth and ensure its success by including contributions from feminist scholars of Latin American nineteenth-century art. The term “viceregal” is only appropriate as a replacement for the term “Spanish colonial,” which can only cover the period of Spanish hegemony in the New World, excepting Cuba and Puerto Rico, from 1492 until the final defeat of the Spanish armies in Peru in 1825.22 But we are as committed to the study of the female presence in the nineteenth-century art of the newly ‘independent’ Spanish American nations as much as to that of the era of Hispanic dominion. Like the viceregal period, the Spanish American nineteenth century was an inchoate epoch pregnant with implications for our time, a field like the viceregal one that is ripe and begging for feminist analysis of its artistic expressions. We cannot understand the present without deconstructing the past. Also, the Latin American nineteenth century continued many of the patterns of viceregal development, including relative subjugation to the tutelage of more powerful external polities and the economics perpetrated by their corporations, with the consequent socio-cultural distortions that this caused. Inclusion of the nineteenth century illuminates and strengthens our grasp of viceregal developments and their destiny rather than distracting from them. The term ‘early modern’ is sufficiently flexible to accommodate both the viceregal and nineteenth-century periods of Latin American history in one vehicle. In the event, the essays that we include on nineteenth-century art, by Carrera and Ramírez, concern only art in Mexico, but are of an excellence that illuminates understanding of the congruent expression of the feminine in art throughout Latin America and indeed, western civilization.23 The organization of this volume is determined not by the predictable linear framework, by periods and centuries, but rather by the realization that in the early years of the conquest, and indeed throughout much of the early modern period, Spanish authorities, chroniclers, and others envisaged the Spanish colonies of the Americas in gendered terms. Proffered as the female body, the ‘New’ (virginal by implication) World was at differing times adored, pursued, courted,

22 23

The use of the term “viceregal” is justified in footnote 1. On women artists in nineteenth-century Mexico see Widdifield (2006).

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seduced, defiled, exploited, reviled, and denounced by those (males) who encountered ‘her.’ This mentality is born out in the various forms of representations of women that are discussed in this volume, from the earliest days of the conquest through the burgeoning of Republican Mexico. Great improvisation, inaccuracy, and errors occurred in the first era of exploration and colonization, suggested in the title of Part I: “Reconnaissance: Marking and Mapping the New World with the Female Body.” The Spanish conquistadors strove to understand the land in terms of the chivalric literature of knighthood—in it love remained unrequited—that induced them to give names like ‘California’ to the landscape they encountered. They invaded the river basin in South America where they saw female warriors fight alongside the men; their only frame of reference was in Greek mythology’s Amazon women, and so they named the world’s greatest river the Río Amazonas. This first era is clumsy, groping, fantastic: Mistaken ways of trying to digest this daunting New World experience plagued the endeavor. The conquerors were to a certain extent purposefully ignorant in order to deny the indigenous peoples and the indigenous landscapes their true definition. They sought to undermine the priceless identity of each native civilization by simply lumping the folk under one disrespectful category, indios, a term that did not even remotely correspond to them, only to peoples living half a world away. Very few Spaniards sought to correct Columbus’s original misapprehension that he had found the inhabitants of India, and by failing to do so they acquiesced in the enterprise of devaluing the natives by alienating them from their diverse heritages. As a result, Spanish definitions became the conventional ones. In Penny Morrill’s essay, the very foreign imagery of the Casa del Deán comes straight out of European ideals of womanhood and as such it lacks a New World consciousness. Outside the probable indigenous execution of the murals and a few modest references to native motifs, most likely selected by the patron, it denies indigenous symbolism or meaning. This phenomenon continued throughout the viceregal period and into the early phase of nation building. A case in point, Magali M. Carrera’s essay underscores the very foreign and very European practice of allegorizing the nation as the female body, whereas, in an attempt to mark, map, and define the New World terrene, as described by Damian, the image of Mary is inscribed by native artists within the native landscape: She is the Great Goddess Earth Mother

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presented in the form of a sacred mountain. And finally in this section, Phillips analyzes the depictions of saints on cloister piers in the Dominican convento of Oaxtepec. The friars not surprisingly employed these images of saints—saints who never lived in Mexico or the New World—to imprint the New World landscape with foreign, alien signifiers in order to try to digest and exploit it. The beginning of the assimilation of this foreign imprint into a new configuration of an independent, de-colonized Latin American civilization is indicated, however, by the fact that the indigenous women at Oaxtepec encouraged the adoption of a pattern that uncharacteristically included a high number of female saints in privileged positions, which is more in accord with the power of female deities and of women in preColumbian Mesoamerican civilization. This becomes even more obvious when the advantageous placement of female effigies in the Oaxtepec cloister cycle is compared to their marginalization in contemporaneous Mexican monastic retablos as studied by Julia May and discussed earlier in this Introduction. Part II, “Taking Possession: Appropriations of the New World/ Female Body,” is more vigorous, more aggressive; in it actors try to force the reality of the New World to conform to male suppositions about the nature of the land and of women. During the first period, ‘reconnaissance,’ outposts were established in Santo Domingo and Cuba, both places where Cortés lived for several years prior to his Mexican campaign, providing the framework for later and much grander conquests.24 Cortés learned the ropes here, how to marshal resources for grander ambitions, and to put together a more comprehensive colonial system.25 His experience was mirrored in Pizarro’s early ventures in Panama that primed him for his brutally exploitive ‘successes’ in Peru.26 This escalating aggressiveness is explored especially in Donahue-Wallace’s essay, an analysis of how physical battery, abuse, and rape of women were appropriated and utilized in

24 For the Caribbean and especially its islands of Española and Cuba, colonized during the first, reconnaissance, period and serving as the hemispheric bases for the second period of consolidation in the grander realms of the mainland, see McAlister (1984), 100, and Parry (1964) 179. 25 López de Gómara (1966) 7–11; MacLachlan and Rodríguez (1980) 67–69; Gibson (1967) 26–27. 26 For Pizarro’s early career as a bridge between the first and second phases of colonization, see Kirkpatrick (1967) 47–59 and 143–46.

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period prints to achieve the political aims of the dominant classes. In the second essay Mariá Elena Bernal-García describes how male anthropologists and scholars aggressively distorted and transformed the intended meanings and usages of the Tlatilco female figurines to fit their own sexist view of the world in the early to mid-20th century. Bernal-García ‘reclaim(s) that body’ or corpus of Tlatilco female figurines from the traditional biased interpretation that has been applied to it. It might be argued that Bernal-García’s essay is beyond the chronological purview that was set by this anthology’s title. The editors’ response is that Bernal-García addresses the phenomenon of misidentification and misappropriation endemic to the western enterprise in early modern Latin America and its continued pathology into the twentieth century, enlightening and liberating us vis-à-vis its whole line of development. Similarly, Ray HernándezDurán presents the aggressively distorted application of visual constructs traditionally associated with women and marriage to the encounter between Cortés and Moctezuma as depicted in an eighteenth-century painting as “part of an emergent American, particularly creole, (proto) national awareness and agency.” Part II ends with Jenny Ramírez’s essay on the forceful and outspoken way that painter José Agustín Arrieta appropriated the female figure to fashion allegorical and cultural statements about men’s perceptions of female associations with food, beverage, nourishment, nurture, and feeding. Part III, “Consolidation: The Qualifying and Taming of the New World/Female Body with Signifieds,” deals with attempts to comprehend and manage the New World reality in terms comparatively more sophisticated than the more primal and aggressive tactics considered in Part II. Just as a territory must be physically conquered and consolidated, its inhabitants must also be intellectually subjugated and controlled. Those enacting the consolidation must make some cognitive sense out of it all so that a plan of action can be elaborated and life can be lived with some sense of logic and order. Consolidation also involves the integration of New World and native aspects with European ones into the discourse as understanding of the New World reality becomes clearer. This section opens with Lori Boornazian Diel’s essay on negotiation over the meaning of the Female Body and its use in subjugating the environment between its prior pre-Columbian interpretation and its later postcontact representation in Aztec art. Negotiation on how to qualify and define

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the female anatomy between the indigenous and the European polarities continues in Carolyn Dean’s essay. With Michael Schreffler and the flourishing of the Mexican screen or biombo, which likewise has New World meanings and addresses the European/New World inbetween cultural identity of the criollos, we have another instance of such consolidation and qualification that involves a sophisticated allegorical and moralizing strategy, no longer primitive or improvised as it was in the essays from the previous section. Phillips’ essay on “Mary as the Cloister” finishes off Part III with the magical consecration of specific pieces of the New World land, the cloisters, as the body of Mary. In this way the New World landscape is sewn with the identity of Mary to co-opt and redirect, in a way beneficial to the Catholic power elite, the non-Christian indigenous tendencies to revere and adore the female principle inherent to the land. It also paradoxically exalts the feminine principle while denigrating the actual living and breathing human animal female, because no woman can live up to the impossible standard set by Mary, who is a virgin and a mother at the same time. Mary: Immaculately conceived in the mind of God at the beginning of time as the vessel for his salvation of humanity, free of sin, unlike all other females. So in Mary men (and women, self-destructively) can adore the feminine principle and fantasize about an ideal lover, and at the same time despise real women and their supposed vulnerability.27 And finally, in Part IV, “Fulfillment: The Extension and Expression of the Female Body in the New World,” the female identity powerfully and proactively asserts itself to define the land and the culture of the New World partly or fully on its own terms. Female creativity or female institutions thrive. Elizabeth Perry’s essay on nuns and their particularized forms of cultural display emphatically underscores the emergence of a “distinctly creole sacred identity.” Catherine R. DiCesare’s essay deals with the projection and display as a talisman of the body of the actual skinned and mutilated female victim, perceived by pre-Columbian worshippers as the definition and protector of the land that ensures its fecundity. It follows, then, that it is obviously perceived by the believers as “the extension and expression of the female body” to ensure survival and the discomfiture of enemies. It can be seen as a metaphor for the projection of fem-

27

Warner (1976), especially page 183.

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inine power inherent in the remaining essays of Part IV. In them women or the feminine principle do not let themselves be fully constrained or contained by men. Rather, either they themselves, or society, stand up for and express the full-throated defense and declaration of the feminine principle. In the essay by Cody Barteet, Beatriz Álvarez de Herrera is neither content to linger in anonymity nor let her dynasty be defined architecturally without references to herself and to her lineage. On the other hand, although the artistic production of the Ecuadoran painter Isabel de Cisneros, as described by A. Lepage, cannot be determined, the fact that her life has been the subject of nationalistic fiction attests to her contributions to the art of the period. And finally the aggressive proactive dissemination of the missionary identity of the Spanish mystic Saint Teresa of Avila across the Latin American landscape is voiced by Christopher Wilson. The editors of Woman and Art in Early Modern Latin America see this volume not as a definitive collection on the subject, but as a vehicle from which to explore further the position in society of women and the contributions made by them to the arts and architecture of early modern Latin America.

Bibliography Alarcón, R., et al. (1996) Pintura Novohispana: Museo Nacional del Virreinato, Tepotzotlán. Vol III, Pt. 2 (Mexico City: 1996). Arrom, S. M. (1995) The Women of Mexico City, 1790–1857 (Stanford: 1985). Brading, D. A. (2001) Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe: Image and Tradition across Five Centuries (Cambridge, UK: 2001). Damian, C. (1995) The Virgin of the Andes: Art and Ritual in Colonial Cuzco (Miami Beach: 1995). Demir, R. “Redefining the Crescent Moon: Symbolic Resonance in Muslim Spanish and Indo-Christian Art” (MA, University of Texas at San Antonio, 2005). Díaz del Castillo, B. (1956) The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, trans. A. P. Maudslay (New York: 1956). Gibson, C. (1967) Spain in America (New York: 1967). Hammer, K. (1999) “Brides of Christ and God’s Laborers: Differing Gender Constructions in Colonial Portraits of Nuns,” College Art Association, Los Angeles, California, Feb. 13, 1999. Kirkpatrick, F. A. (1967) The Spanish Conquistadores (Cleveland: 1967 [1934]). Klein, C. F. (1999) “Introductory Remarks: Indigenous Artists and European Intruders: Visual Strategies of Empowerment in Colonial Mexico,” College Art Association, Los Angeles, California, Feb. 13, 1999. López de Gómara, F. (1966) Cortés: The Life of the Conqueror by His Secretary _____ (trans., ed. Simpson (Berkeley: 1966 [1552]). MacLachlan, C. M., and J. E. Rodríguez O. (1980) The Forging of the Cosmic Race (Berkeley: 1980).

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Martín, L. (1989) Daughters of the Conquistadores (Dallas: 1989). May, J. S. (1996) “Female Saints on Mexican Retables of the Early Colonial Period” Unpublished research paper written under the direction of R. E. Phillips, Virginia Commonwealth University, 1996. McAlister, L. N. (1984) Spain and Portugal in the New World 1492–1700 (Minneapolis: 1984). Monroy, S. (1973) La Conquistadora de Hernán Cortés (Puebla: 1973). Morant, Isabel, et al., eds. (2006) Historia de las mujéres en España y América Latina (Madrid: 2006) O’Neill, J. P., ed. (1990) Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries (New York: 1990). Parry, J. H. (1964) The Age of Reconnaissance (New York: 1964). Peterson, J. F. (1992) “The Virgin of Guadalupe: Symbol of Conquest or Liberation?” Art Journal 51, no. 4 (Winter 1992) 39–47. Pollock, G. (1988) “Feminist Interventions in the History of Art: An Introduction,” in Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and the History of Art (London: 1988) 1–17. Poole, S. (1995) Our Lady of Guadalupe: The Origins and Sources of a Mexican National Symbol, 1531–1797 (Tucson: 1995). Rodríguez, J. (1994) Our Lady of Guadalupe: Faith and Empowerment among MexicanAmerican Women (Austin: 1994). Salas, E. (1990) Soldaderas in the Mexican Military (Austin: 1990). Salles-Reese, V. (1997) From Viracocha to the Virgin of Copacabana (Austin: 1997). Silverblatt, I. (1987) Moon, Sun, and Witches (Princeton: 1987). Taylor, W. B. (1999) “Our Lady of Guadalupe and Friends: The Virgin Mary in Colonial Mexico,” San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio, Texas, March 14, 1999. Toussaint, M. (1965) Pintura Colonial en México (Mexico City: 1965). Warner, M. (1976) Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York: 1976). Widdifield, S. G. (2006) “The Spaces of Nineteenth-Century Mexican Women Artists,” in D. Cherry and J. Helland, eds. Studio, Space and Sociality: New Narratives of Nineteenth-Century Women Artists (London: 2006). Valadés, Fr. D. de (1989) Rhetórica Christiana (Mexico City: 1989).

PART ONE

RECONNAISSANCE: MARKING AND MAPPING THE NEW WORLD WITH THE FEMALE BODY

CHAPTER ONE

THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN REIGNS IN NEW SPAIN: THE TRIUMPH OF ETERNITY IN THE CASA DEL DEÁN MURALS Penny C. Morrill

Introduction An extensive mural cycle has emerged from beneath layers of whitewash in two formal second-storey rooms of the Casa del Deán in Puebla, Mexico (Figs. 1.1 and 1.2). The murals, painted by an indigenous artist with assistants, today look much as they would have appeared when painted around 1580, the year carved in stone on the house’s fragmentary façade.1 It clings perilously to the side of a massive rectangular movie theatre that replaced most of the residence. This remaining façade and the two decorated formal rooms on the interior are significant works in the history of early modern art and culture. The patron, Don Tomás de la Plaza, had come to New Spain (roughly coterminous with the modern nation of Mexico) from Alburquerque in Spain’s Extremadura province. He had served as a secular priest in Mexico’s southern Oaxaca province before becoming Dean of Puebla’s Cathedral in 1564.2 Founded in 1533, the city of Puebla was strategically centered on the Camino Real between Mexico City and the viceroyalty’s principal port at Veracruz.3 In 1537 the Cabildo (city council) of Puebla successfully petitioned that the Cathedral of the Tlaxcala diocese be moved from Tlaxcala to Puebla. The first bishop to reside in Puebla with the king’s authorization was Fray Sarmiento de Ojocastro, who served from 1547 to 1557.4 Thus by the time of Don Tomás’s tenure as Dean, Puebla

1 2 3 4

Kropfinger von Kügelgen (1979) 211. Schwaller (1987) 32–33. Fernández Echeverría y Veytia (1931) I, 308–309. Leicht (1986) 139.

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had recently become not only a manufacturing, agricultural, and commercial center, but also the ecclesiastical hub of the PueblaTlaxcala region. Don Tomás’s residence was fashioned after the urban palaces that were built in Spain at Seville, Salamanca, and in Extremadura during the first half of the sixteenth century. The formal rooms with their elaborately conceived mural cycle reflected the Dean’s interests: His humanist theology, Spanish ancestry, and experiences as a priest in New Spain. Under his patronage, as demonstrated here, indigenous artists found their models for this mural program in books and prints published in the mid-sixteenth century at Antwerp or Lyons.5 This article proposes that the theme for this wall-painted sequence is built upon pre-figuration in the Room of the Sibyls and upon fulfillment in the Room of the Triumphs. The final female allegorical figure in the cycle, Eternity/Ecclesia, is the focus of this essay. Embodying eternity, she escapes the confines of earth and triumphs over Time and Death. As the personification of the Church, she is the keeper of the Sacraments. Eternity and Ecclesia are conflated in her because redemption through the Church’s sacraments is seen as the key to the soul’s eternal life. She is simultaneously endowed with the identities of the Virgin Mother, Queen of Heaven, and Juno. It is argued that this figure constitutes a break in the European symbolic tradition that had almost always represented the Triumph of Eternity with the Christian Trinity. The essay ends with a discussion of the possible precedents for this new iconography. The multiple identities embodied in the Casa del Deán’s figure of the Triumph of Eternity were, I believe, a familiar concept for both the indigenous artists and their European patron. An appreciation for

5 Proof that such trade in prints from Europe was occurring around the time that the Casa del Deán’s murals were created is provided by a 1572 inventory for a shipment of books from Spain to Veracruz’s port at San Juan de Ulúa. It included 210 dibujos large and small. The modern translation of the Spanish word dibujo into English is “drawing” while the word grabado is commonly used to refer to a print. There was no known market in colonial Mexico for master drawings, so the term dibujo in the 1572 inventory must refer to prints; see Fernández del Castillo (1982) 360–362 and 470–471. See also De Marchi and Van Miegroet (2000) 81–112.

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Fig. 1.1 The Triumph of Love. Mural painting in the Casa del Deán, Puebla, Mexico. ca. 1580. Photo by Jorge Pérez de Lara.

Fig. 1.2 The Triumph of Eternity/Ecclesia. Mural painting in the Casa del Deán, Puebla, Mexico. ca. 1580. Photo by Jorge Pérez de Lara.

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woman as allegory is evident in the Last Judgment play written in Náhuatl by Fray Andrés de Olmos about 1540, a colloquy among allegorical figures that I compare to the Casa del Deán murals.

Description of the Murals In the foreground of the first mural, set before a continuous landscape, twelve young women, each elaborately costumed and carrying her own standard, parade in order on horseback. The first is identified as Synagoga, the personification of the Old Testament, blindfolded and riding on a mule. She is followed by eleven Sibyls whose prophetic gifts led to their association with Old Testament prophecies and with specific events in the life of Christ. The artist or artists wrote directly on the wall near each Sibyl, announcing not only her name but also the book and chapter numbers for the related biblical passages. These citations were taken from Old Testament prophets, the Psalms, the Gospels, or the Book of Revelation. The interplay of the printed biblical references, which replace the traditional depiction of the prophet or evangelist to embody such texts, the Sibyls on horseback, and the floating roundels that contain scenes from Christ’s life, all contribute to a rendering of space that reiterates rather than defies the two-dimensional surface. This patterned effect is reminiscent of prints from Antwerp that were ultimately derived from books like the Speculum humanae salvationis with its multiple correspondences. The landscape with the Sibyls on procession is framed by rinceaux in the friezes. Among the leaves and large blossoms are entwined putti and several rather unique versions of childlike centaurs. The artist also depicted monkeys wearing jade bracelets and earrings that playfully interlace their long tails. The most telling feature of these anthropomorphic figures is the pre-Columbian sound scroll that issues from their mouths. The lower half of the first room’s lowest register appears to have been painted out, raising questions concerning its original appearance and meaning. Seraphim wearing jade pendants occupy the spandrels and, in the arched openings, knights in armor, shown only as heads in profile, alternate with large bunches of flowers that once may have been depicted in vases or in a miniature landscape.

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The murals in the second room of the Casa del Deán almost defy description. Based on the Triumphs of Petrarch, the frescoes represent the patron’s immersion in Christian humanism. The personifications of Love, Chastity, Death, Fame, Time, and Eternity, taken from Petrarch’s poem to Laura, are usually shown riding triumphantly in noble chariots, with Eternity as the victor over the human condition that demands death. Petrarch’s poetic expression of earthly love converges with the ultimate realization of Christian redemption, that is, the gift of eternal life.6 In this second room of the Dean’s house, Don Tomás and the indigenous artist or artists whom he commissioned broke with tradition and depicted only five of the six Triumphs, and in a different order than is found in Petrarch’s original text. The allegorical personages in their chariots and those whom they have conquered occupy a rocky foreground save the figure of Eternity whose chariot floats above the clouds. As a setting for the Triumphs the landscape is not continuous, suggesting that the scenes that unfold behind each of the victorious protagonists were meant to contribute greater meaning to the specific figure. Above and below the Triumphs are friezes of rinceaux in which putti display cartouches containing images of animals involved in activities that are anthropomorphic (Figs. 1.1 and 1.2). Each animal and the related emblems that surround it seem to be connected to the Triumph nearest the cartouche. It is in this portion of the mural cycle in both rooms that elements of pre-Columbian imagery are especially evident and where it is likely that some form of cultural symbiosis took place.

Petrarch’s Triumphs and Spectacle Literacy The Triumphs, the ingenious rhetorical invention or concetto devised by Petrarch, greatly influenced poets and artists for several centuries. As each temporarily triumphant or ascendant aspect of the human life span is in turn vanquished, Petrarch establishes for the spectator (or reader) a conceptualization of the victory of Christian faith over death that is palpable and sensual. The poem emerges from

6

Seigel (1968) 46.

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the classical Roman imperial tradition of the conquering general’s heroic entry, accompanied by his retinue, into the capital.7 The military quality of conquest and the notion of a ruler’s victorious entry provide a note of irony in the poem. In five of the triumphs that take place on earth, all of humanity is subject to defeat, a result of the ephemeral nature of life itself. In the end all are offered the ultimate triumph over death: Five of these Triumphs on the earth below We have beheld, and at the end, the sixth, God willing, we shall see in heaven above.8

Several biblical passages can be considered as sources for the iconography of the Triumphs.9 Ezekiel’s chariot is in concordance with the triumphant appearance to St. John of the “King of kings and Lord of lords” in the Book of Revelation. The four beasts that draw the prophet Ezekiel’s chariot and appear again in Revelation became the symbols of the four Evangelists. The most powerful biblical description of a chariot is in the Second Book of Kings when Elijah turns his power of the spirit over to Elisha: And as they still went on and talked, behold, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them. And Elijah went up by a whirwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it and cried, “My father, my father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” and saw him no more.10

These ‘historical’ precedents, both classical and biblical, were equally seductive for Petrarch’s early fourteenth-century contemporary Dante. In his Purgatorio section of the Divine Comedy, Dante recounts a miraculous vision that is considered to be the personified Church Triumphant in a chariot surrounded by the four beasts described by Ezekiel and by St. John the Evangelist.11 Petrarch’s concept of triumph was elab-

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Strong (1984) 44. Petrarca (1962) 112. 9 Knipping (1974) 55. 10 Ezekiel 1:4–28; Revelation 4:6–8 and 19:11–16; and 2 Kings 2:9–12. The Bible edition employed for this essay is The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha (New York: 1977). In the sixteenth-century Franciscan monasteries of Cholula, Huejotzingo, and Tecali, all near Puebla, are mural representations of St. Francis in a chariot of fire. St. Francis is thus being identified as the new Elijah. According to Montes Bardo (1998) 287–289, Elijah prophesies the salvation of the pagans and the Last Judgment. 8

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orated in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili by Francesco Colonna, published in 1499. This exotic novel, with its vivid descriptions and illustrations, influenced the development and appearance of public processions and representations of triumphs.12 Another powerful literary generator of artistic imagery was Savonarola’s Triumphus Crucis, published in 1497. Christ, the Man of Sorrows, rides in a chariot and displays his wounds, surrounded by the instruments of the Passion. Erwin Panofsky asserted that “Savonarola seems indeed to be the first to have visualized Christ in person as a triumphator ‘all’antica.’”13 The Triumphs entered popular culture through public religious processions and triumphal entries of kings and princes. In 1443 King Alfonso of Catalonia arrived in Naples in a gilded chariot drawn by white horses and shaded by a cloth of gold. The Florentines in Naples contributed a chariot in which rode the personification of Fortuna, accompanied by the Seven Virtues on horseback. The Catalans followed, “with mock horses fastened in front and behind them, fighting a mock battle with mock Turks.”14 The sequence of triumphs devised by Petrarch evokes the dynamic of the procession itself as not only highly symbolic but also with narrative qualities. The parade passes before the viewers in the same way that the triumphs follow an order expressive of Petrarch’s loss and mourning. In a recent essay Domenico Pietropaolo has turned his attention to formal aspects of the reception of spectacles and how they might be applied to scholarly investigation of literary descriptions like Petrarch’s Triumphs. Spectacular literacy is that species of the phenomenon in which the signs are units of spectacular discourse rather than words. . . . The pragmatics of processional discourse concerns . . . a direct encounter with a community of observers and not an encounter mediated by poetic language. In the context of Petrarch’s Triumphs, which are linguistic representations of spectacle rather than spectacle itself, the observer is not external but internal to the text and ultimately coincides with the narrative voice.15

11 Dante (1950) 365–367. Bocaccio’s Amorosa Visione of the mid-fourteenth century describes a triumph based on classical sources; see Knipping (1974) 55. 12 Strong (1984) 45–6. The Library of Congress Rare Book Room has a 1499 imprint of the Hypnerotomachia . . . 13 Scribner III (1982) 66–67; and Panofsky (1969) 59. 14 Hughes (1997) 101. 15 Pietropaolo (1987) 359.

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Pietropaolo confronts the relationship of time and space by setting forth what he terms the “three temporal dimensions of the present moment”: actuality, recollection, and expectation. As the procession moves through the street, what is past and what is anticipated are perceived simultaneously.16 Thus, when time and space intersect, the act of observing involves the construction of narrative. The single most telling aspect of the Casa del Deán murals is that all of the figures are shown on procession. The Sibyls on horseback and allegorical figures riding in chariots could have been participants in a triumphal parade or religious pageant in any major city in sixteenth-century Western Europe. Festivals and triumphal entries served social, political, and religious purposes, as in the case of Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor styled as the ‘Champion of Christianity,’ who employed them on a grand scale. “By the time of his abdication in 1556, every educated person within Europe must have been familiar with the rhetoric and imagery of Sacred Empire.”17 Love of pageantry extended to the New World, an aspect of both cultures that could be shared. In 1585 the citizens of Tlaxcala, the original seat of the bishopric that had moved twenty-four miles to Puebla, prepared for a formal visit from the viceroy. As Cathedral Dean of the bishopric of Tlaxcala-Puebla, Don Tomás de la Plaza could very well have been in attendance. Prior to [the viceroy’s] arrival the people constructed a wooden castle of several stories with quarters and vantage points for simulated warfare. Their plan was to dress as Spaniards, Tlaxcalans, and Chichimecs and to present a battle scene. When the viceroy came, they offered him the keys and requested the preservation of their fueros [rights and privileges]. An army of Indians dressed as Spaniards and Tlaxcalans accompanied this entrance. Finally, four old men, garbed as the four “kings” of conquest times [i.e. the chiefs of the four quarters of the pre-Hispanic Tlaxcalan polity] with crowns on their heads, addressed sonnets to him in Spanish.18

Every year of his tenure as Dean, for eight days in late spring, Don Tomás de la Plaza was responsible for the celebration of the feast of Corpus Christi, when the Holy Sacrament was carried through the streets in procession. All the citizens of Puebla were involved,

16 17 18

Ibid., 361. Strong (1984) 74–75, 80. Gibson (1952) 147.

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sweeping and preparing altars at each street intersection. The city’s Cabildo and confraternities provided financial contributions and marched in the procession, carrying torches and banners with their insignia and coats of arms. The procession began and ended at the Cathedral, where dances and comedies were performed.19 Consequently it can be asserted with little doubt that the Dean was intimately familiar with all aspects of Christian processional lore as he proved in the mural cycle that he commissioned for his home. At a much later date, but related to Don Tomas’s deanship, was the festive dedication of the Cathedral of Puebla upon its completion in 1649, presided by Bishop Don Juan Palafox y Mendoza: This afternoon, festivities planned by the Noblest of Cities began, for which the principal plaza was enclosed with scaffolding and in the center was built a Castle in which fought various troops, attacking and defending, dressed as Spaniards and Indians of various Nations, some wearing animal skins and their costumes adorned with feathers according to their tradition, who executed with skill the various skirmishes and attacks. Then two costumed troops entered on horseback, dressed as Christians and Moors with a large number of attendants on foot, all richly dressed, who performed with equal skill the team events, games, and tourneys and having concluded, a Triumphal Chariot entered the plaza, dedicated to the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, whose sacred image was placed in the upper section and at whose feet was a choir of musicians, very well-dressed, that, to the sound of a large group of instruments, sang elegies to the sacred Mystery [i.e., the mystery embodied in God’s Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary], moving around the plaza until after nightfall, when the costumed troops entered for a second time carrying lighted torches and with these held in their hands, began to execute the various drills and movements, which delighted the gathering far into the night.20

Petrarch’s Triumphs were especially beguiling for artists as variations on the theme abounded: Triumphs of the Seasons, the Virtues, and of Old Testament heroes. The transmutation from image to pageant

19 Actas de Cabildo de Puebla (1996), Ficha no. 09451, Vol. 0012, Document 056, Asunto 04, 30 April 1586, fol. 0047v: Pregon para que en la procesion de Corpus Christi y su ochavario de este año, todos los obrajeros salgan con su pendon y candelas y que los oficiales de todos los oficios salgan en ella, so pena de 50 pesos de oro comun. Que se nombren a los veedores de los obrajeros para que participen en la procesion. Ademas, se indico que se aderecen las casas y puertas y que en las encrucijadas se coloquen los altares como es costumbre. 20 Translation by the author from Fernández Echeverría y Veytia (1931) II, 79–80.

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and back to image reached its height in the sixteenth century. Tapestries, frescoed walls, pottery, stained glass, marble, bronze, and ivory sculpture, books, woodcuts, and engravings provided permanence for what had been ephemeral events.21 The festival organizers consulted the Biblia pauperum, emblem books, and humanist and classical writings to devise the complex layers of meanings that publicly unfolded in what Émile Mâle has called “a miraculous continuity of revelation.”22 The first edition of Petrarch’s Triumphs in Castilian, the language now commonly known as ‘Spanish,’ translated from the Italian by Antonio de Obregón, was published in 1512 in Logroño, Spain. Hernando de Hozes’s Spanish translation, published in 1581 in Salamanca, was shipped to the New World in 1586. Several editions of the Triumphs are on the Inquisition lists because of perceived heretical statements made in the commentaries. The 1541 Valladolid edition was banned in Mexico. For the Seville version of the Obregón translation, the officer of the Inquisition provided the specific folio on which the offending text could be found.23 While the above evidence proves that there were printed book versions of the Triumphs in the New World, it seems more likely that Don Tomás and his artists found inspiration in a prints series from Antwerp. After looking at numerous versions of the Triumphs published between 1512 and 1581, it is hard to imagine that any of these illustrated editions influenced the poblano murals. The iconography of the images in most of the sixteenth-century book editions of the Triumphs is dependent upon early Italian models, while the variations evident in the Casa del Deán seem to derive from a northern European tradition. Several Triumphs prints series, not from books, were produced around the time of the Puebla mural cycle, including those by Georg Pencz and Martin van Heemskerck. At the Augustinian monastery at Metztitlán, north of Mexico City, the sixteenth-century artists did wall paintings of a Triumph of Chastity and a Triumph of Patience, both

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Massena (1902) 127. Mâle (1986) 233. 23 A copy of the 1512 Obregón edition is in the Hispanic Society in New York. See Kropfinger von Kügelgen (1973) 81; and Fernández Echeverría y Veytia (1931) 246, 323, 486–487, 501. 22

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taken directly from prints by van Heemskerck.24 Although the murals in the Casa del Deán do not resemble the work of Pencz or van Heemskerck stylistically, the strongest argument that they were based upon a series of prints rather than on book illustrations is the fact that Don Tomás changed the order of the Triumphs and excluded Fame, making it more likely that the images were viewed separately from text.

Triumphs Leading to Eternity Launching the Casa del Deán mural cycle, the personification of Love is clothed in a simple white robe and seated in a chariot pulled by two spirited horses “whiter than whitest snow” as specified by Petrarch (Fig. 1.1).25 Love’s chariot glides across the rocky terrain, leaving for dead those whom she has conquered—a king, a soldier, a friar, and a young woman. The serene pastoral landscape, with its atmospheric blues and greens and soft linear transitions, provides a sharp contrast to the rock-strewn hard earth of the foreground. In representations of the Triumphs, the steeds for each of the chariots had become traditional: White horses for Love; unicorns for Chastity; oxen for Death; elephants for Fame; stags for Time; and the symbolic animals of the four Evangelists for Eternity. As will become evident, Don Tomás followed literary and visual traditions when they adhered to the statement he wished to make. While Cupid blindfolded played the role of Love Triumphant in many of the illustrated editions, in the poblano cycle Cupid makes his appearance instead as a tiny figure perched on the chariot behind the personified figure of Love (Fig. 1.1). The nude winged figure of Cupid is masked and armed, “a cruel youth with bow in hand and arrows at his side.”26 According to

24 Palm (1973). Palm discovered the connection between the Metztitlán murals and the van Heemskerck prints. He also opined that the Heemskerck series provided the program for the murals of the Casa del Deán: “El libro de Hadrianus Junius, médico de la cabecera del príncipe de Orania, proporciona además una segunda clave. Al reunir epigramas sobre los Triunfos de Petrarca con otros sobre las Virtudes cristianas, revela ser la fuente de Contrarreforma que sirve de programa común para los murales de Metztitlán y la Casa del Deán.” 25 Petrarca (1962) 5–6. 26 Petrarca (1962) 6.

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Panofsky, the ubiquitous personification of Love in Italian Renaissance art and poetry acquired the blindfold as an attribute, and “[a] majority of Renaissance artists . . . began to use the Blind Cupid and the Seeing Cupid almost at random. In the illustrations of Petrarch’s Triumphs both types appear indiscriminately.” However, he continues, within the context of the Counter-Reformation—the epoch of our Mexican sequence—a distinction was made between the Blind Cupid, who represented profane, sensual love, and the Seeing Cupid, who signified that which is sacred.27 Because the Cupid in the Casa del Deán is masked rather than blindfolded, I would suggest that he represents love of the sacred. The dual nature of love enters into the question of the female figure’s identity as Venus.28 A century earlier the Florentine Marsilio Ficino, attempting to integrate the ‘pagan’ philosophy of Plato with Christian theology, conceived of love as the essential aspect of God’s interaction with humanity. “According to Ficino, amore is only another name for that self-reverting current (circuitus spiritualis) from God to the world and from the world to God. The loving individual inserts himself into this mystical current.”29 In the Neo-Platonic scheme envisioned by Ficino, the desire for a higher understanding of the sublime leads to a love that manifests itself in beauty. This beauty exists on earth as two aspects, symbolized as the “Twin Venuses,” as love that can be celestial or natural as originally identified and discussed in Plato’s Symposium.30 This NeoPlatonic conceptualization of the nature of love was a guiding principle in the development of the meaning of the figure of Love Triumphant in the Casa del Deán painting. In Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love, dated 1515, it is the nude Venus who represents love of the sublime as she gestures ‘heavenward’ with a flaming vase.31 The clothed Venus in Puebla holds a scepter in her right hand; in her left is a flaming heart, symbol of impassioned spirituality, which she raises toward the empyrean.32 This perception of love’s dual nature led in 1544 to the prohibition in Mexico of any sort of costumed dancing during the festival 27 28 29 30 31 32

Panofsky (1967) 103, 121–128. Sebastián (1992) 110. Panofsky (1967) 141. Panofsky (1967) 142–143. Panofsky (1969) 115. Ferguson (1974) 48–49; and Hall (1979) 146.

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of Corpus Christi. Archbishop Juan de Zumárraga set forth a treatise on the proper and reverential manner of celebrating this devotional event, including the following codicil: And something of great irreverence and shamelessness, it seems that, before the Most Holy Sacrament, men in disguise and in women’s costumes go dancing and leaping about, swaying in an immodest and lascivious manner, making a din that drowns out the church choirs, representing profane triumphs, like that of the God of Love, so immodest, and even to those persons without modesty, so shameful to see.33

In our Puebla murals, a hillside marks the transition to the next allegory, introduced by a group of female figures depicted at the corner of the room. These are the Virtues who assist Chastity in her triumph over Love, following Petrarch: With her, and arméd, was the glorious host Of all the radiant virtues that were hers, Hands held in hands that clasped them, two by two. Honor and Modesty were in the van, A noble pair of virtues excellent, That set her high above all other women; Prudence and Moderation were near by, Benignity and Gladness of Heart— Glory and Perseverance in the rear; Foresight and Graciousness were at the sides, And Courtesy therewith, and Purity, Desire for Honor, and Fear of Shame. A Thoughtfulness mature in spite of Youth, And, in concord rarely to be found, Beauty supreme at one with Chastity.34

Chastity carries a palm in her right hand in recognition of the virgin martyrs. The chariot is drawn by a pair of unicorns, an allusion to female chastity.35 Like the personification of Love, “she wore, that day, a gown of white . . .” In this very personal interpretation

33 My italics. García Icazbalceta (1968) II, 349, quoting Archbishop Zumárraga, 1544, this author’s translation: Y cosa de gran desacato y desvergüenza parece que ante el Santísimo Sacramento vayan los hombres con máscaras y en hábitos de mujeres, danzando y saltando con meneos deshonestos y lascivos, haciendo estruendo, estorbando los cantos de la Iglesia, representando profanos triunfos, como el del Dios del Amor, tan deshonesto, y aun á las personas no honestas, tan vergonzoso de mirar . . . 34 Petrarca (1962) 42. 35 Hall (1979) 231–232, 327–328.

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of the Triumphs by Don Tomás de la Plaza, Chastity is that “Virtue, that never doth forsake the good . . .” This virtue, which “kindles pure desires within the heart,” 36 is the sacred vow of the priest, that he might overcome earthly appetites to enact his spiritual calling. The narrative of the procession in the Casa del Deán does not involve the conquest of each of the personified aspects of life, as in many of the other representations of the series. In the poblano mural Chastity does not trample Sublime Love, as is usually the case, but continues the quest for a higher spiritual and intellectual plane. The focus of this iconographic program is on the drama of life’s choices and demands, always with the promise of ultimate victory over death. Time is represented by the winged figure of Saturn with his hourglass at his side. He uses a cane to support himself while he holds up his son in the horrifying act of devouring him. As Panofsky has written, “Petrarch’s Time was not an abstract philosophical principle but a concrete alarming power.”37 In his description of the Triumph of Time Petrarch writes of Phoebus in his quadriga (chariot) with his ‘four good steeds’ moving with great speed, a reminder of the brevity of life. In the mural the chariot of Time is drawn by stags, known for their swiftness. The destructive force of personified Time is represented by his advanced age and crippled body. The cannibalistic act is the consumption of all that is created.38 From destruction comes the revelation of Truth. The fleeting passage of time forces the rejection of all that is vain. By placing Time before Death, Don Tomás has characterized life before its end. In his version of the Triumphs, Fame does not vanquish Death nor give meaning to life. It is nothing more than ‘arrant vanity’ or human pride: “The Sun, victorious o’er the human mind, / Will still revolve, and Fame will fade away.”39 Rather, it is Time that qualifies life, admonishing and unflinchingly pointing toward the truth of Salvation. The frightening skeletal apparition of Death holds his scythe aloft as he drives his team of oxen. As his chariot rolls forward, Death indiscriminately brings an end to life for people of all ages, from the poor and powerless to those who have enjoyed earthly success. The 36 37 38 39

Petrarca (1962) 41, 44, 46. Panofsky (1967) 79–80. Ibid., 76–77. Petrarca (1962) 96 and 99.

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Three Fates—Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos—determine each person’s destiny and life span by cutting the thread of life from the spindle on its distaff.40 In a village set into the middle ground, a funerary cortege moves toward a circular walled enclosure. In the center of the back wall rises a tall tower embellished with signs of the cross on either side of the doorway. This tower is reminiscent of those that were constructed in the mid-sixteenth century in the towns of Tlaxcala and Tepeaca, both within close proximity to the city of Puebla, at the behest of Don Francisco Verdugo.41 These towers served as symbols of royal justice and power.

The Triumph of Eternity/Ecclesia The allegorical figure of Eternity/Ecclesia displays a queenly manner (Fig. 1.2). Her scepter in her right hand, she gestures a command to the peacocks to draw her aloft into the clouds. Behind her, as part of the chariot, lighted torches are set upon Solomonic columns. The bird’s eye view of the landscape allows the observer the same perspective as that of Eternity. Clouds barely rise above the grasscovered mountain in the foreground, while in the middle distance villages can be seen in the valley below. The mountains in the far distance are lost in a blue atmospheric haze. For centuries the Virgin as Queen of Heaven was envisioned simultaneously as the Church Triumphant. An early example of this is provided by the twelfth-century Hortus Deliciarum, in which the Virgin appears as both Ecclesia and the Queen of Heaven, surrounded by a hierarchy of bishops, friars, kings, and prophets.42 In a thirteenthcentury mosaic in Rome’s church of Santa Maria Maggiore, Christ crowns the Virgin with His right hand and holds a book in His left in which is written Veni, Electa mia, et ponam te in thronum meum. The River Jordan flows through the foreground of the scene, “symbol of baptism and regeneration; on its shore stands the hart, the emblem of religious aspiration.”43

40 41 42 43

Hall (1979) 302. Weckmann (1992) 370, 457, 594. Schiller (1971–) I, 288–299. See also Panofsky (1966) 145–146. Jameson (1895) 106–110.

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Panofsky interprets a work that illustrates the complexity of Late Gothic Mariological symbolism, Jan van Eyck’s painting of the Madonna in the Church: In order to lend artistic expression to this mysterious and many-leveled identity of Virgin and Mother, Mother and Daughter, Daughter and Bride, Queen of Heaven and Church on Earth, an image had been devised which may be described as “the Virgin Mary in a church and as the Church.” [On her hem appear the following words:] It [meaning Divine Wisdom as diffused in the Universal Church and embodied in the Virgin Mary] is more beautiful than the sun and above the whole order (dispositio) of the stars. Being compared with the [natural] light, she is found before it. She is the brightness of eternal light, and the flawless mirror of God’s majesty.44

Building upon this visual heritage of the identification of the Virgin Mary with the Church, a tapestry from Chaumont in the Loire Valley, datable to the period 1500–10 and now in the Cleveland Museum of Art, provides the closest known iconographic antecedent to Mary as the Triumph of Eternity/Ecclesia as used in the Casa del Deán. The tapestry displays two angels who crown the Virgin as she sits enthroned in the Garden of Paradise, surrounded by a group of angelic musicians. According to the inscription on the banner in the upper right corner of the tapestry, Mary as Ecclesia has unmistakably been endowed with the additional identity of the Triumph of Eternity. Nothing triumphs by right authority Unless it is conducted by Eternity. Nothing is permanent beneath the firmament, But above us triumphs Eternity.45

Despite this iconographic development toward the Virgin as the simultaneous embodiment of the Triumph of Eternity and of the Church, in the illustrated editions of Petrarch’s Triumphs and in most depictions of the subject on cassoni or in print series, the Triumph of Eternity is evoked by the image of the Trinity or of Christ in Majesty. Contemporaneously, Titian painted a fresco in his residence of the Triumph of Faith and subsequently produced a woodcut based on the painting in 1511. Rather than casting Christ as the Man of

44 45

Panofsky (1966) 145–148. This author’s brackets. Shepherd (1961) 158–159 and 172–173.

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Sorrows, as in Savonarola’s Triumphus Crucis, Titian has Him riding in majesty, carrying a scepter and seated on a celestial orb, as the Eternal Christ.46 While this representation has its origins in Italy and is possibly reflective of the influence of Titian’s print, its use was widespread throughout Europe in the first half of the sixteenth century. Thus Dorothy G. Shepherd could affirm that the crowned Virgin as the Triumph of Eternity in the Chaumont tapestry of ca. 1500–10 is without precedent.47 This conceit, as Sheperd states, may have been unprecedented before the turn of the fifteenth century, but this essay asserts that it was reprised around 1580 in the murals of the Casa del Deán. It is now necessary to settle the identity of this female personification in the poblano cycle. Should she be considered the Triumph of Eternity as in Petrarch’s poem, or has she taken on another role or guise in the iconographic program of Don Tomás de la Plaza? The answer lies in visual clues, the most important being the Solomonic columns that are part of the chariot. The twelve Antique twisted columns that were placed in Old St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome were, according to legend, brought from the Temple of Solomon by the Emperor Constantine. Solomon’s Temple was the prototype for the universal Catholic Church and, on another level, was the “pre-figuration of the Heavenly Jerusalem.” Solomonic or Eucharistic architecture signifies the establishment of the Heavenly Jerusalem on earth at the end of time. The Council of Trent reinforced this view of the Eucharist, administered by the Church, bringing the faithful on earth ever closer to heaven. As Nora de Poorter observed on the symbolism embodied by the Solomonic columns, “The church itself thus becomes a forecourt of paradise. Through the power of the Eucharist . . . the believer is able to see and experience in advance the blessedness that he is destined to enjoy forever.”48 Consequently, the use of the Solomonic columns in her chariot proves that the Puebla figure, besides embodying the more common Petrarchist significance of Eternity, is also meant to be seen as the simultaneous personification of Ecclesia. It could be no other way for a cleric such as Don Tomás: Eternity, Eternal Life 46

Scribner (1982) 67; and Panofsky (1969) 59. Shepherd (1961) 172–173, cites one other related example, a manuscript illustrated with ink drawings, number 5066 in the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Paris. 48 De Poorter (1978) 171–176. 47

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is achieved by the otherwise ephemeral human being only by joining with the body of the Church, so they are tantamount and indistinguishable. And Mary is the figure for the body of the Church. This allegorical figure, Eternity/Ecclesia, triumphs over Death and Time. Her role as Mary, Queen of Heaven is validated by specific classicizing symbolic references that pervade other murals in the Room of Triumphs. She is defined by the peacocks, which draw her chariot, by the crown she wears, and by the scepter she carries. This imagery simultaneously identifies this syncretistic figure as Juno, identified by the Renaissance as the preeminent queen goddess of heaven in Antiquity and thus a trope for Mary (cf. Fig. 1.3).49 In her study of the Triumph of the Eucharist tapestries by Rubens, de Poorter emphasizes that in the Lowlands “preference was given at an early stage to Triumphs of a more didactic kind, in line with the somewhat austere allegories of the Rhetoricians. Abstract ideas, clad in allegorical forms, are seen in procession in triumphal cars, but the original idea of victory is to a large extent lost.”50 This same characterization can be applied to the Triumph murals in the Casa del Deán. The emblematic approach to this specific subject is apparent in the works that were precedents for Rubens’s tapestry designs and that happen to have been contemporaneous with the poblano cycle. A drawing attributed to Jan van der Straet, in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and dated ca. 1590–1595, is entitled The Triumph of the Holy Scriptures and the Church. Following tradition, the chariot is drawn by the four animal symbols of the Evangelists, but the triumphal figure is a female personification of the Church, as in Puebla.51 Commissioned in 1590 by Albert and Isabella in Brussels, Otto van Veen painted six panels representing the Triumph of the Catholic Church. Ecclesia is a female personification common to all of the

49 Hall (1979) 182, 238; and Seyffert (1961) 337. On the early modern synchronization of history whereby themes from pre-Christian Antiquity are given biblical orientation, see Tanner (1993) 33–34, 54, 119–121; and Strong (1984) 68. According to de la Maza, (1968) 33, the birds in Puebla identified here as peacocks are instead geese. However, the artist who worked on the 1955 renovation of the Casa del Deán murals assured me that they represent peacocks. 50 De Poorter (1978) 199. 51 Jan van der Straet was also known as Johannes Stradanus or Giovanni Stradano.

Fig. 1.3 Juno. An engraving from Francis Pomey, Pantheum mythicum, seu, Fabulosa deorum historia. Amsterdam: Ex Officina Schouteniana; Apud J. J. a Poolsum, 1757. Courtesy of the Chapin Library Collection, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts.

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paintings. In the Triumph of Verbum Dei and Ecclesia, also known as Christ’s Investiture of the Church, the apocalyptic double-edged sword extends from the mouth of Christ as he places a book representing the Word of the Lord into the lap of Ecclesia, the crowned Queen of Heaven. Surrounded by the four writers of the Epistles—Peter, Paul, James, and John the Evangelist—Ecclesia’s chariot is drawn by the animal symbols of the four Gospel authors.52 None of these works had a direct influence on the poblano murals, but their development of symbolic references to the Church Triumphant and to the Eucharist as the essential path to redemption is reflective of the Counter-Reformation rhetoric that they share with the Dean’s opus. Among the decrees of the Council of Trent was the designation of the feast of Corpus Christi as an appropriate and solemn veneration of the Sacred Sacrament. It was also envisioned as the celebration of truth, the unique property of the universal Church in its triumph over falsehood and heresy.53 The triumphal figure in the Casa del Deán can be considered an example of a new allegorical model for Ecclesia, whose creation in the Spanish Netherlands in the mid-sixteenth century led to Rubens’s Triumph of the Eucharist. Prints of his composition were enormously influential in New Spain in the mid-seventeenth century as can be attested by the large renditions, virtually replicas, of Rubens’s work still hanging in the Cathedrals of Mexico City and Puebla.54 An illuminating text for the interpretation of the murals in the Room of the Triumphs is a Last Judgment in Náhuatl, the predominant Indian language of central Mexico at the time of the Spanish

52 Sutton (1993) 14–15. De Poorter (1978) publishes an image of a lost tapestry, Plate 76, described on page 201, dated c. 1520–30, entitled The Triumph of Faith, in which the Virgin Mary is enthroned, holding in her right hand a model of a church and in her left the cross of the Resurrection. Church equals Ecclesia and Resurrection equals Eternity, Eternal Life, foretelling the poblano personification. For the six van Veen panels, see de Poorter (1978) 199–200. De Poorter switched the titles for the Triumphs in Plates 71 and 72. For the van Veen cycle, see also Vogl (1987); and Knipping (1974) 57. For the biblical references to the sword, Revelation 1:16; 2:12, 16. 53 De Poorter (1978) 165. 54 Burke (1982) 59–63; and Toussaint (1967) 238–241. Baltasar Echave Rioja’s version of the Triumph of the Eucharist, dated 1675, is in Puebla Cathedral’s sacristy. Cristóbal de Villalpando painted another for the Cathedral of Mexico City in 1685, followed by Nicolás Rodríguez Juárez’s rendition in 1695 for the Church of El Carmen in the city of Celaya in the present Mexican State of Guanajuato.

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conquest and through the colonial period. Dating before 1550, this play, now in the Library of Congress, has been attributed to the Franciscan Andrés de Olmos. Ricard states that The famous polyglot Fray Andrés de Olmos wrote . . . an auto entitled El Juicio Final. . . . It was staged in the chapel of San José de los Naturales [in Mexico City] before Viceroy Mendoza, who arrived in 1535, and before [Archbishop] Zumárraga, who died in 1548. According to Las Casas, some eight hundred actors and supernumeraries participated in it and played their parts to perfection.55

One of those parts is spoken by the Holy Church, and this allegorical figure’s lines, along with those of Time and Death, are worth relating to the meaning of their plastic counterparts in the Room of the Triumphs. The play begins with the sound of trumpets as the Heavens open and St. Michael appears: Michael: Be in deadly fear! For the Day of Judgment will descend upon you, fearful, dreadful, frightful, paralyzing! Take warning and lead a proper life. The Day of Judgment is at hand.

The trumpets sound again and Penitence, Time, the Holy Church, Confession, and Death appear onstage. As they speak about the Judgment that is imminent, the dialogue provides a closely related parallel to the iconographic program in the Room of the Triumphs. Time: I am Time. I am he who continues ever-questioning people. Our Lord God sent and established me to keep them, care for them, warn them, remind them day and night. Never do I stop speaking! I am continually shouting in their ears so that they may remember their Creator, their Maker, the Lord God. I take care that they cry out to Him; that they bless Him; that they serve Him; that they do as their Lord our God wishes. I urge them to go to His house and to praise Him; to ask for His Divine Grace. Holy Church: I am the ever-merciful mother. My beloved Son Jesus Christ has established me here for the people of the earth. I am always weeping for them, especially when some of them die. For when I shed tears, I pray to my beloved Mother, the sacred fountain of Joy, to have pity on her creatures and to give light to them. . . . My heart is sad for them. Would that they might pray to be pardoned; that they might weep and repent of their shortcomings and sins! 55 Ricard (1966) 47–48, 195. The play’s actual combined Spanish-Náhuatl title is Nexcuitilmachiotl Motenhua Juicio Final.

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penny c. morrill Penitence: Oh mother of complete faith, all that you say is quite true! . . . Death: I am the officer of the law, the appointed one, the messenger empowered by heaven. Here on earth the power spreads forth to the uttermost limits as the rays of the sun shining forth in the heavens, and over the whole earth. Let the people of the earth remember that soon the beloved Son of God will come down to judge the quick and the dead. . . . Holy Church: I am the divine light of the only faith. I enlighten and give spiritual vision to all Christians that they may come so that I may cleanse them; for they are dizzy and stupid with sin. If they weep and are sad, then my beloved Youth, Jesus Christ, will pardon them and give them the kingdom of heaven.

The Judgment proceeds and the play ends with the entrance of the priest. Priest: . . . The Day of Judgment is coming soon. Pray to our Lord Jesus Christ and to the Virgin Mary, that She may entreat Her beloved Son Jesus Christ that you might merit and deserve the joy of Heaven— that eternal glory! Amen.56

Andrés de Olmos has cast the Holy Church not only as Mother of God but as the embodiment of “the divine light of the only faith.” The Mater Ecclesia is the ever-merciful mother whose “beloved Son Jesus Christ” has established Her, the Church, on this earth for all people. At the same time that the Holy Church takes the part of the mother who weeps for her children, the Holy Church prays to the beloved Mother. In this interweaving of roles and identities, we are reminded of Jan van Eyck’s Madonna in the Church, in which Mary is depicted in the church and as the Church. In both the painting and in Olmos’s play, the Virgin Mary shines with the radiance of divine light: “She is the brightness of eternal light, and the flawless mirror of God’s majesty.”57 And at the last it is the Virgin in Her role as Queen of Heaven and Bride of Christ who is intercessor on the Day of Judgment.

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Ravicz (1970) 141–156. Panofsky (1966) 145–148. Dotson (1979) 427, in her definitive interpretation of Michelangelo’s mural cycle in the Sistine Chapel, points out that the Sibyls in their oracles acknowledge the central role of the Virgin who as Mother of Christ simultaneously becomes the Church, “which feeds her children, whose lap is a refuge, in whose womb is the model of life.” 57

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Conclusion The narrative of the processions that make their way through the two rooms of the Casa del Deán ends in serenity and peace. What began with blindfolded Synagoga reaches its culmination in the Triumph of Eternity/Ecclesia. Panofsky wrote of this duality with its eschatological implications that “The conversion of the Synagogue . . . was the precondition of the final triumph of Christianity which was ushered in by the Last Judgment and found fulfillment in what St. Augustine calls the ‘Eternal Beatitude of the City of God.’”58 The theme for the mural cycle is built upon the concepts of prefiguration in the Room of the Sibyls and of fulfillment in the Room of the Triumphs.59 The knowledge of the future beyond human experience involves a conception of history as divinely determined. An eschatological and apocalyptic view of God’s plan can only be communicated through a ‘celestial mediator’ and then written down by the visionary who has received the divine revelation. This concept of a predetermined history can be characterized as teleological, a “drama of conflict between good and evil leading toward a definitive conclusion, an end that gives meaning to the whole.”60 The theme that unifies the mural cycle is the fulfillment of prophecy in the Triumph of the Church. In the first room of the Casa del Deán, the Sibyls foretell the events of Christ’s life on earth, ending with the Resurrection. As predicted, Christ took on human form to live and die and live again. Through His suffering and death Christ became the last sacrifice, the propitiation for the sins of humanity. Like the pagan believers who heard the Sibyls’ prophecies, the indigenous people of New Spain, following this dialectic, accepted the true God and His promise of redemption. This promise is fulfilled in the Triumph of the Church. The unity of Christ with the Mater Ecclesia is built upon the central sacramental responsibilities of the Church: the administration of Baptism and the ongoing celebration of Christ’s sacrificial omnipresence in the Eucharist. As the only true agent of redemptive grace, the post-Reformation Church Triumphant appears in the Casa del Deán mural as the Queen of Heaven in Her syncretistic guise as the Triumph of Eternity. 58 59 60

Panofsky (1969) 65. Dotson (1979) 409. McGinn (1985) 51–53.

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The culmination of the poblano mural sequence in the Triumph of Eternity/Ecclesia reveals a shared conceptualization on the part of Don Tomás de la Plaza and the native artist to the effect that they were participants in an unfolding cosmic drama. The Church Triumphant was seen as the earthly agent that could bring the hope of redemption to Spaniard and Amerindian alike, as tortillas became sacred flesh, and wine, the sacred blood of Christ.

Bibliography Actas de Cabildo de los siglos XVI y XVII de la muy noble y muy leal Ciudad de la Puebla de los Ángeles, CD-rom (Puebla: 1996). Burke, M. (1992) Pintura y escultura en Nueva España: El Barroco (Mexico: 1992). Colonna, F. (1499) Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, ubi humana omnia non nisi somnium esse docet (Venice: 1499). Dante Alighieri (1950) The Comedy of Dante Alighieri, trans. D. L. Sayers (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: 1950). De La Maza, F. (1968) La mitología clásica en el arte colonial de México (Mexico City: 1968). De Marchi, N., and H. J. Van Miegroet (2000) “Exploring Markets for Netherlandish Painting in Spain and Nueva España,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 50 (2000) 81–112. De Poorter, N. (1978) The Eucharist Series. Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, part 2, 2 vols. (London: 1978). Dotson, E. G. (1979) “An Augustinian Interpretation of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel,” Art Bulletin 61, nos. 2–3 ( June–September 1979). Ferguson, G. (1974) Signs and Symbols in Christian Art (Oxford: 1974). Fernández del Castillo, F. (1914) Libros y libreros en el siglo XVI, rpt. (Mexico City: 1982 [1914]). Fernández Echeverría y Veytia, M. (1931) Historia de la fundación de la Ciudad de la Puebla de los Ángeles en la Nueva España: Su descripción y presente estado, 2 vols. (Puebla: 1931). Gibson, C. (1952) Tlaxcala in the Sixteenth Century (New Haven, CT: 1952). Hall, J. (1979) Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art, rev. ed. (New York: 1979). Hughes, G. (1997) Renaissance Cassoni, Masterpieces of Early Italian Art: Painted Marriage Chests, 1400–1500 (London: 1997). Jameson, A. (1895) Legends of the Madonna as Represented in the Fine Arts (Boston: 1895). Knipping, J. B. (1974) Iconography of the Counter-Reformation in the Netherlands: Heaven on Earth, 2 vols. (Nieuwkoop, The Netherlands: 1974). Kropfinger von Kügelgen, H. (1979) “Aspectos iconológicos en los murales de la Casa del Deán de Puebla,” Comunicaciones de la Fundación Alemana para la Investigación Científica 16 (1979). ——, (1973) Exportación de libros europeos de Sevilla a la Nueva España en el año de 1586 (Wiesbaden: 1973). Leicht, H. (1934) Las calles de Puebla, rpt. (Puebla: 1986 [1934]). Mâle, É. (1986) Religious Art in France: The Late Middle Ages, H. Bober, ed., and M. Matthews, trans. (Princeton: 1986). Massena, V., Prince d’Essling (1902) Petrarche: Ses études d’art. . . . (Paris: 1902).

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McGinn, B. (1985) The Calabrian Abbot: Joachim of Fiore in the History of Western Thought (New York: 1985). Montes Bardo, J. (1998) Arte y espiritualidad franciscana en la Nueva España, siglo XVI: Iconología en la Provincia del Santo Evangelio ( Jaén, Spain: 1998). The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha. Revised Standard Edition. H. G. May and B. M. Metzger, eds. (New York: 1977). Palm, E. W. (1973) “Los murales del convento agustino de Metztitlán.” Comunicaciones (Puebla: 1973). Panofsky, E. (1966) Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: 1966). ——, (1969) Problems in Titian, Mostly Iconographic (New York: 1969). ——, (1967) Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (New York: 1967). Petrarca, F. (1962) The Triumphs of Petrarch, trans. E. H. Wilkins (Chicago: 1962). Pietropaolo, D. (1987) “Spectacular Literacy and the Topology of Significance: The Processional Mode,” in Petrarch’s Triumphs: Allegory and Spectacle, K. Eisenbichler and A. A. Iannucci, eds. (Toronto: 1987). Pomey, F. (1757) Pantheum mythicum, seu, Fabulosa deorum historia (Amsterdam: 1757). Ravicz, M. E. (1970) Early Colonial Religious Drama in Mexico: From Tzompantli to Golgotha (Washington, D.C.: 1970). Ricard, R. (1966) The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico, ed. L. B. Simpson (Berkeley: 1966). Schiller, G. (1971–) Iconography of Christian Art, J. Seligman, trans. (Greenwich, CT: 1971–). Two volumes of the translation have appeared so far. Schwaller, J. F. (1987) The Church and Clergy in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Albuquerque: 1987). Scribner III, C. (1982) The Triumph of the Eucharist Tapestries Designed by Rubens (Ann Arbor, MI: 1982). Sebastián, S. (1992) Iconografía e iconología del arte novohispano (Mexico: 1992). Seigel, J. (1968) Rhetoric and Philosophy in Renaissance Humanism: The Union of Eloquence and Wisdom, Petrarch to Valla (Princeton: 1968). Seyffert, O. (1961) Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, eds. H. Nettleship and J. E. Sandys (Cleveland: 1961). Shepherd, D. G. (1961) “Three Tapestries from Chaumont,” Bulletin, Cleveland Museum of Art, 48, 7 (September 1961). Strong, R. C. Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals, 1450–1650 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: 1984). Tanner, M. (1993) The Last Descendant of Aeneas: The Hapsburgs and the Mythic Image of the Emperor (New Haven, CT: 1993). Toussaint, M. (1967) Colonial Art in Mexico, trans. and ed. E. W. Weismann (Austin: 1967). Vogl, A. (1987) Der Bilderzyklus “Der Triumph der Kirche” von Otto van Veen (Munich: 1987). Weckmann, L. (1992) The Medieval Heritage of Mexico (New York: 1992).

CHAPTER TWO

AFFECTIONS OF THE HEART: FEMALE IMAGERY AND THE NOTION OF NATION IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY MEXICO Magali M. Carrera

Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness; it invents nations where they do not exist. Benedict Anderson Women contribute most particularly to the happiness of the State . . . In her bosom man begins to exist, in her lap he grows, is nourished and acquires his first notions of Good and Evil. Semanario Económico de México, 1813

“A nation is nothing more than a great family, and in order for it to be stable and strong it means that all of its members must be closely united with ties of interest and affections of the heart.”1 With these words, written in 1847, Mariano Otero, a young Mexican politician, reminded his countrymen that they must put aside their differences and come together through love of country in order to overcome Mexico’s tumultuous political, social, and economic disarray in the mid-nineteenth century. Otero’s use of the metaphor of family is important because it implies the concept of ‘nation’ as an intricate web of affective relationships promoting a common good. Indeed, the theme of love of country constantly echoed across visual and written texts as the kingdom of New Spain, with its emphasis on la patria, motherland (also fatherland), in service to the sovereignty of the king, became the Republic of Mexico, with its focus on la nación, “nation,” in service to the sovereignty of the people. This essay examines the gendered imagery that was associated with such affections. As Mexico attempted to define and constitute

1 Otero (1975) [1847] 45. Otero’s essay was originally published anonymously and is generally attributed to him. Dennis E. Berge (1975), an historian, believes that the authors were Mariano Otero and, possibly, Juan Bautista Morales, also a political essayist.

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itself as a nation, sovereignty, represented by the imagery of the king’s body, was replaced by a changing set of female images. Throughout the nineteenth century, this new corporeal imagery marked the shifting of the signifying site of sovereignty and represented an ongoing search to give visual focus to nationalist affections of the heart.

The Body of the Sovereign “Vivan Nuestros Amados Soberanos Carlos Quarto [sic] y María Luisa de Borbón,” “Long Live Our Beloved Sovereigns Carlos the Fourth and María Luisa of Bourbon.” These words, supported by large wooden props, appeared on the central plaza of Mexico City in December 1796 as part of a three-day celebration to mark both the birthday of the Queen, María Luisa de Borbón, and the installation of a statue of King Carlos IV. As one would expect of this opulent and luxurious capital of New Spain, the city was elaborately decorated with banners and its numerous public and private buildings were lit with over 20,000 lights. In summarizing the event, the Gaceta de México, a monthly publication, went so far as to state: “It offered a spectacle that sweeps the imagination.”2 The culmination of the celebration, however, was the unveiling of a massive statue of Carlos IV in the city’s central plaza that presented the king, his right arm extended, riding a great prancing horse. In inaugurating this sculptural project, Viceroy Branciforte asserted that the magnificent metropolis of Mexico City had enjoyed many benefits of royal patronage and now possessed what it had previously lacked—a great image of the king placed in the center of the capital that illustrated his virtues.3 Closer examination of the circumstances of the statue, however, exposes an obvious but unexplored fact about the historical context of this equestrian visage: It was initially dedicated about three years after the King of France, Louis XIV, had been beheaded and the French monarchical system—figuratively and literally—had been dis-

2

Gaceta de México (9 December 1796) 231. Documentos varios para la historia de la Ciudad de México a fines de la época colonial (1769 –1815) (1983) nos. 1–16, “Descripción de las fiestas,” 1. 3

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membered by the French Revolution. In New Spain there was great dismay over the French Revolution and its implications as is evident in a December 1794 sermon, delivered by Fray Servando Teresa de Mier in Mexico City, which censored the treacherous ideas of Rousseau and the horror of the Jacobin regicide.4 Within this political context, the equestrian statue may be understood as a reification of the paramount trope of the ancien régime: The body of the Spanish king was assembled in New Spain as the sovereign body of the French king was disassembled. At the beginning of the nineteenth century there was continued awareness of the conceptual destruction of monarchy caused by French political thinking. This view is confirmed by the fact that in August 1801 the Gaceta de México announced that the book Histoire philosophique de la révolution de France by Antoine Fantin Desodoards [sic] had been banned because it “emanated an implacable hatred towards monarchical government, kingship, [and] the Catholic Religion. . . .”5 In addition, Inquisition records indicate that French political writings were in circulation in eighteenth-century New Spain and a list of prohibited books was regularly announced. Various individuals were denounced for owning or reading books by writers such as Voltaire and Rousseau.6 In December 1803 the commission for the equestrian statue of Charles IV was completed when a bronze version was installed that replaced the temporary wooden one which had been used for the 1796 celebration. On this momentous occasion, Viceroy Iturrigaray,

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Brading (2001) 201. Gaceta de México (29 August 1801) n. p. Further research indicates that the Gaceta notice is probably referring to the book by Antoine Étienne Nicolas Fantin des Odoards [1738–1820], Histoire de la République française . . . (Paris: A. J. Dugour [etc.] an. VI [1798]). Also, late eighteenth-century New Spanish Inquisition records contain numerous proclamations listing banned books and pamphlets. Books by Rousseau, Voltaire, and other French philosophers were repeatedly placed on these lists. 6 Two examples for the time period under discussion include: “El Sr Inquisidor fiscal de este santo oficio contra el Fr. D. José Pastor Morales, clerigo de ordenes menores de este arzobispado . . . Por Proposiciones. Resulta contra Morelle, Durrey, Enderica, . . . (leia libros de Voltaire, Rousseau, etc, era afecto a las maximas de Francia y a su revolución, etc.),” AGN-202749, Inquisición, 1795, vol. 1361, Exp. 1 fols. 1–184 and “Relación de la causa seguida contra Dn, Antonio Castro y Salgado . . . Soltero. Por proposiciones hereticas, lectura de libros prohibidos, defensor de Rousseau, etc.” AGN-204162. Inquisición 1803 vol. 1414, Exp. 2, fols. 280–289, 309–328. 5

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Branciforte’s successor, expounded effusively on the importance of this monument by writing In an instant, the place [central plaza] was filled with people of all classes. Their faces reflected the enjoyment they felt in their souls. They had no words to respectfully express their sincere gratitude for their great fortune. As they gazed at the statue—at his paternal smile, his tender looks—the people expressed reverent comments to each other.7

As in 1796, ostensibly the purpose of the permanent statue was to honor the king and bring his physical presence to New Spain and into the hearts and minds of New Spanish subjects. The viceroy’s words emphasized New Spanish loyalty and affection for the king. We might wonder, however, why, after more than two-and-onehalf centuries of Spanish rule, was there a need to produce such corporeal imagery of the king’s body in New Spain? In earlier centuries, the person of the viceroy was considered to embody the king’s presence in New Spain while verbal edicts and proclamations regularly declared and assured the king’s oversight.8 An examination of this reproduction of the king’s body in the context of the republican ideas spawned by the French revolution provides possible answers to this question. In his excellent study of the ancien régime’s notion of the body of the king, Antoine de Baecque asserts that the trope of the body was derived from Enlightenment thinking that selected the human body as the “proper matter for their studies and experiments, in order to calibrate the grid through which to read the microcosm and the macrocosm.” Baecque points out that “one single body perpetuated itself from Bourbon king to king, embodying the continuity of the state, a body in which all subjects could recognize themselves and in which everyone recognized their sovereign.” French revolutionary rhetoric was derived from this scientific viewpoint and political understanding as “corporeal images were at the very center of

7 “En un instante se llenó de personas de todas classes, en cuyos semblantes se veía la enagenacion de sus almas, que llenas de regocijo no les cabian en el pecho; y que, creyéndose en la presencia de su mismo adorado Monarca, manifestaban con respetuosos palabras su justa sincera gratitud á tanta fortuna. Las dulces miradas, la sonrisa filial, la afectuosa reverencia y lo que unos á otras se decian mirando á la Estatua, . . .” (1803) Documentos varios para la historia de la Ciudad de México a fines de la época colonial (1769–1815) (1983): XIV, nos. 1–12, 9. 8 See Cañeque (1999).

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the metaphoric language used to describe the revolution in progress.” Old Regime imagery had emphasized the body of the king, while revolutionary visual and written rhetoric used corporeal imagery such as the congenital deformity of the aristocrats and the impotence of the king. As a result, the king’s body was deconsecrated, represented as a sick, impotent entity that, literally and physically, had to be torn apart.9 Considered as part of a broader corporeal discourse of the ancien régime, the production of the massive equestrian statue of Charles IV may be seen as an attempt to propose absolutist stability and continuity in New Spain at a time when the conceptual tenet of the king’s body as a sign of sovereignty was highly unstable in Europe and its continuity in jeopardy. This latent discourse on sovereignty was manifested through this late-eighteenth-century equestrian imagery of Spain’s Bourbon king. More importantly, in the next century, corporeal imagery would be continued in the metaphorical visual language of Mexican nation-building. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, New Spain saw dramatic political changes as the French Revolution’s purging of the ancien régime trope spread to Spain when Napoleon Bonaparte occupied Spain and forced the abdication of King Charles IV, the renunciation and captivity of his successor, Ferdinand VII, and the appointment of Joseph Napoleon to the Spanish throne in 1807. In the period 1807–1821, elites in New Spain protested the Spanish king’s forced confinement and moved initially to be autonomous from Spain and, eventually, independent. During this time, New Spain had to confront radical questions about the definition and imagery of sovereignty: If sovereignty was no longer located in the body of the king, where was it to be located and how would it be visualized? How were loyal affections to be directed? Alegoría de las autoridades españolas e indígenas by Patricio Suárez de Peredo, an 1809 oil painting, reflects these early nineteenth-century events (Fig. 2.1). In this panel, three oval-shaped medallions and two groups of figures surround the central image of Ferdinand VII, a captive of the French. An image of the Virgin of Guadalupe floats in a white cloud above the king; the medallion to the right of the king bears the Spanish crest of Castile y León, while that to the

9

Baecque (1997) 1, 4–5, 8.

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Fig. 2.1 Patricio Súarez de Peredo, Alegoría de las autoridades españolas e indígenas (Allegory of the Spanish and Indigenous Authorities). 1809, oil, approx. 170 × 90 cm. Museo Nacional del Virreinato, Mexico. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Consejo Nacional de la Cultura (CONACULTA.INAH.-MEX), Mexico.

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king’s left illustrates the insignia of Mexico City. The abraded legend in the lower section of the panel begins with “Long Live the King” and identifies the standing figure as José Ramírez, a Spaniard and a delegate of the king. He is surrounded by Spanish soldiers and Don Juan Felipe M., an elaborately dressed Indian corregidor, or “official,” of the town of San Cristóbal Ecatepec. Don Juan stands with another unnamed figure and a third partially dressed personage who wears the feathered dress associated with the traditional indigenous costume. Overall, the painting both verbally and visually states New Spain’s continued loyalty to the confined king.10 While the painting emphasizes loyalty to the captive king, its imagery de-emphasizes the person of the king. It emphatically situates the body of the king within a new constellation of references that do not come from the absolutist vision of sovereignty. Ferdinand VII does not emerge as a singular, powerful figure. Instead he is protected by a bulwark of emblems that, with the exception of the Castile y León standard, emphasize New Spanish identity. Further, new sets of bodies are also put in this constellation with that of the King. These include Spanish and Indian subjects. Nevertheless, particularly striking, and not mentioned in the legend, is the presence of the Virgin of Guadalupe: This female body, larger in scale than that of the king, hovers over him. This leads us to question: Why is the image of the Virgin depicted in this painting and how does she relate to issues of sovereignty that New Spain was facing at this time?

The Body of the Patria “Long live religion! Long live our most holy Mother of Guadalupe! Long live Ferdinand VII! Long Live America and death to bad government!” These insurgent words, pronounced on September 16, 1810, by Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, a parish priest of the town of Dolores, elucidate the context of the Suárez painting. Spoken seven years after the inauguration of the bronze equestrian statue, the words called for a revolution from the Napoleonic tyranny that had beset Spain.

10

For further discussion of this painting, see Acevedo (2000) 117–118.

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Hidalgo reinforced his Grito de Dolores, as it is known, by adopting a standard emblazoned with the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Thus, although the Grito de Dolores demanded Ferdinand’s freedom from captivity, Hidalgo did not call on the imagery of the absolutist body of the king to visualize his declaration; rather, he called on a female image—an image unique to New Spain. Hidalgo’s use of Guadalupana imagery may be derived from two dimensions of the Virgin Mary: First, the broader historical associations of the Virgin and, secondly, her specific meanings in New Spain. In researching the wider cultural implications of the figure of Mary, Amy Remensnyder, a historian of medieval Europe, has argued that the general scholarly perception of her as a figure of nurturing and benevolence is an incomplete assessment of the iconographic constellation of the Virgin. Mary was associated directly with the twelfth-century Christian campaigns against Islam, confirmed by the fact that medieval manuscripts illustrate crusaders going into battle carrying banners that display her image. Mary, in fact, could be quite a wrathful woman, as is found in various New Testament texts. Remensnyder, concluding that this vengeful side of Mary has been less acknowledged by scholars, suggests that Mary is better understood as a boundary figure who, as described in visual and written media, triumphs over the ‘other.’11 The Virgin had this conquest/triumphant role in the subjugation of the Aztec-Mexica, as Hernán Cortés is said to have placed an image of Our Lady of Los Remedios, a renowned Marian icon in Spain, on the altar of the main Aztec-Mexica temple of Tenochtitlán to embody Spanish conquest. Eventually, Our Lady of Los Remedios would be designated patron of Mexico City, the capital of New Spain, and would become an important cult figure for the Spanishborn population.12 In the context of these broad and very deep meanings of the imagery of the Virgin and her association with aggression, it is appropriate then that this insurgent priest of Dolores, steeped in church history, chose the image of Mary to launch a revolution. Along with the conquest associations of the Virgin Mary, Hidalgo’s use of her image in the form of the Guadalupe has a second dimension that is specific to her appearance in the Americas. The tradi-

11 12

Remensnyder (2003). Brading (2001) 46–47.

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tion and cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe marked a profound change in New Spain’s understanding of itself because, unlike Our Lady of Los Remedios, Guadalupe was considered indigenous to New Spain. To understand this significance, it is important to review the simple story of the Guadalupe’s apparition. On December 9, 1531, Juan Diego, a converted Indian, was walking across a barren hill called Tepeyac. Suddenly, he heard music and was blinded by a light as before him appeared a dark-skinned woman who identified herself as the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ. She directed Juan Diego to tell Bishop Juan de Zumárraga that she wished to have a church built on the hill in her honor. Hearing Juan Diego’s request, the unbelieving Bishop asked for proof of the validity of the apparition. Three days later, on December 12th, the Virgin reappeared to Juan Diego and directed him to pick roses from a nearby bush and take them to Zumárraga. Juan Diego obeyed, placed the roses in his cloak and carried them to the Bishop. When he opened his cloak to present the flowers, an image of the Virgin was miraculously imprinted on Juan Diego’s mantle. Now a believer, the Bishop had a small church built on the site of the apparition. While the basic elements of this story are well known, the origins and uses of this tale are convoluted and, perhaps, more interesting than the story itself. The simple fact is that Bishop Zumárraga did not provide any written description or certification of the apparition and, in reality, there are no existing primary sources from the time of the apparition. In his book The Mexican Phoenix, D. A. Brading makes his way through a maze of secondary sources—especially sermons—that started to appear more than one hundred years after the apparition supposedly occurred and from which the generally accepted story of Guadalupe is derived. Although the circuitous details of the evolution of this Virgin’s story cannot be presented here, it is important to recognize that in the seventeenth century there was an explosion of interest in this apparition that continued through subsequent centuries. Over these centuries, written sources would tie together religion and patriotism associated with the growth of a criollo, that is American-born Spaniard, sense of a New Spanish rather than an Iberian patria. For example, seventeenth-century writers would emphasize that, unlike Our Lady of Remedios, “Mary and the Mexican patria were united in the enduring imagery of Guadalupe.” Others remarked that her image stirred “that natural affection which inclines so powerfully,

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often without feeling it, and moves us with even more vehemence on everything that is of the mother country.” In fact, by the last quarter of the seventeenth century, the words “non facit taliter omni natione,” “It was not done thus to all nations,” taken from Psalm 147, appeared in reproductions of the image of the Guadalupe. This phrase indicated the belief that New Spain held a privileged place in the supposedly special way that it was favored by this particular apparition and vocation of the Virgin over other nations.13 Such displays of exceptionalism are central stratagems of nationalism and the development of a national consciousness. By the eighteenth century the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe gained official status. In 1737 she would be named patron of Mexico City and the kingdom of New Spain by the city council, and in 1754 Pope Benedict XIV would approve the Guadalupe as the patron of New Spain. Brading concludes that the final eighteenth-century emergence of the ‘nation’ in the discourse of these [Guadalupana] sermons, no matter how distant from any social reality, testified to the fervent patriotism . . . which helped inspire the cult of Guadalupe. . . . But from the start, the inner meaning of the Apparition story was that the Mother of God had come to Mexico, and in a special way had chosen to remain in Mexico, acting as its patron.14

Thus, in adopting the imagery of the Guadalupe on his standard, along with Her medieval associations of violence, Hidalgo was also associating his revolutionary ideas with the affections for the patria that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries came to be associated with the Virgin. It is clear then, that Hidalgo could not have called upon the image of Ferdinand VII to endorse his proclamation because the ancién regime’s body was weakened and unable to represent potent sovereignty. Similarly, in the painting Alegoría de las autoridades españolas e indígenas, we see the king positioned not singularly but in the company of the Virgin’s female body and New Spanish subjects for the same reason (Fig. 2.1). Along with Her association with the conquest tradition and Her ties to the construct of patria, Hidalgo’s use of the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe signifies the new relationship of New Spanish subjects to Spain at a time when this nexus was

13 14

Brading (2001) 69, 111. Brading (2001) 125, 132, 168.

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being radically restructured. The body of the Virgin of Guadalupe signifies a new process in the formation of the nación. Her use in nationalist iconography also initiates the sequence of corporeal imagery of females to mark the shifting of the signifying site of sovereignty from the body of the king to a new body. Napoleon’s actions in Spain marked the transition in that country’s political culture from the ancien régime, where legitimacy of the state was based in the corporate institutions and their pact with the king, to modernity, where the legitimacy of the state is predicated on the individual and her/his contract with the nation.15 In New Spain this transition was certified in September 1813 when José María Morelos, a priest and student of Hidalgo as well as a prominent military leader of the Mexican revolution, would convoke a Constitutional Congress at Chilpancingo, Guerrero, and declare Mexico’s independence from Spain. His declaration emphatically stated that sovereignty springs from the people and established that the “twelfth of December be celebrated in all villages in honor of the patroness of our liberty, the Most Holy Mary of Guadalupe.”16 In sum, as New Spain became Mexico, the presence of the Virgin of Guadalupe in early nationalist verbal and visual discourse marked the presence of a boundary between the old regime and modernity as affections of the heart were directed away from the king toward the Virgin. This use of female imagery specified an altogether new relationship of the subject to the patria. If the male body represented the old regime, then the use of the female body may be seen as helping to undermine the icon and symbol of the absolutist state. The Virgin of Guadalupe now elicited the loyal affection toward the patria previously educed by the king. While introducing new imagery for the incipient stages of Mexican independence, the Virgin of Guadalupe, however, would not and could not become the central signifier of the Mexican nation in subsequent decades. By the late 1820s a new set of female entities make their appearance in the discourse of nationalist painting.

15 16

Anna (1998) 53–54. Morelos (2002) [1813] 189–190.

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The Sovereign Body of the Nation At the beginning of the third decade of the nineteenth century, Mexico gained its independence from Spain through the Treaty of Córdoba and established itself as an independent state through the Plan de Iguala. The Plan de Iguala attempted to bring together diverse groups—liberal and conservative, rebels and royalists, criollos and Spaniards—into an uneasy union and declared all inhabitants of Mexico citizens.17 Establishing the founding principles of Religion, Independence, and Union, the Plan called for a constitutional monarchy in hopes that Ferdinand VII or another aristocrat would rule the Mexican empire. When it became evident that a European royal would not ascend the Mexican throne, Agustín Iturbide, a hero of the war of independence, was proclaimed Emperor Agustín I of Mexico in May 1822. Iturbide attempted “to preserve the best features of the social administrative structure of the Bourbon monarchy, believing that national unity required centralism. In claiming his role as emperor, he reverted to the imagery of the ancien régime focused on his male body as the center of national pageantry and imagery. Iturbide would be forced to abdicate in March 1823, however, because he had tried to impose this centralized system on an empire that was in fact an aggregate of provinces that sought significant autonomy and separation from centralized government. In the end, the Congress claimed that Iturbide did not possess the right to exercise authority because sovereignty belonged to the Congress as representative of the regional states.18 As Mexico moved from the independence struggle toward the creation of nation, female bodies continued to represent the shifting understanding of sovereignty. In particular, a new female figure emerged to refocus the changing relationship of the citizen to the nation, rooting it in the arousal of patriotic affection. Seen in the oil painting Alegoría de la Independencia (1834), this young and somewhat frail seated female figure is identified as Mexico through her crown of red, white, and green feathers marking Mexico’s national colors (Fig. 2.2). She wears a quiver, a reference to indigenous culture,

17 18

Anna (1998) 81–82. Anna (1998) 95–97.

Fig. 2.2 Anon., Alegoría de la Independencia. 1834, oil, approx. 169 × 196 cm., Museo Casa de Hidalgo, Centro INAH-Guanajuato, Dolores Hidalgo, Mexico. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Consejo Nacional de la Cultura (CONACULTA.-INAH.-MEX), Mexico.

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Fig. 2.3 Louis Charles Routte and Jacques-Louis Copia, after Louis-Marie Sicardi, La Liberté, Patrone des Français, after Louis-Simon Boizot. 1795, etching, S.P. Avery Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

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and she holds the Phrygian cap on a stick, which signifies liberty through its reference to the hat worn by French insurgents that became a symbol of the French revolution. The metropolitan model for this allegorical figure of Mexico is exemplified by La Liberté Patrone des Français (Fig. 2.3). This 1795 French etching illustrates Liberty dressed in a simple tunic wearing the Phrygian cap and a French revolutionary tricolor sash around her waist.19 Allegorical Mexico, unlike our French example, is seated between two male figures: Miguel Hidalgo, who crowns her with a laurel wreath representing victory, and Agustín Iturbide, who clutches broken chains representing the break from Spain and subjugation. Such metaphorical images of Mexico as an elaborately bedecked female would be repeated in other paintings and prints throughout the early part of the century as independence from Spain became a reality.20 Always dressed in flowing robes, these figures are also often associated with a bow and arrow and a cornucopia that overflows with fruits and vegetables, denoting the natural fecundity of the land, along with tri-colored feathered costume elements such as skirts and headpieces. An eagle, a flag, drums, and an indigenous weapon, which refer to different aspects of Mexican independence as catalysts of national identity, sometimes surround the figure as well. No longer referent to the body of the Virgin of Guadalupe, these allegorical figures indicate instead that a new phase of Mexican corporeal imagery has dawned. What is particularly distinctive about these new female bodies is the seductive, somewhat erotic, dimension to their presentation. In her research on the female body in the iconography of the era of revolution and the erotic dimension of patriotism, Joan Landes offers important insights into the significance of this early nineteenthcentury female imagery in Mexico. Landes explains that with the dissolution of the ancien régime in France, female representations of Liberty, derived from ancient Greek and Roman goddesses, appeared

19

I am not suggesting that this particular print was available in Mexico during this period. A comprehensive scholarly study of foreign prints available in Mexico during the nineteenth century is not available. Given the fact that banned French writings were circulating in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Mexico, however, it is likely that European or French prints like the one represented in Fig. 2.3 were available. 20 Such allegorical images were derived from colonial period imagery of the Americas; see Acevedo (2003).

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in opposition to the older order of authority, the king’s body. “[By] physically depicting incorporeal values, female imagery helped to consolidate French citizens’ loyalties to their nation and to discriminate against those considered outside the body of the Republic.” As such, the female figure of Liberty was not opposed to male politics but set against historically tainted forms of the old body politic. Liberty anchored the nation’s legitimacy, operating as a metaphor for the sovereignty of the people.21 The female virtue inherent in these images was linked to the female role in the republican family, a passive one that emphasized modesty, propriety, and respectable silence. In this domestic association, females were to be under the care of males, fathers and husbands, and, most importantly, capable of producing republican citizens. By analogy the very role of the male republican citizen was the care, maintenance, and reproduction of the nation. The female body of the nation, therefore, became an object of desire. The “repetitive presence of a seductive (metaphorical) female in the imaginary place of the nation may lure men to attach deep romantic longings to the state.” Landes concludes that the deployment of the female body was aimed at creating “new affective solidarities and political publics to express popular energies or to anticipate and forestall political dissent.”22 Republican citizenship offers men a role as guardian of the allegorical body of the nation as it incites and conceals the seduction of patriotic love. And this is the very role we see in the Alegoría de la Independencia as the guardian figures of Mexico, Hidalgo, and Iturbide crush her enemies, free her from Spanish chains, and crown her. The seductive attraction of this metaphorical image of Mexico, the need for protection of Alegoría/Mexico, are essential qualities needed to lure citizens to love, protect, and even give up their lives for the nation. In contrast, the Virgin of Guadalupe, as a sacrosanct figure, was not able to play this role. She could not take on the human traits needed to allegorize the love of nation; that is, while she might represent the construct of patria, she could not give rise to the sexual allure required for nationalist patriotism. And as a virgin, she could not be associated with allegorical Mexico’s most impor-

21 22

Landes (2001) 18, 32, 81. Landes (2001) 22, 38, 110.

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tant role: giving birth to citizens. The Virgin of Guadalupe marked the process of independence but she did not and could not have the requisite qualities to represent nation. Thus, female corporeal imagery was a critical element of expanding nationalist imagery in the early nineteenth century. However, while the Virgin of Guadalupe marked a transitional boundary, as New Spain becomes Mexico, the allegorical figures of Mexico marked the transformation of Mexico into a nation.

Locating the National Body In the following decades, as Mexico continued to experience the social, economic, and political turmoil of nationalist construction, there was an ongoing search to come to terms with the meaning of sovereignty and nation and, as a result, the image of Mexico also changed. In 1847, Mariano Otero wrote In Mexico there has not been, nor could there have been, a national spirit, for there is no nation. . . . [because a] nation is nothing more than a great family, and in order for it to be stable and strong it means that all of its members must be closely united with ties of interest and affections of the heart.23

Otero’s words, which introduced this essay, certify the continuing focus on the seductive power of national affection. His words also express the extreme frustration of this young liberal politician and political theorist with the inability of Mexico, thirty-seven years after Hidalgo’s Grito de Dolores, to stabilize itself politically and economically. While Hidalgo was attempting to gather the power of sentiment for nation for his cause against bad government, Otero recognized that independence did not automatically result in nation and that a political regeneration of the society was required. To promote these reforms the Congress proclaimed a new Constitution on February 5, 1857. Mexico was once again organized as a federal republic under a document that specified freedom of education and the press and the guarantee of individual and judicial rights. Due to continued political struggles and the subsequent French intervention to

23

Otero (1975) [1847] 45.

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impose the regime of Emperor Maximilian, it would be another decade before this Constitution of 1857 was implemented. In this context a new image of Mexico appeared: She is Constitución de 1857 (Fig. 2.4). Painted by Petronilo Monroy, the panel was the result of a call from the director of the National Academy of Fine Arts in 1869 for national art and especially history painting.24 The panel illustrates a young woman hovering among the clouds who holds an olive branch and a stone tablet inscribed with the words “Constitución de 1857.” This 1869 figure may be seen as a counterpoint to the tumultuous conditions of Mexican politics.25 French intervention had established Maximilian as Emperor of Mexico from 1863 until his defeat and execution in 1867. Maximilian reverted to absolutist iconography and even had the 1803 equestrian statue of Charles IV reset to be part of his Paseo del Emperador, now Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma, as a symbolic link to the Bourbon kings.26 The negative reaction to this second attempt at monarchy was vehement. Mexican President Benito Juárez, after leading the defeat of Maximilian’s army, replayed the French Revolution’s tableau of regicide by putting the Emperor to death. He then reinstated the Constitution of 1857 and instituted a series of political, religious, and social reforms known as La Reforma. By looking carefully at the allegorical figure of La Constitución in Monroy’s painting, however, one realizes that while she bears a resemblance to the 1834 Alegoría de México through her simple tunic, this metaphorical female construction has been undressed. Gone are the feathered clothing and the other narrative attributes. The colonial and early-independence-period iconography has been discarded. Now this new allegorical figure, holding the Constitutional tablet while wearing a simple crown, has been re-dressed in a billowing white gown with red scarf. At the time of its exhibition, some critics viewed this simplified personage as inappropriate for a history painting because it lacked imagery that referenced historical narrative.27 Nevertheless, as a symbol of Mexico’s reformist constitution, 24 “Programa de la décimocuarta exposición de la Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes de México,” 24 December 1869; in Rodríguez Prampolini (1997) I: 148–152. 25 It should be noted that this expansion of female imagery did not correspond to expansion of women’s rights. 26 Widdifield (1996) 39. 27 An excellent analysis and complex reading of this painting and its critical context is found in Widdifield (1996) 149–158.

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Fig. 2.4 Petronilo Monroy, Constitución de 1857. Exhibited 1869, oil, approx. 170 × 90 cm., Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Consejo Nacional de la Cultura (CONACULTA.-INAH.-MEX), Mexico.

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this icon was understood as an apparition of Mexico. One critic described the figure in rather seductive terms: her face, open to thought and love; her black eyes in which sleep the rays of passion; and her mouth trembling, with promises, caresses. He concludes, “Es México, es la patria querida, es la glorificación de la razón. . . .” (She is Mexico, the beloved motherland, the glorification of reason . . .).28 Constitución, then, does not narrate a history because she is meta-historical, a continuation of the visual configuration of a deep discourse on sovereignty and the corporeal imagery of the nation as a body that seduces and enamors citizens. Her allegorical form as the Constitution of 1857 indicates the continued appropriation of the female body to mark the shifting site of sovereignty. Along with their appearance in visual culture, the affective associations of females and nation appeared in nineteenth-century literature as well. For example, politician and writer Ignacio Altamirano’s 1869 novel Clemencia tells the story of two soldiers.29 Fernando Valle, a swarthy and physically unattractive captain in the army, is a principled and honorable man who is ready to give up his life for his country. His antithesis, an army colonel, is Enrique Flores, an attractive, light-skinned man, who is conceited, dishonorable, and a cad. Both soldiers’ amorous interests are taken up by Isabel and Clemencia, beautiful cousins. Initially, the cousins have no time for Fernando, as they focus their affections on the handsome Enrique. They come to realize, however, that Enrique has deceived them and taken advantage of them. Unfortunately, this realization comes too late because Fernando dies with valor and honor, a hero and martyr for his country. Clemencia realizes that her affections should have been reserved for Fernando because true beauty is based not on appearances but on honor, valor, dignity, and love of country. In this moralizing story, Altamirano envisions Mexico like Clemencia, needing to avoid the superficial attractiveness of certain politicians who only serve the country out of self-aggrandizing interest. She should turn her attention toward the virtuous citizen who serves out of loyalty and selflessness. The novel demonstrates once again how

28 “Crónica Charlamentaria” from El Monitor Republicano, núm. 4162, México, 17 January 1869. In Rodríguez Prampolini (1997) I: 141. 29 Altamirano (1990) [1869].

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Mexico is allegorized as a woman who must be carefully guarded and guided. With the rise of President Porfirio Díaz in the late 1870s, the metaphorical image of Mexico would change yet again. Díaz sought to establish Mexico as a nation respected among nations. He wanted to bring Mexico into modernity through programs of economic and social development. There was also a realization that a “comprehensive nationalist history was the sine qua non both for the consolidation of the nation and as a proof of stability and civilization.”30 Consequently, in 1887 the first comprehensive overview of Mexican history and culture appeared as México a través de los siglos . . . edited by Vicente Riva Palacio. This five-volume work was profusely illustrated. Most interesting for this study is the frontispiece of the volumes, which again represents a young woman as the metaphorical image of Mexico (Fig. 2.5). With a bust of Liberty above her, Mexico, holding writing utensils, is seated on a throne in front of a banner showing the Aztec founding image of the eagle alighted on a nopal cactus with a snake in its mouth. Her feet rest on a low pedestal with a band of low relief. The distinctive tropical, semi-arid and arid vegetation filling the corners of the print denote the distinct geographic areas of Mexico. Within this regional staging, Mexico is surrounded by imagery that visually presents a condensed history of Mexico. Four carved relief plaques set in the metopes, the open spaces between the triglyph dividers of a Doric frieze across the back wall, identify critical episodes of national history.31 Various objects and four standing figures further elucidate these national milestones. Designating the indigenous origins of Mexico are the antique sculpted vessels, the pedestal relief, and two statuesque Indian warriors resplendent with feathered clothing, shields, spear, bow, and arrows. The metope with the profile relief image of Moctezuma, the leader of the Aztec-Mexica at the time of sixteenth-century Spanish contact, is placed in the frieze in a position farthest to the left of the throne. Next to this portrait is that of Hernán Cortés who, along with a heavily armored conquistador to the right of Mexico, represents the epoch of the Spanish

30

Tenorio-Trillo (1996) 68. For the standard terminology of the Doric frieze, including triglyphs and metopes, see Janson (2004) 125. 31

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Fig. 2.5 Frontispiece. Color lithograph. In Vicente Riva Palacio, ed., México a través de los siglos . . . vol. I (México: Ballescá, 1887–1889), n.p.

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Conquest and the subsequent Viceroyalty. The Mexican insurgency and independence movements of the early nineteenth century are indicated by the profile portrait of Miguel Hidalgo, which appears in the frieze to the right of the figure of Mexico. The fourth standing figure may be read as a criollo, a former Spanish subject who is now a Mexican citizen. Finally, the frieze’s profile image of Benito Juárez denotes his dismantling of the French intervention and initiation of the Reforma movement. Within this frontispiece, historical episodes that would be elucidated in the five volumes of México a través de los siglos are encapsulated visually. México a través de los siglos is a history written from the present in order to secure the future. It sought to exhibit Mexico’s rich past and impending potential for modernity. The female figure of its frontispiece is related to the 1834 Alegoría as well as the 1869 Constitución by her simple costume elements. Notably different, however, is the fact that this image of Mexico neither wears a Phrygian cap nor holds a massive stone tablet; instead, she is poised with a small writing tablet and quill pen. She is Mexico, a nation ready to write her history. She is Mexico prepared to claim parity with other nations by virtue of having a deep history, that is, a complex national narrative complete with an originating indigenous culture and nationforging events such as colonization, civil war, and wars of independence as enacted by the male intercessors. Here, Mexico is invented again: Her seductive powers are intact as the allegorical nation on the stage of national history.

Conclusion At once, in place of the particular individuality of each contracting party, this act of association produces a moral and collective body, composed of as many members as the assembly contains voices, and receiving from this act its unity, its common identity, its life and its will. . . . The Sovereign, being formed solely of the individuals who compose it, neither has nor can have any interest contrary to theirs . . .32

As he read these words from Du contrat social by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Don José Antonio de Villanueva tried to fit them into his own

32

Rousseau (1996) 52–53.

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understanding. He looked out of his coach window as it rumbled along the rough road to Mexico City on this chilly day in late December 1794, and his lips silently repeated the words again. Don José picked up his bookmark, a small printed image of the Virgin of Guadalupe with the words “non facit taliter omni natione,” stamped on it, marked this page and slipped the book back into its regular hiding place under the coach seat. Turning his attention to the passing scenery, gazing at the rolling landscape with serpentine rivulets of dark smoke rising on the horizon indicating small Indian villages, his heart was filled with affection for his patria. He loved his motherland—its beautiful countryside, its colorful land, its wide skies, its imposing mountains, and its people. Once more, Rousseau’s words hummed in his head: “. . . a moral and collective body . . . the Sovereign, being formed wholly of the individuals . . .,” and a glimmering of their meaning shone in his mind but, more significantly, Don José felt Rousseau’s words in his heart as he continued to gaze at his patria. “How incredible!” he thought. This fictional narrative is based on Inquisition records held in Mexico’s national archive. These proceedings indicate that in May 1795 an Inquisition prosecutor brought a case against Licenciado Don José Antonio de Villanueva, a miner from the royal mines of Taxco, for owning and reading forbidden books, including “El contrato social por Juan Jacobo Rousseau.”33 The documents focus on Don José’s ‘crime’ and, of course, do not indicate his thoughts about his readings. Nevertheless, this case, along with others similar to it found in the archive, illustrates that despite Spain’s extensive efforts to prohibit and banish them, revolutionary political writings were circulating in New Spain among educated men.34 Spanish authorities had considerable concern about the implication of the ideas in Rousseau’s work and similar writings. Indeed, these worries were well founded because the absolutist understanding of sovereignty was dismantled in Rousseau’s lines and located in a new body. These words offered ideas that disassembled the known

33 El señor inquisidor fiscal del Santo Oficio contra el Lic. D. José Antonio de Villanueva, minero del real de Tasco [sic] por leer libros prohibidos . . . AGN201768, Inquisición, 1795, vol. 1326, Exp. 3, fols. 1–11. 34 Gaceta de México (29 August 1801), n. p.; AGN-202749, Inquisición, 1795, vol. 1361, Exp. 1, fols. 1–184 and AGN-204162, Inquisición, 1803, vol. 1414, Exp. 2, fols. 280–289, 309–328.

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reality of New Spain and assembled a truly new world, that is, the often fragmented and complex nation of Mexico. While new constructs of sovereignty would collide with older understandings, they continued to exploit the affective relationships formerly associated with absolutist sovereignty and its associated corporeal imagery. Nationalist affections of the heart would be visualized through female images of Mexico throughout the nineteenth century. As independence became a reality for New Spain and throughout the nineteenth century, Mexican citizens like my fictional Don José would find love of nation a powerful and alluring emotion moving them to fanatic dedication, incredible feats of bravery, and heart-wrenching sacrifices.

Bibliography Acevedo, E. (2000) “Entre la tradición alegórica y la narrativa factual,” in Los pínceles de la historia: De la patria criolla a la nación mexicana 1750–1860, eds. E. Acevedo, J. Cuadriello, and F. Ramírez (Mexico City: 2000) 115–131. ——. (2003) “Los comienzos de una historia laica en imágenes,” in Los pinceles de la historia: La fabricación del estado 1864–1910, eds. E. Acevedo, J. Cuadriello, and F. Ramírez (Mexico City: 2003) 35–53. Altamirano, I. (1990) [1869] Clemencia (Barcelona: 1990 [1869]). Anna, T. (1998) Forging Mexico 1821–1835 (Lincoln, NE: 1998). Archivo General de la Nación (AGN) Mexico City, Legajo Inquisición, 1795–1803. Baecque, A. de (1997) The Body Politic: Corporeal Metaphor in Revolutionary France, 1770 –1800, trans. C. Mandell (Stanford: 1997). Brading, D. A. (2001) Mexican Phoenix: Our Lady of Guadalupe, Image and Tradition across Five Centuries (Cambridge, England: 2001). Cañeque, A. (1999) “The King’s Living Image: The Culture and Politics of Viceregal Power in Seventeenth-Century New Spain” (PhD. diss., New York University, 1999). “Descripción de las fiestas celebradas en la imperial corte de México con motivo de la solemne colocación de una estatua equestre [sic] de nuestro Augusto Soberano el Señor Don Carlos IV en la plaza mayor” (1796), in Documentos varios para la historia de la Ciudad de México a fines de la época colonial (1769–1815), edición facsimilar XIV, 1–16 (Mexico: 1983). “Descripción del modo con que se conduxo [sic] elevó y colocó sobre su base La Real Estatua de nuestro Augusto Soberano el Señor Don Carlos IV y de las fiestas que se hicieron con este motivo” (1803), in Documentos varios para la historia de la Ciudad de México a fines de la época colonial (1769–1815), edición facsimilar XIV, 1–12 (Mexico: 1983). Gaceta de México, compendio de noticias de Nueva España, por don Manuel Antonio Valdes (Mexico: ?–1809). Janson, H. W., and A. F. Janson (2004) History of Art: The Western Tradition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: 2004). Landes, J. (2001) Visualizing the Nation: Gender, Representation, and Revolution in EighteenthCentury France (Ithaca, NY: 2001).

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Morelos, J. M. (2002) “Sentiments of the Nation, or Points Outlined by Morelos for the Consititution,” in The Mexico Reader: History, Culture, Politics, eds. G. M. Joseph and T. J. Henderson (Durham, NC: 2002) 189–191. Otero, M. (1975) [1847] [attributed] Consideraciones sobre la situación política y social de la república mexicana, en el año 1847 [Considerations on the Political and Social Situation of the Mexican Republic 1847.], trans. and ed. D. E. Berge. Southwestern Studies, Monograph 45 (El Paso, TX: 1975). Remensnyder, A. (2003) “Our Lady of Colonization,” lecture, John Carter Brown Library, Providence, RI, December 3, 2003. Riva Palacio, V. (1887–1889) ed., México a través de los siglos: Historia general y completa . . . de México desde la antigüedad más remota hasta la época actual, 5 vols (Mexico: 1887–1889). Rodríguez Prampolini, I., ed. (1997) La crítica de arte en México en el siglo XIX, vol. I, 2nd ed. (Mexico: 1997). Rousseau, J. J. (1996) Du Contrat Social (Paris: 1996). Tenorio-Trillo, M. (1996) Mexico at the World’s Fairs: Crafting a Modern Nation (Berkeley: 1996). Widdifield, S. G. (1996) The Embodiment of the National in Late Nineteenth-Century Mexican Painting (Tucson: 1996).

CHAPTER THREE

THE VIRGIN OF THE ANDES: INKA QUEEN AND CHRISTIAN GODDESS Carol Damian

In 1532, the Spanish Conquistador Francisco Pizarro and his army of 62 horsemen and 102 foot soldiers conquered the Inka empire called Tawantinsuyu, the “Center of the Four Quarters,” with its capital at Cuzco, Peru. The Spanish Conquest ended more than one hundred years of Inka domination over the indigenous Andean population. The Inka dynasty began, according to Inka legend, with eight brothers and sisters. After achieving the dominant position of leadership and to guarantee the purity of the ruling family, the Inka Manco Ccapac, who called himself the son of the Sun God, Inti, married his sister Mama Ocllo. Inti instructed Manco Ccapac and Mama Ocllo to teach the people of the earth to worship the Sun and the Moon (Quilla) and thus prosper. Mama Ocllo, the Coya (or queen), was the woman most venerated among the Indians. She was a goddess, the descendant of the Moon. She was the queen, the wife/sister of the Inka king. They ruled in parallel duality. The Coya wore and displayed her particular attributes and insignia, as did the Inka, and was associated with the symbols of her role (Fig. 3.1). Among these were weaving implements, feathers, birds, flowers, tipi pins, and other ornaments. When the Spaniards conquered the Inka Empire, the reverence to the Inka Coya would persist in Christian images of the Virgin Mary, the Catholic Queen (Fig. 3.2). For centuries, people throughout the world have revered the Virgin Mary. But nowhere is she more beautiful and more mysterious than in Cuzco, Peru, where she is portrayed as a distinctive image that fuses Christian and Andean concepts. Around this image, the indigenous artists of Cuzco created a school of painting, the first in the so-called New World and known as the Cuzco School, where they could portray her in multiple ways, with many titles and identifying attributes, few of which are Spanish in inspiration. By the seventeenth century, these artists earned commercial fame for their paintings and their devotion to the Virgin Mary endures to this day.

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Fig. 3.1 Anon., School of Cuzco, Coya or Ñusta. 18th c., oil on canvas, 75” × 47”, Museo Arqueológico, Cuzco, Peru.

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Anon., School of Cuzco, Virgin of the Rosary of Pomata. 18th c., oil on canvas, 78” × 51”, Museo Pedro de Osma, Lima, Peru.

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Although art historians traditionally describe the paintings of Cuzco as ‘syncretic,’ a combination of Spanish and Andean concepts, the actual meaning of that term is seldom explained. In this paper, ‘syncretism’ refers to the reconciliation, or attempted reconciliation, of differing beliefs as evidenced in the syncretic images of Cuzco which intertwine Andean and Christian beliefs and painting techniques. While the Spanish artists who came to Peru to train the native people were informed by European or ‘Western’ artistic techniques based upon Renaissance figurative and naturalistic imagery, native artists were unconcerned with such formal or outward appearances. For the Andean artist, with over two thousand years of a rich artistic heritage behind him or her, the most important aspect of a created object was its essence, or spirit. He sought to create a visual expression of his beliefs and that of his community through art. The images that he portrayed did not represent particular deities in the same sense as those by the European artist who created paintings of the Virgin Mary to represent her on earth. In contrast, the object created by the native artist for veneration was the deity or one of its manifestations, and it spoke through a language of signs and symbols. By deciphering the symbols found in the syncretic image of the Virgin as she was painted in Cuzco it is possible to distinguish what was Andean from what was Christian and to explain how they worked together. Identifying the Christian symbols is easy and familiar; identifying the Andean, however, is a complex process that reaches back into the pre-Hispanic past, well before the arrival of the Inka and his Queen, the Coya. Indeed, the Andean archaeological record has provided images and objects that date before 1000 BCE and continue through the period of the Inka Empire (ca. 1400–1535 CE) that help to explain the post-contact Andean veneration of Mary as a new female deity. The role of female deities in the Andes was reaffirmed in the native myths and legends recorded by the Spanish chroniclers of the early conquest period. By incorporating the imagery and symbolism associated with these female deities and other royal personalities, the colonial image of the Virgin Mary assumed new significance as an Andean, rather than a purely European/Western, deity. Her ChristianSpanish iconography coexisted with its counterpart inspired by such deities as the Earth Mother, called Pachamama, and the Goddess of the Moon, Quilla. She was also a Queen to the native peoples— an Inka Coya. She was revered on multiple levels as fertility god-

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dess, lunar goddess, agricultural goddess, mother, and queen. She became the perfect embodiment of an Andean cosmology that emphasized the all-encompassing unity that exists between human beings, spirits, and the land. At the same time, the Virgin Mary of Cuzco was also created to adapt to the imposition of an alien religion with its own symbols. She became a means of insuring, in a fractured world, the survival of ancient ritual. Although her Cuzqueño image may be inimitable, it is, when seen through Andean eyes, but one more link in a long chain of ritual objects and nature worship that connects the Inka past with the viceregal period. It is important to understand that complex religious organization, such as that which developed in the Andean region, produces a complexity of symbols that impedes the rigid categorization of images into exclusive models. Furthermore, the very nature of the Cuzco School defies traditional methodology based upon a chronology of clear stages of artistic development or perfectly defined styles. Moreover, there are no set definitions of how the Virgin should look for each avocation, whether painted or sculpted. In other words, not all “Virgins of the Rosary” or “Immaculate Conceptions” look exactly alike: within each ‘category’ of images of the Virgin Mary, there are many variations and combinations. The paintings of the Virgin from the School of Cuzco are complicated combinations of a multitude of iconographic themes. However, the one consistent feature that appears as a dominant stylistic and iconographic trait is the triangular shape of the Virgin’s dress as a reference to the shape of a mountain and to her role as Pachamama, the Earth Mother.* Whether the subject relates to her role as protector of the Earth, the Moon Deity, or a royal queen, the Virgin Mary is always dressed in an elaborately decorated gown of triangular form. So pervasive is this motif among Cuzco images, it appears not only on canvases but on murals and statues as well. The Virgin in her identification with Pachamama maintains the Inka people’s great reverence for nature, which they worshipped on a daily basis. Whereas in traditional Western society the world is human-oriented and grounded in the individual, the indigenous worldview regards the universe as nature-based. No differentiation between Man and Nature is made. The worship of the Earth dominates the lives of those * On female association with the earth/mountain construct in precontact Mexico, see M. E. Bernal-García, Ch. 6 this text.

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who revere everything in nature as sacred. In the paintings of Cuzco, then, the artist replicates the earth-mountain in the shape of Mary’s dress, and pays tribute to nature’s abundance with birds and flowers. By considering the most popular images of the Virgin as she is portrayed as the Virgin of the Rosary of Pomata, the Pastoral Virgin, the Immaculate Conception, the Virgin Spinning, or the Virgin of the Candlestick with their many variations, this constant reference to Earth Mother becomes evident. To look at the Virgin of the Andes is to look at a complex of symbols and concepts. The shape of her dress; the dress itself with its golden ornamentation and rich array of flowers and jewels; the offerings of Andean flora and fauna that accompany her; the presence of feathers as decorative additions and a host of other attributes, including the moon, contribute to the image of the Virgin of the Andes as a distinct product of her environment, natural and spiritual. Pachamama is a comprehensive deity, identified with the Earth, worshipped on numerous levels and in numerous manifestations as the protector of the crops and giver of life for over two thousand years. Pachamama and her agricultural counterparts became identified with particular iconographic attributes related to fertility rituals and astronomical and calendrical cycles. These included ritual dressing, feathers, solar radiances, birds, and offering objects. She represents the physical world, paired with (and in certain opposition to) the Sun. Thus, everything on earth and in it is, or is sustained by, Pachamama. She does not have concrete form as a human deity. Her force is contained within the earth, a rock in the field, a stream, a mountain. The Spanish writers state repeatedly that: “They worship the Earth because they say it was their mother and they had to make her form and her offerings; and they also said she was the mother of fire, and corn and other seeds and the sheep and cattle, and the chicha [a fermented corn beverage].”1 For this reason, they “worshipped the summits of all peaks and mountain passes, and offered maize and other things” to their Mother the Earth.2 One Andean legend portrays Mother Earth’s all-encompassing nature by describing the sexual/reproductive parts of her body as Lake Titicaca, her torso as Quito, her heart in Cuzco, and her mouth in Lima.3 The entire Andean world of the Inka was con1 2 3

Molina (1968) 76. Molina (1535) 59. Randall (1987) 267.

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tained within Mother Earth. The mountain became a metaphor for life and existence in the Andean world. The extraordinary reverence for the Earth was manifested in shrines throughout the Andean territory. From the simple paga a la tierra (pay the earth), which offers something (usually chicha) to the earth before every agricultural and significant activity, to the placement of stones and other ritual objects on roadside locations and grand pilgrimage shrines, often in inaccessible and isolated locations, worship of the Earth was the most persistent of Andean rituals. It was also the most difficult to identify, eradicate, or replace. Within a 20-mile radius of the city of Cuzco alone, the archaeologist John Howland Rowe counted 350 earth shrines mentioned in the Spanish chronicle descriptions, most of them along the ceques, the ritual lines of demarcation and procession.4 This Andean tradition of Earth worship manifests in a number of ways in the Christian art of the Andes. The images of the Virgin Mary in a wide bell-shaped dress replicate Pachamama as Earth Mother, in the form of a mountain or as the ‘body-mountain’ itself, and as she symbolizes Nature in the fertility of the pastoral landscape. The image of the Virgin as the mountain is most evident in those works that actually describe her as or in the mountain. One of the best-known paintings and a striking example to illustrate the Virgin as the Mountain and worshiped within the context of a royal Inka and Christian presence comes from Alto Peru. In La Virgen María con el Cerro de Potosí (The Virgin Mary with the Mountain of Potosiama) (Fig. 3.3), the face and hands of the Virgin are actually within the conical shape of the mountain of Potosí. In the celestial level above, God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost hold a crown over the mountain peak (the Virgin’s head). Within her mountain/gown are described roads and trees and animals, with native people going about their daily activities. They are totally integrated within the landscape beneath the protection of the Mountain. The landscape is transformed into a ritual of man and nature whose compatibility is dependent upon the beneficence of Mother Earth. The Virgin Mary is intimately identified with the Andean countryside in similar paintings of numerous titles in which she dons the mountain-shaped dress strewn with flora and fauna distinctly Andean, not Spanish. 4 Rowe (1946) 183–130, and (1979) 1–80; and Zuidema (1964). Chroniclers Bernabé Cobo and Cristóbal de Molina also describe the ceque system.

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Fig. 3.3 Anon., Alto Peru, La Virgen María con el cerro de Potosí (The Virgin Mary with the Mountain of Potasiama). 18th c., oil on canvas, 53” × 41 ½”, Casa Nacional de Moneda, Potosí, Bolivia.

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This concept of ‘oneness’ with the land is symbolized in images of La Divina Peregrina (The Virgin of the Pilgrims) from Cuzco. In them, the Virgin wears a shepherd’s hat and a gown profusely decorated with flowers. For the Spaniards, the broad-brimmed shepherd’s hat identifies the Virgin as La Divina Peregrina. Sacred pilgrimage is also an essential aspect of Andean religion. The people make pilgrimages to sacrosanct locations, mountains, rocks, and caves to pay tribute to the nature spirits who dwell there and they leave offerings while pledging their servitude to the spirit of the land. The image of the Virgin of the Pilgrims combines all of these elements: agricultural protector, pilgrim, and humble servant. She wears a dress that is a tapestry of floral brocade patterns and golden details and borders. In becoming a carpet of flowers and jewels, she symbolizes the beneficence of Mother Nature. In the Andean tradition, flowers were associated with the cult to Pachamama. For the Inka, flowers were harbingers of the harvest; even men placed flowers in their hats or behind their ears during harvest celebrations. The Coya had her own specific flowers, which were offered to her on agricultural feast days. The reverence for Mother Earth is complemented by the worship of the Moon as a female deity associated with the cycles of nature and of women. Just as the Spanish incorporated the moon into images of the Virgin Mary of the Immaculate Conception who trounces the forces of evil, the Andean artist also used the moon as a symbol of ancient veneration. In numerous paintings from Cuzco, the moon has special meaning beyond that of Christian symbolism for an audience that had long worshipped the Moon Goddess. The Spanish chronicles describe the Temple of the Sun in Cuzco with its gold figure of the Sun God Inti and silver figures of the Moon. They also describe how the figure of the Moon was carried in procession during the month of November and revered as Queen, Mama Quilla. The Andean artist, far from the strict guidelines imposed by the Church in Rome, incorporated the moon in numerous images of the Virgin Mary, confusing and conflating its meaning as prescribed in European images associated with the Immaculate Conception and Assumption of the Virgin. As a result, the symbolism of the Andes enhances that of Christianity, and vice versa. The paintings of the Virgin that describe her association with the moon were popular subjects for Cuzco artists. For the Andean believer, the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, so important an image

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of reverence for the Spanish, was the perfect foil for their devotion to the deity of the Moon who was also the Queen of the Inka, the Coya, and the Consort of the Sun Inti. Unchanging and precise, yet in constant flux, the moon vividly symbolized the idea of eternity for the Andean peoples. They realized that the moon also moved the tides to ebb and flow, and the deity of the Moon became the eternal mistress of the waters, the protective deity of life, and especially the patron of women in childbirth. The generalized devotion to the moon of pre-Inka societies was elevated to royal status by the Inkas who identified the lunar deity with Mama Ocllo, the wife/sister of the first Inka, Manco Ccapac, and with their reverence for her as Mama Quilla, the Moon and the Consort of Inti. The wak’a (sacred object) of the Moon was brought out from the Temple of the Sun during the month of November for the Feast of the Lord Inka.5 The veneration of the Moon as Queen coincides with the regal image of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception and of Mary as the Queen of Heaven. Triumphantly soaring above her earthly subjects on the crescent moon, Mary was easily appropriated by the Indian artisan into an amalgamated image representing an Andean/Christian lunar goddess. The image of the Immaculate Conception as painted by indigenous artists demonstrates the manner in which Andean artists, who were taught to copy from Spanish models that were plentiful in postcontact Cuzco, incorporated their own distinctive artistry and Andean details and iconography into the subject. Although the Cuzqueño interpretation of the Immaculate Conception defines this image, indigenous artists borrowed liberally from other European avocations of the Virgin, including Mary as Queen of Heaven and the Virgin in Glory. Specific elements from each of these European sources were re-arranged and re-interpreted by the native artist to create distinctive Andean constructions of the Virgin-on-the-moon motif. These idiosyncratic images produced by artists of the School of Cuzco, especially, were given a variety of titles, including the Virgin of the Candlestick, the Virgin of the Rosary, and the Virgin of Bethlehem.

5 Molina (1535) 36. Passa-Mama means moon in Collao dialect; in Kechwa it is Quilla.

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In addition to the painted image of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, she was also represented as a dressed statue (imágen de vestir) on the crescent moon, a particularly popular form in colonial Cuzco. These statues were carried in processions and dressed for special occasions in elaborate garments. Although some of these sculpted images were European in origin, many more were produced by native artists who used European images as models. These Andean statues, like paintings of the Virgin, also incorporated Andean symbolism and meaning. Andean peoples had long used textiles and other objects as sacred additions to adorn idols, and the clothing of the Virgin Mary may indeed have become a substitute for the traditional ritual accorded the wak’as of their ancestors. In addition, symbolism associated with the placement of gold and jeweled attributes, scepters, headdresses, and other offerings on the anda, or “processional litter,” of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, for example, recreates the symbolic offerings of the pre-contact past. In this manner, the images of the Virgin Mary painted or sculpted by Cuzco’s colonial artists replicate the dressed and adorned statues and mummies of their ancestors. Splendidly arrayed in the finest brocades and tapestry cloths, she represents not only the Queen of Heaven, but also the native Queen of the Andean peoples. The documents of the visitas during the campaigns against idolatry of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries describe Indians weaving a mantle for the Virgin and simultaneously one for the wak’a.6 The idolatry documents also relate that on numerous occasions wak’as were hidden beneath the litters or within the dresses of the statues. Father Pablo Joseph Arriaga recounted the Corpus Christi Procession in 1620, during which the native peoples celebrate Oncoymita, a Festival to the Sun: They have “slyly hidden a wak’a on the very platform of the monstrance of the Holy Sacrament . . . and wak’as in the hollow niches of the saints in front of the holy altar, and others below the altar.”7

6

Arriaga (1620) 68. Ibid., 70. Dr. Ávila discovered that in Huarochirí, the Feast of the Assumption was used to disguise the festival to the idols of the woman called Chupixamor and Mamayoc. This provoked him to undertake massive campaigns to search out and destroy the wak’as; see Salomon and Urioste (1991) 26. For other such surreptitious events, see also Polo de Ondegardo (c. 1559–1571). 7

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During the idolatry campaigns, the use of fine Inka cloth on the statues of the Virgin and saints was the subject of investigation. Father Arriaga wrote: I know a place where a cloak was made for the image of Our Lady and a shirt for their wak’a from the same cloth. They feel and even say that they can worship their wak’as while believing in God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Thus, for the worship of Jesus Christ they generally offer what they offer their wak’as.8

The symbolism of cloth is further enhanced by its golden threads and golden details identified as Inka insignia that take on new meaning in the painting of Our Lady of the Victory of Málaga, ca. 1737, by the indigenous artist Luis Nino of Alto Perú (Fig. 3.4). She commemorates a Spanish event but is depicted in the characteristic lavish style of the Cuzco School. The Virgin stands beneath an elaborate European baroque arch decorated in sculptural relief profusely ornamented in patterns of gold. Her crown and radiant halo display the native artist’s metallurgical skills. She also wears the flat triangular gown of gold and tapestry brocade tooled in gold stencil, a technique called estofado, so elaborate that the Christ Child is lost in its patterns. The interesting semi-circular design on the bottom of her dress contains references to the moon. Its abstract form appears to have been inspired by the form of the tumi, the ceremonial knife of the Inka and pre-Inka peoples. Many of these knives have been found in tombs, most notably in those of the Chimor Civilization (which was conquered by the Inka), and relate to regal warrior status. In a colonial portrait painted by an anonymous artist of an Inka warrior princess, La Ñusta Chanan Cori Coca, the lunar-shaped knife is used as a tupu pin to fasten her cape. It is exactly like the pins that fastened the dressings of the Nasca women depicted on pottery over one thousand years before. In the Inka portrait, the princess stands beside an Inka warrior and triumphantly displays the head of her victim. The Ñusta Chanan Cori Coca is the descendant of the Inka warrior Coya, the ‘vicious’ Mama Huaco. The knife is a warrior-specific object of victory and conquest.9 As a decorative device 8

Arriaga (1620) 72. Sarmiento de Gamboa (1572) Ch XI: 45. The warrior princess of Inka legend was one of the four legendary sisters/founders of the Inka dynasty, Mama Huaco (“who was fierce and cruel”). The description of this vicious female comes from Spanish accounts to discredit the Inkas (and there are discrepancies between the 9

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Fig. 3.4 Luis Nino, Alto Peru, Our Lady of the Victory of Málaga. Ca. 1735, oil on canvas, 59 ½” × 43 ¾”, Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado.

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within the patterns of the dress of the Virgin of Málaga, the tumi relates to the moon and to Mary as the victorious Queen of Heaven and Queen of the Andes. When the form of the tumi is turned upside down, it resembles a flower bud, specifically the bud of the ñukchu lily, the sacred flower of the Inka. The compressed flat patterning of the entire arrangement of figural and decorative devices reveals other solar forms, including the radiant aureola behind her crown and the semi-circular crescent form above her shoulders. Within the masterful application of gold leaf and estofado patterns, the artist repeats the circular and semi-circular forms of the moon to produce a composition of great elegance and complexity. The image of the Virgin Mary in association with Pachamama and the Moon is clearly revealed through signs and symbols incorporated within the Christian iconography. With the symbolism accorded the Royal Consort of the Inka, the Coya, the Virgin Mary acquires another level of meaning. This symbolism relates particularly to respect for the Coya and her responsibilities to women, as well as to pre-Inka and Inka traditions associated with cloth and clothing. “The Coya, or Queen, took care to teach the women to spin and weave wool and cotton, as well as other tasks and occupations of their profession.”10 Descendants of the sister co-founders of the Inka dynasty, the women of royal Inka blood commanded the same respect as did the men: both were progenitors of the Inka race and responsible for the founding of the first ten ayllus (kinship groups) of Cuzco. As such they owned land and their mummies were retained as wak’as and venerated with great ceremony. In the Temple of the Sun, on either side of the figure of the Moon were the bodies of the dead queens, arranged in order of antiquity. Mama Ocllo, the mother of Huaina Ccapac, was placed in front of the Moon and face to face with her, being thus distinguished from the rest as the mother of such a son.11

identification of the sisters and their roles); however, women did play a role in Inka conquest according to Inka legend. See Dransart (1987) 62. 10 Cobo, History of the Inca Empire (1653) Book II, Ch 4:108. 11 Vega (1609) Part I, Book III, Ch XXI:182.

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The Inka queen and princesses (Ñustas) played their most important roles in the agricultural festivities and in the production of the sacred cloths worn by the Inka and given as offerings to the idols. They were also identified by regal insignia and dress and given titles.12 The Inka Coya wore a very specific costume, not unlike that of the Virgin Mary (Fig. 3.1). She was revered as the descendant of the Goddess of the Moon and the Consort of the Sun God Deity. The similarities accorded the ritual dressing of both the Virgin and the Coya, as well as the specific items of clothing repeatedly associated with their portrayal, are quite remarkable. The Coya wore a long dress called an anacu that was tied many times with a wide sash called chumpi. Over this dress she wore a cloak called an iliclla that was put over her shoulders. Bringing the corners together over her chest, she fastened it with a pin, tipi. The pins that were used to fasten the clothes of Inka women were very specific to each Coya in shape and size. The head was made of a small metal plate in a variety of shapes relating to a basically semi-circular form, its edges so thin and sharp that many things were cut with them. Some of these tipis had many little gold and silver bells hanging from them. The Coyas adorned their hair by wearing it long and loose or braided or bound with a band called a vincha. For their headdress they wore a piece of rich cumbi (very fine) cloth called pampacona, folded several times to a width of about 5 1/2 inches. One edge dropped down over the forehead and the rest hung over the hair down the back of the head. Across the chest, from one shoulder to another, they wore strings of certain beads, called chaquira, made of bone and seashells of various colors.13 As recorded in post-conquest portraits of the Inka Coyas and Ñustas painted in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries and in the

12 13

Ibid., Book One, Ch XXVI:63. Cobo (1990) Book II, Ch 2:188.

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drawings of Guaman Poma de Ayala,14 the costume of the Inka queens appears to be quite consistent and to have survived with little change for many years. There is little reason to doubt that the costumes in the post-conquest portrayals were very different from those of the reigning Inkas of the pre-conquest and conquest periods. Their survival with little change throughout the colonial period in portraiture attests to the significance of noble Inka dress as a distinct trait of status worn with great pride for generations. Furthermore, the Inka objects on which Inka dress is depicted—the dressed statues, pottery vessels, and keros—affirm that Inka women wore dresses with capes and tipis (or tipkis, pins that actually fastened the garment and were worn horizontally) and tupus (pins that hung vertically from the capes). To view the image of the Virgin Mary as part of the structure of ideological sign systems of Inka and pre-Inka ritual objects imparts new meaning to its form and function. The Inka appropriated specific Andean symbols and developed their own vocabulary of ritual iconography. The language of Andean ritual was well established by the time of the arrival of the Spaniards. The native artist maintained its efficacy by incorporating it into Christian imagery. Images of the Virgin Mary Spinning relate to the role of the Coya as the teacher of women and to Mary as a humble domestic maiden called by God. In these paintings, Mary is dressed in a combination of noble Spanish and Inka costumes. The golden patterns of the cloth incorporate both the floral brocades of European origin and the geometric patterns of the Inka. The frame of flowers is an allusion to the rites of fertility and abundance presided over by the Coya. The young Virgin wears a headband (llautu) of golden thread around her head with a curious curl on her forehead. European images of the Virgin Mary consistently describe her hair parted in the middle. This unusual rendering of a curl in the Andean version, however, suggests the bang of hair that descends below the King’s and Queen’s royal headband. To the Spanish observer, the curl is a delightful addition of the native artist. To the native viewer, the headband and curl are royal insignia. The Child Mary is the equivalent of the Inka princess (Ñusta) and the Chosen Women (elite women in the service of the Inka). Also, for the Andean observer,

14

Guaman Poma de Ayala (1614).

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the golden radiances behind her head are symbolic of Inka royalty’s homage to the sun. The Child Virgin holds the spindle aloft and twirls out the thread, as Indian women do throughout the day, throughout their lives, to this day. Undoubtedly copied from Spanish models of the Virgin learning to sew, the Virgin Spinning exemplifies the significance of the weavers of the Andes, especially the Chosen Women, and the strength of their traditions. In the Andes, weaving was a ritual act for devotional purposes developed over centuries. Cloth was also a “chief article of tribute given for the service of the Inka and of religion” and “large quantities were made up for sacrifices, for in all the festivals much cloth was offered up.”15 The Spanish chroniclers marveled at the ability of the people to weave. Bernabé Cobo wrote: In ancient times, they made five different kinds of textiles. One, called abasca, was coarse and ordinary; another, called cumbi was fine and valuable; the third was made with colored feathers . . .; the fourth was like cloth of silver and gold embroidered in chaquira; and the fifth was a very coarse and thick cloth used for various rugs and blankets.16

Special attention to the clothing of the Inka and to ceremonial and offering cloth was given by the Chosen Women responsible for its production. These garments were for the Inka himself and would be worn only once, then burned. The Spanish describe storehouses and tombs full of cloth, and ancestor mummies wrapped in cloth and accompanied by folded textiles brought out to the public square on special feast days. They took special note of the elaborate costumes for every ceremony and festival. To the Andean believer, the image of the Virgin Spinning was more than that of a humble schoolgirl learning a domestic chore. Her responsibility to maintain the tradition of Andean weaving, in the service of the gods and the Inka himself, was tantamount. Images of the Virgin and Child are particularly endearing to the people of Cuzco and the Virgin of the Rosary of Pomata is among the most characteristic and beautiful (Fig. 3.2). Sentimental and maternal, her representation as a queenly figure adorned with flowers and jewels elevates the position of the Virgin to that of a queen and the Child becomes a miniature king. She holds lilies (Christian symbols of purity and the flower of the Virgin) and the rosary. Both the 15 16

Polo de Ondegardo (1571) 167. Cobo (1990) Book II, Ch 11:225.

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Virgin and Child wear elaborate brocade dresses with garlands of pearls secured by jeweled flower broaches. The swags of pearls are characteristic of the Virgin of Pomata. Pearls were Spanish symbols of perfection, admired as jewels of great beauty and luxury. They were also prized ornaments for Andean idols dressed by pre-Hispanic coastal peoples that were buried in elite tombs as accompaniments to the mummies. The Virgin of the Rosary of Pomata combines a number of interesting iconographic attributes: jewels, mountain-shaped gown, and, distinctively, feathers. The use of feathers in images of the Virgin Mary was particularly associated with Cuzco. They are especially linked with the Virgin of Pomata and can be found in her crown and in that of the Child Jesus. Although feathers may have adorned helmets worn by the Conquistadors, and in some Spanish images of the Virgin of the Pilgrims she dons a wide-brimmed felt hat with a feather (in the style of European pilgrimage hats), feathered crowns are not found in the royal iconography associated with the Virgin as Queen of Heaven in European representations. It is significant to note, however, that feathers, long associated with ritual in the Andes, signify royalty in Inka iconography. Feathers were used on female idols as early as the period of the Nasca civilization (circa 200 BCE–600 CE) as symbolic attributes of the fertility figures. Elaborate feather garments and headdresses clothed the mummies of Chimu royalty who continued to occupy the north coast of Peru upon the arrival of the Spanish. Their original symbolism appears to relate to birds and winged mythical creatures. The association of birds with communicators to the spirit world is a wellestablished trope in the Andean world. Birds were present as guardian figures at Chavín de Huántar (circa 400–200 BCE) where they are incised in the architectural ornamentation of the portico of the principal pyramid. Birds are important iconographic elements in the many culture areas of the Andes. They can be found on pottery, textiles, and stone and wood objects. Winged figures were guardians of the deity called the “Gateway God” (Viracocha?) in the culture of the Peruvian-Bolivian altiplano city of Tiwanaku (ca. 1100 CE). The Virgin of the Rosary of Pomata relates to the spirits and birds of the mountains. Added to the mountainous shape of her dress, the feathers also place her in a royal Inka context, affirming the Inka appropriation of Earth Mother for their own aggrandizement. The Virgin bears the attributes of Inka royalty, in particular of Mama

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Ocllo who taught the women how to plant and harvest the agricultural fields. Feathers, spondylus shells, and tupu and tipi pins were distinct attributes of Inka royalty and were not worn by ordinary people. Feathers had significance for the female members of the Inka nobility, especially. Furthermore, over the years and with the destruction of the Inka state religion, feathers survived in association with women. Feathers assumed the position of both agricultural and royal symbols, as appropriate for the Queen of Heaven, the new Coya, as they once had been for the Inka royalty. The Virgin of the Rosary of Pomata pays tribute to the royal lineage of Pachamama and the Inka at the same time. In this image, the combination of pearls and feathers is a synthesis of regal imagery. Vestiges of the belief system of popular and state ritual assume new authority within this specifically Andean/Christian interpretation of the Virgin. The Virgin of the Candlestick with Tunic of Feathers, one of the most extraordinary subjects of the School of Cuzco, incorporates a variety of Andean symbols within its Christian imagery, including the moon, solar rays, gold ornamented fabric, and qantu and ñukchu lilies among the flowers (Fig. 3.5). The Virgin and Child are atop a pedestal, a statue painting framed by a border of flowers and drawn curtains. The crescent moon is described in the hem of her gown. She holds a lit candle to symbolize Christ as the light of the world and as a reference to Candlemas celebrations. She wears a crown with radiances that form a halo above. The Christ child also wears a crown and is held to her breast and wrapped tightly in white lace in the manner of Andean babies. Garcilaso de la Vega found such tight bundles peculiar: They brought up their children in a strange way, both Inca and common folk, rich and poor, without distinction, with the least possible pampering. As soon as the infant was born . . . it was swaddled in shawls . . . Their arms were kept inside the swaddling clothes for more than three months, because it was thought that if they were loosened earlier, they would grow weak in the arm.17

In this painting, the Child Jesus is swaddled in white cloth; only his little hand protrudes in a gesture of peace. The Virgin is clothed in a red brocade dress and cape elaborately ornamented with gold patterns. The gown has lace sleevelets and she wears a lace veil, decoration 17

Vega (1609) Book IV, Ch XII:212.

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Fig. 3.5 Anon., School of Cuzco, Virgin of the Candlestick of Tenerife with Tunic of Feathers. Ca. 1680–1700, oil on canvas, 61” × 45”, Museo Pedro de Osma, Lima, Peru.

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inspired by Spanish noble dress. Over her gown, however, she wears a tunic of red, blue, and white feathers edged in lace. The addition of feathers to the gown of the Virgin Mary is a specifically Andean feature with regal and ritual connotations dating back two thousand years. Feathers were signs of religious authority. Father Blas Valera describes, with an accompanying drawing, the Huampar chucu, a crown of sheets of gold encrusted with semi-precious stones worn by the supreme sun priest, Vilahoma. A solar disk was inscribed on the front. A diadem of feathers from “large parrots called guacamayas was across the top, with the three feathers of the Inka insignia at the center.”18 The presence of feather crowns and feather garments in the tombs of warrior-priests and other important religious and administrative leaders affirms their significance for numerous culture areas in the Andes. Feathers adorned the imagery of anthropomorphic and fantastic deity figures from as far back as Chavín de Huántar. Feather cloths were first produced in ancient Peru by the south coast Paracas people (circa 500 BCE) and subsequently by the Nasca, Tiwanaku, Wari, Chimu, Chancay, and Inka peoples, as well as in northern Chile and northwest Argentina. Amazingly preserved in the dry desert tombs of the Andean people, feather tunics, breast cloths, loincloths, purses, masks, and fans adorned the mummy bundles and were placed as offerings in the elaborately prepared tombs of the noble elite or priestly class. There is little doubt that these cloths were used in life as well as in death, but always reserved for a specific class of people. Feathers come from a variety of coastal, highland, and jungle birds native to the Andean culture area. The feathers were collected and stitched to the natural or dyed cotton backing with horizontal threads called hileras. Feathers were also glued to masks that covered the faces of mummy bundles. There are a few examples of feather textiles decorated with gold and silver ornaments.19 The colors of feather tunics run the full color range of native birds, from reds and blues to brilliant yellows and greens. Their designs

18

Blas Valera (c. 1590) 363. Guacamayas are also described in the origin myths by Molina (1535) 8. 19 Reid (1990) 2.

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are primarily simple geometric color patterns (stripes and checkerboards, especially). However, some exhibit the simplified forms of birds, monkeys, deities, and snakes. The designs of feather cloths were associated with mythology and diverse ancestral personalities and their legends. The majority of these stories tell of birds and flying creatures or humans turned into birds. For the Inka peoples, feather textiles were first and foremost ceremonial decorations and tribute offerings given to the royal family and their ancestors or to the Temple of the Sun. Great quantities of feather cloths were made for the Inka nobility and collected in royal storehouses for use on special festival days, in initiation ceremonies or in death rituals. When the Spanish arrived, they discovered these storehouses filled with abundant supplies of both feathers and feather cloths: Almost all of the feathers were iridescent, with an admirable sheen which looked like very fine gold. Another kind was an iridescent golden green. And there was an immense amount of those tiny feathers which are found on the chest of the little birds that we call tominejo (hummingbird).20

The cloths were made by the Chosen Women and specific techniques and feathers determined their use and symbolic value. Certain festivals demanded special colors or patterns, similar to the patterning of Inka garments. Although the secrets of this symbolic vocabulary are now lost, the feather cloths and ornaments were always highly prized for their aesthetic beauty, while the documentation of their value and use by the Spaniards affirms their significance. The description of Don Juan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti-yamqui of a grand feast for the birth of Yahuar-huaccac Inka Yupanqui, the son of Inka Ruca, is illustrative of the Inka use of feathers: “The square and all the streets were filled with arches of feathers, and the house of Coricancha was entirely covered with rich plumes, both within and without.”21 Feathers were also used on the parasols that were held above the litters of the Inka and his Queen. Ceremonial cloth constructed with

20

Cobo (1990) Book II, Ch 11:226. Pachacuti-yamqui Salcamayhua (c. 1620) 89. See also Pizarro (1571) 242. Molina (1535) 19, describes feathers strewn before the path of the Inka; and the placement of feathers on the wak’as and image of the sun, 25. 21

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feathers is symbolic of Inka royalty and significant for the maintenance of Andean traditions. According to Cobo: Feather cloths were the most esteemed and valued, and this was quite reasonable because the ones that I have seen would be highly regarded anywhere. They were made on the cumbi, but in such a way that the feathers stand out on the wool and cover it like velvet. The material that they had for this kind of cloth was extensive because incredible numbers and varieties of birds are found in this land with such excellent colors that it is beyond belief.22

The Andean believer attempting to reconcile Christian ideology with ancient concepts identified with the birds of Catholic doctrine. Wings were the symbols of divine mission for the Catholic Church. The Holy Ghost as the white dove was the communicator for the Christian god. Angels, archangels, seraphim, and cherubim, with their feathered wings, were the guardians of the Christian world and residents of heaven.23 The Catholic priests taught that Lucifer was the prince of the fallen angels in revolt against God, defeated by the Archangel Michael, and tumbled from his place in heaven. Angels with feathered wings were not difficult for the Andean people to understand. Winged creatures were part of their heritage:24 the bird of the Coya was easily transferable to the symbolism of the Virgin Mary. The feather tunic covering the beautifully embroidered garment worn by The Virgin of the Candlestick with Tunic of Feathers exactly repeats the pattern found on feather tunics interred with mummies on the desert coast of Peru. Feathered garments (notably not worn by the Virgin in European representations) were the valuable property of Andean nobility and of their mummified ancestors. By dressing the Virgin in a feather tunic, she becomes the special vehicle for the Andean artist to pay homage to ancient customs of ritual and royalty. In the numerous representations of the Virgin in the Andes, indigenous artists created a locus from which to battle the trauma of conquest and the subsequent loss of identity. In these images they inflected

22

Cobo (1990) Book II, Ch II:226. There is no doubt that another interesting subject of the Cuzco School, the paintings of the Archangels with their elaborate Spanish costumes, weapons, and wings, was inspired by the Andean fascination with birds and their ease of identity with feathered creatures. 24 Las Plumas del Sol y los Ángeles de la Conquista (1993). 23

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pre-contact symbols and meaning—the sacred landscape, implements of war, ritual textiles, feathers—in the body of the most revered woman in Euro-Christian belief. At the same time, they preserved ancient female deities, especially Pachamama and the Moon Goddess, and recorded, to a degree, the position of royal women in pre-contact Inka society by imbuing some of the Virgin’s traditional attributes with new (that is, ancient) symbolism and by adding indigenous ritual objects and motifs to her litany of traditional ones. The Virgin of the Andes was both Inka Queen and Christian Goddess.

Bibliography Arriaga, P. J. de (1620) The Extirpation of Idolatry in Peru, trans. L. C. Keating (Lexington: 1968). Blas Valera, Fr. (c. 1590) “Relacion de las costumbres antiguas de los naturales del Piru,” Revista del Archivo Histórico del Cuzco 4 (1953) 363. Damian, C. (1994) The Virgin of the Andes: Art and Ritual in Colonial Cuzco (Miami Beach: 1994). Cobo, Fr. B. (1653) History of the Inca Empire, ed. and trans. R. Hamilton (Austin: 1978). —— (1653) Inca Religion and Customs, ed. and trans. R. Hamilton (Austin: 1990 [1653]). Dansart, P. (1987) “Women and Ritual Conflict in Inka Society,” in Images of Women in Peace and War, eds. S. Macdonald, P. Holden, and S. Ardener (London: 1987). Gisbert, T. (1980) Iconografía y mitos indígenas en el arte (La Paz: 1980). Guaman Poma de Ayala, F. (1614) Nueva corónica y buen goberno, facsimile (Paris: 1936). Las plumas del sol y los ángeles de la Conquista (1993), ex. cat. (Lima: 1993). Mesa, J. de, and T. Gisbert (1982) Historia de la pintura cuzqueña, vols. 1 and 2 (Lima: 1982). Molina, C. de (1968) “Cosas acaescidas en el Perú,” in Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, ed. F. Esteve Barba (Madrid: 1968) 76. —— (1535) “An Account of the Fables and Rites of the Incas,” in Narratives of the Rites and Laws of the Yncas, ed. and trans. C. R. Markham (London: 1873) 59. Pachacuti-yamqui Salcamayhua, Don J. de Santa Cruz (ca. 1620) “An Account of the Antiquities of Peru,” in Narratives of the Rites and Laws of the Yncas, ed. and trans. C. R. Markham (London: 1873) 89. Pizarro, P. (1571) Relación del descubrimiento y conquista de los Reinos del Perú (Lima: 1986). Polo de Ondegardo, Lic. J. (ca. 1559–71) “Informaciones acerca de la religión y gobierno de los Incas” part 2, in Colleción de libros y documentos referentes a la historia del Perú, tomo IV (2a serie), ed. H. H. Urteaga (Lima: 1917) 151–158. —— (1571) “Report by Polo de Ondegardo,” in Narratives of the Rites and Laws of the Yncas, ed. and trans. C. R. Markham (London: 1873) 167. Randall, R. (1987) “La lengua sagrada,” Alppanchis XIX: 29–30 (1987) 267. Reid, J. (1990) Feather Masterpieces of the Ancient Andean World (London: 1990). Rowe, J. H. (1946) “An Account of the Inca Shrines of Cuzco,” Ñawpa Pacha 17:1–80.

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—— (1946) “Inca Culture at the Time of the Spanish Conquest,” in Handbook of South American Indians, vol. 2., ed. J. H. Steward (Washington, D.C.: 1946) 183. Salomon, F., and G. L. Urioste (1991) trans., The Huarochirí Manuscript (Austin: 1991). Sallnow, M. J. (1987) Pilgrims of the Andes (Washington, D.C.: 1987). Sarmiento de Gamboa, P. (1572) History of the Incas, ed. and trans. C. R. Markham (London: 1907). Vega, El Inca, G. de la (1609) The Royal Commentaries of the Inca, part I, trans. H. V. Livermore (Austin: 1987). Zuidema, T. R. (1964) The Ceque System of Cuzco: The Social Organization of the Capital of the Inca (Leiden: 1964).

CHAPTER FOUR

WOMEN AND MEN AS COSMIC CO-BEARERS AT OAXTEPEC, MEXICO, ABOUT 1553 Richard E. Phillips

Introduction During the course of the sixteenth century, over two hundred monasteries were built in the central and southern Mexican countryside. Many of them still stand and function as parish churches, museums, or monastic establishments. They were constructed for the male Franciscan, Dominican, and Augustinian friars by their post-conquest native charges. Many of these monasteries featured large churches that accommodated hundreds of parishioners. Many also had capacious cloisters, complete with such dependencies as refectories and chapter rooms. The cloisters were almost always square and consisted of four roofed, often vaulted ranges supported by piers or columns called ‘cloister walks’ that opened onto a central unroofed garth. Most of these monasteries, including the cloisters, had at least some mural painting, and much of this painting survives on site. Where sixteenth-century paintings on cloister piers persist in central Mexico, they always represent groups of saints, one saint per pier surface opposite the viewer in the adjacent cloister walk.1 No surviving Mexican sixteenth-century pier cycle attaches nearly as much importance to female saints as that of the cloister of the Dominican monastery of the town of Oaxtepec in the modern State of Morelos (Fig. 4.1). This sequence of saints on piers was painted about 1553, some thirty-two years after the Spanish conquest.2 Given

1 Kubler (1948) 231–359, 363–72, 378, 450–94, 503–35; McAndrew (1969) 121–67; Angulo Iñíguez et al. (1945–56) 1, passim; Edgerton (2001) 5–6, 35–38, 40–60, 129–53; Sartor (1992) 95–191, 206–29; Edwards (1966) 66–112; and Phillips (1993) 16–27, 210–18, 361–77, 466–72, 478–79. 2 Kubler (1948) 348–49; Mullen (1975) 76–77; Dávila Padilla (1625) 617–18; and Santiago (1540–87) fols 35v, 40, 45v, 46. I am grateful to the then Directors of

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Fig. 4.1 Schematic iconographical diagram, first floor of the cloister, Dominican monastery of Oaxtepec, State of Morelos, Mexico, ca. 1553. Drawing courtesy of Prof. James Dutremaine.

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the profound misogyny at the heart of the Dominican intellectual tradition discussed below, what caused the friars residing at Oaxtepec to permit icons of female saints next to those of male saints on the four corner piers? These images indicate that both men and women are fundamental as the symbolic cornerstones of the Catholic Church and by extension the cosmic order.3 The Dominicans would not have allowed such an allegory simply out of their own good will without substantial pressure for this affirmation of women on the part of Oaxtepec’s populace. The intent of this paper on one level is to demonstrate that the evangelization and acculturation of Mexico, and therefore the creation of what is now modern Mexican civilization, cannot be envisioned simply as the triumph of a superior Spanish and European civilization over inferior and defenseless indigenous conglomerations that led to the supposed obliteration of the native peoples’ preColumbian traditions. The Spanish, including the friars, wielded enormous but not complete power. In the first decades after the conquest of Mexico the Spanish were a tiny minority in the midst of a sea of autochthonous peoples. They had to make some concessions to gain the natives’ sometimes enthusiastic, sometimes grudging compliance. Once the intrinsic but limited puissance of the native masses in viceregal Mexico is realized and the defective model of monolithic European imposition is discarded, it is then possible to perceive indigenous women’s power to shape the cultural discourse as revealed by their influence on the Oaxtepec cloister image configuration.4

the Fondo de Microfilm of the Biblioteca Eusebio Dávalos Hurtado del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City, Víctor E. Urruchúa Hernández, and J. J. González Monroy, for allowing and assisting me to consult Santiago (1540–87). 3 For the metaphor of the saints as columns or cornerstones of the Church as applied in Europe, see the Bible, Revelation 21, 14, Galatians 2, 9, Ephesians 2, 19–20; see also Irenaeus of Lyon (1969–82) 3:2: 160–63; Migne (1844–91) 108: 177, 111: 394, 403–4, 165: 896, 172: 316, 176: 439, 1167–68, 198: 694, 707; Panofsky-Soergel (1979) 104–05; Durandus (1906) 17, 21; Sauerländer (1972) 471–72; Transformations of the Court Style (1977) 17–18; Schapiro (1985) 20 and fig. 24; and Forsyth (1986) 76. For this same metaphor as used by sixteenth-century Mexican friars or clergy in their writings, see Motolinía (1971) 19; Cuevas (1975) 67; and Paso y Troncoso (1905–42) 8: 19. 4 This view of the Mexican colonial intercultural dynamic is in accord with that demonstrated by the eminent historians Lockhart (1992) and Burkhart (1989).

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richard e. phillips The Oaxtepec Cloister’s Murals: Style, Function, and Constituencies

To prove this thesis, first it is necessary to establish that the Tlalhuica and Xochimilca women and men who constituted the population of Oaxtepec and its district had access to the monastery’s cloister and that they constituted the primary audience for whom the murals were painted.5 A multitude of colonial Mexican sources proves that the mendicant friars routinely conducted their parishioners on procession through cloisters. In the mid-sixteenth century the vast majority of these parishioners were Native Americans, many born before the Spanish conquest of 1521. Sometimes the colonial records even specify that the claustral processional participants were ‘indios’ or ‘naturales.’6 Among its other functions, the Oaxtepec cloister served as a processional theatre. In each of the four outer corners of the cloister is

5 The Valley of Morelos was occupied by two Nahua-speaking groups after 1200 CE, the Tlalhuicas and the Xochimilcas. Although the sources indicate that the valley towns of Oaxtepec and Cuernavaca had both been conquered by the Tlalhuicas before the latter were subsequently subdued by the Aztecs, Oaxtepec was surrounded to such an extent by Xochimilca towns that it is unclear which of the two ethnicities was really predominant there. The Aztecs from the Valley of Mexico conquered the Valley of Morelos in the middle of the fifteenth century, but they did not bring any great cultural or demographic change. The Tlalhuicas, Xochimilcas, and Aztecs were all closely related culturally under the subsuming Nahua ethnicity, and followed most of the same religious practices. See Maldonado Jiménez (1990) 26–32. 6 Fondo Franciscano 47: 151v, 132: 37v, 209, 214v, 260v. For further proofs that the native Mexican peoples were the principal intended audience and ritual users of the sixteenth-century claustral mural paintings, see Edgerton (2001) 108 and 210; and Phillips (1999) 227–50. I am grateful to Dr. Ángel J. García Zambrano for translating this essay. See also Phillips (1993) 140–404; Cervantes de Salazar (1953) 51, 54; de la Rea (1643) fols. 84v–85v; Ordinarivm Sacri Ordinis Heremitarum . . . (1556) fols. 14–14v; Estatvtos generales de Barcelona . . . (1585) fol. 17; Constitvtiones . . . Augustini (1587) fol. 12v; Fondo Franciscano 39: fols. 57–57v, 47: fol. 121v, fols. 148–154v, 48: fols. 21–29v, 49: fol. 17, 132: fols. 37v, 39v, 106, 150v–153, 207–9, 214v, 257v–260v, 139: fols 107–107v, 180: fol. 20; Fondo Lira, 10: 65. My thanks to Dr. Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, then Chief of the National Museum of Anthropology, and to the then Director of the Biblioteca Eusebio Dávalos Hurtado del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City, Sra. Estela González, for permitting me to use the Fondo Franciscano, the Fondo Lira, and other bound viceregal collections of documents there. For proof that lay women participated in claustral processions, see Aramburu Cendoya (1966) 50–51; and Barry (1942) 54–59. For proof of Early Modern processions with secular folk to claustral stations in Europe, see . . . Liber Processionum . . . (1494) fols. 6v–11v, 39–47; Jiménez de Cisneros (1965) 2: 516, 596; Processionarium . . . (1519) fol. 126; Sigüenza (1907–9) 2: 425, 479, 540–44; Browe (1933) passim; and Heitz (1963) passim.

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a large niche whose ledge functioned as a temporary altar to receive the Host, where it was incensed and revered during the course of a processional station (Fig. 4.2). The back walls of the niches still display their damaged mural paintings, meant to serve as retables for the altar ledges. The first station’s altar niche painting represents The Mocking of Christ, the second The Flagellation, the third The Way of the Cross, and the fourth The Crucifixion.7 Following the biblical narrative, the sequence of stational images at Oaxtepec is chronological, so there is no doubt as to the counterclockwise processional route, marked with Roman numerals I through IV in Figure 4.1. Normally there were only four friars resident at Oaxtepec in the sixteenth century.8 They alone could not have constituted anything like a ritually acceptable Catholic procession. The Oaxtepec processional theatre, with its four niche-altar stations of Christ’s Passion facing the four spacious cloister walks, was obviously intended for a throng, not for a few (Fig. 4.2). Further evidence that the native neophytes were the primary intended audience for the Oaxtepec cloister murals is revealed by the stylistic testimony of the paintings themselves. The indigenous or mestizo cultural upbringing of the master who painted the murals of the cloister stands out clearly in comparison to those by the European or Europeanized master of the Oaxtepec refectory only a few steps away. This Refectory Master’s representation of Christ Blessing the Loaves and the Fishes embodies the standard Renaissance, Western repertoire of gradual shading and illusionistic volume (Fig. 4.3). It stands in stark contrast to the painting of Saint Peter that begins the cloister’s pier cycle (Fig. 4.4). Peter’s patterned and flattened figure is elegantly contained in an irregular calligraphic oval that is repeated in such subsidiary elements as the oval folds of his right leg. This demonstrates that the pier cycle painter was substantially influenced by his or her preColumbian artistic heritage, because that tradition was generally

7 The author established the identity of the pier and corner niche images during field work at Oaxtepec and subsequent study of the photographs and notes in conjunction with consultation of Réau (1955–59) and Schiller (1966). 8 Acuña (1982–) 6: 211. Oaxtepec was never the site of a Dominican Chapter meeting for the whole Mexican Province, nor, apparently, was it ever used as a seminary. No such distinction is listed for the monastery in Santiago (1540–87), in Dávila Padilla (1625), or in Cruz de Moya (1954–55).

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much more abstract and conceptual in nature than the Renaissance artistic legacy of Europe. The more conceptual an artistic tradition is, the more it tends to fit the human figure and all other objects into pre-established conventional patterns.9 The same pre-Columbian-inherited tendency toward abstraction and schematization can be observed in the figure of Blessed Osanna Andreasi on the ninth pier (Fig. 4.5).10 Her white Dominican dress, indicating where her legs and hips should be, occupies fully threequarters of her total height, meaning that the painter was not very concerned with Western European standards of credible human proportions. The pre-Columbian art of Mesoamerica, other than that created at times by the Maya, was also not bound to a set naturalistic canon of human measurements. This lack of submission to naturalism allows the cloister master to think of the bottom threequarters of the saint’s white dress in geometric terms as a kind of steep pyramid or flattened cone. This enhances the saint’s iconic impact as an abstract, geometric force or presence. The folds of Osanna’s white dress are schematic. They lack the customary gradual Renaissance modulation of shade as employed by the Refectory Master a few feet away and are therefore not comprehensive enough to detract from the geometric icon of the dress. The white pyramid is reiterated and reinforced by the second pyramid of the surrounding black Dominican cloak, whose straight, triangular edges only become curvilinear at the saint’s shoulders to provide the minimum necessary reference to human form. The whole figure has been visualized through prior convention, not as an integral human anatomy, but instead as an interlocking composition of only four silhouettes: the two pyramids of drapery, the oval face, and the circular halo. 9

For the non-Western stylistic imperatives and Kunstwollen of the Mexican preColumbian heritage as it subsisted into the viceregal era, see Robertson (1959), and Boone and Smith (2003). 10 Osanna was born in 1449, entered the Third Order of Penitence of St. Dominic in 1501, and died in 1505. Her cult was approved in 1515 but she was never canonized. One of the traditional attributes of her image is the Christ child according to Lechner (1968–76). The Dominican nun saint Rosa of Lima is often shown with the Christ child in her hands, but she lived 1586–1617, long after the Oaxtepec cycle was painted, so she could not be the saint who is depicted on pier surface 9. By a process of elimination, since a book is not a recorded attribute of Osanna Andreasi, while the Christ child is used as an attribute of both St. Agnes of Montepulciano and Osanna, then the Dominican nun holding a book on pier face 16 must be Agnes, following Timmers (1968–76); and Réau (1955–59) 3, 1: 38–39.

Fig. 4.2 Dominican monastery of Oaxtepec, first floor of the cloister. View toward the east down the south cloister walk, with the mural paintings of Sts. Paul and Catherine of Alexandria on the southwest pier. Photo by the author.

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Fig. 4.3 Christ Blessing the Loaves and the Fishes. Dominican monastery of Oaxtepec, first floor. West end wall of the refectory, south side. Photo by the author.

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Fig. 4.4 St. Peter. Dominican monastery of Oaxtepec, first floor of the cloister. First image of the pier cycle. Photo by the author.

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Fig. 4.5 Blessed Osanna Andreasi. Dominican monastery of Oaxtepec, first floor of the cloister. Ninth pier face of the cloister arcade cycle, south cloister walk. Photo by the author.

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One of Osanna’s typical symbolic attributes is the figure of the Christ child toward whom she channels her maternal love. Little children are of course much smaller than grown adults but they are not nearly as small in relation to a normal adult as the Christ child is to Osanna in the pier nine mural. Many non-Western artistic styles such as the pre-Columbian are not overly concerned with the veracity of scale that was one of the central tenets of Western art beginning with the Renaissance. When the importance of symbolism and meaning overrides the importance of realism in any given artistic tradition, figures may be depicted in larger-than-normal scale in relation to others in order to indicate their relative importance.11 Such is the case here. Osanna is in larger-than-normal scale vis-à-vis the child to indicate that she is the principal figure toward which attention is to be channeled on this particular pier within the logic of a cycle of saints representing the pillars of the Church, although within the grander scheme of Christianity she is infinitesimally as important as the Christ child is. The tiny size of the Christ child only reinforces her power for him as a kind of maternal mountain of nurturing refuge. The features of the child himself, with his dark hair and dark brown face, are characteristically Mexican. The native women on procession through the cloister certainly would have felt affirmed by this image of the protective mother and her Mexican-looking charge, whose small size only enhances the viewers’ empathetic desire to protect and cherish him. This author suspects that a Mexicanizing or indigenizing master was chosen to paint the cloister, even though a Europeanizing master did the refectory, due to the preferences of the indigenous masses to whom the Dominicans had to respond. Within the Western monastic tradition the Oaxtepec refectory was a more corporate, private space, reserved for the prerogatives of the Dominican friars themselves, while the cloister in the Western tradition was commonly shared by the regular clergy with the laity ever since early medieval times for processions.12 Consequently, the Oaxtepec cloister was

11 12

See the discussion of the ‘heirarchy of scale’ in Kleiner, et al. (2001) xxvii–xxviii. See footnote 6.

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decorated in a style that resonated more with the natives. It is plausible that they had a say in the ultimate choice of the Cloister Master. These assertions are supported by the fact that the people of Oaxtepec and its district had a fundamental impact on the symbolic program of saints on piers that the Dominicans chose for the first floor of the cloister, as shown presently.

The Dominican Tradition and Its Redirection The images of the saints on the claustral piers serve as ciphers for several sets of complex interrelated messages that the Dominican friars wished to communicate about themselves and their religious Order. The schematic representation of the mural cycle in Figure 4.1 identifies the saints whose images were chosen to embody the pillars of the universal church. In addition, each icon represented one of three essential categories of saints into which the Oaxtepec pier cycle can be subdivided. Each saint had been either a member of the Dominican Order, the founder of a religious Order, or a saint from Antiquity (before 500 CE).13 These basic categories are indicated in Figure 4.1 with the letters D, F, and A, respectively, recorded on the piers next to the saints’ names.

13 It is nearly certain, by analogy, that the two destroyed images of the first, western range of the Oaxtepec claustral piers, faces 2 and 3, were of male saints. Besides the factor of overall agreement with the exclusively masculine third range on the east, this conclusion about the missing figures of the first range is reached by noting that the middle piers of the remaining three sides represent the three most prestigious Dominican male saints other than Dominic: Thomas Aquinas on face 8, Peter Martyr at 13, Vincent Ferrer at 18. Since the image of Francis, the founder of one of the three mendicant orders active in Mexico when these murals were painted, is on pier face 4 and because Dominic, the founder of the Dominican Order that built this monastery, is the only saint unaccounted for in the subset of major male Dominican saints on the four central piers, then logically he was depicted on the third face. We can be sure that the saints once represented on piers 2 and 3 were Augustine and Dominic because the two figures that frame the first range are Peter and Paul, the two most eminent disseminators of the faith. Francis, still visible on face 4, is equated with Peter and Paul as a proselytizer of the religion carried by his minions to the New World. Augustine and Dominic therefore completed the first range as counterparts of Peter and Paul in spreading the faith.

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As could be expected in a Dominican cloister, ten of the twenty depicted saints are Dominicans. The Dominican friars who inhabited the cloister made sure to laud their Order as an especially august body in upholding the fabric of the Catholic church. The resident friars meant to imply that they themselves were the successors of the Dominican saints in a hoary pedigree that upheld the fabric of the

In the second range the feminine counterparts to Peter and Paul of the first are Catherine of Alexandria on face 6 and Catherine of Siena on face 10. They shared both their names and comparable positions within the traditional Dominican hagiography. Catherine of Alexandria was the most famous woman saint after Mary and Mary Magdalene and the preeminent of the four Virgin Patronesses of the universal Church, following Jameson (1895) 2: 458–60. Catherine of Siena was the primordial female saint of the Dominican order before the emergence of Rosa of Lima in the early seventeenth century. She is also represented opposite Dominic on the main portal of the monastery church at Tepoztlán near Oaxtepec, dating from about 1560. At Oaxtepec Catherine of Alexandria is identified, despite the destruction of two-thirds of her image, by her royal crown and the hilt of the sword by which she was martyred, following Jameson (1895) 2: 461–65 (cf. Fig. 4.2). Catherine of Siena is shown holding a crucifix and her heart, which she exchanged with that of Jesus when she betrothed him, following Réau (1955–59) 3, 1, 273–74. Between the ‘bookends’ of the Catherines are the images of one female and two male saints. On face 7 is a saint who holds a banner with a cross. The most famous saint (other than Christ) to sustain such a banner is St. George, so perhaps the image represents that military saint. This saint must bear armor, however, and it was not ascertained during field work if the saint of face 7 is so outfitted. Portly Thomas Aquinas holds his book at number 8 as the preeminent Dominican scholar. The ends of the fourth pier range are signified on analogy with those of the second, in that Agnes of Montepulciano, like Catherine of Siena opposite her a Dominican female saint, is paired with a legendary female virgin martyr saint from Antiquity, Lucy at surface #20, just as Catherine of Siena is linked with Catherine of Alexandria, following Jameson (1895) 2: 57. Under the spell of the female termini of the corner patronesses of the fourth claustral pier range are three males for the intermediate piers. At face 17 is a Dominican pope, perhaps Benedict XI, 1303–4, on the analogy of pier face 3 of the lower cloister of nearby Dominican Yautepec, following Kaster (1968–76). At number 18 is a Dominican saint with wings and a crucifix, Vincent Ferrer, following Jameson (1901) 412. At number 19 is a saint with a wallet hanging from a pike atop his staff. This is James the Greater, known in Spanish as “Santiago,” the patron saint of Spain, who appears in pilgrim garb such as this from the thirteenth century onward due to the fame of his relics at his pilgrimage Cathedral of Compostella in northeast Spain, following Réau (1955–59) 3, 2: 695. The first corner of the third range, face 11, presents a monk with a book, perhaps Benedict with his Rule. The other framing face, 15, displays a Dominican who wears an archbishop’s cloak over his monastic habit, holds a palm of martyrdom in one hand, and three oranges in the other: St. Antoninus of Florence, following Réau (1955–59) 3, 1: 123–24, and Strnad (1968–76). Between these two figures are Andrew, Peter Martyr, and Dominic.

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church, the latest inhabitants of the Christian cloister, guaranteeing to the denizens of Oaxtepec that a religious Order that has produced so many saints is a trustworthy guide to heaven for the believer. From the information so far presented, it is obvious that the Tlalhuicas and Xochimilcas were not the sole audience for whom this cloister cycle was intended, for it lauds and boosts the greatness of the Dominican institute whose friars occupied this residence. It was also meant for the occasional important Spanish guests and Franciscan and Augustinian friars who, along with the Dominicans, evangelized the tightly packed mission field of the Valley of Morelos.14 Because of this, Saints Augustine and Francis flank St. Dominic on the western piers where visitors would first enter the cloister (Fig. 4.1). They are in turn bracketed by Saints Peter (Fig. 4.4) and Paul, the apostles of the Jews and Gentiles, respectively, who symbolize between them the totality of the universal Christian Church.15 The founders of the three mendicant orders of friars that were involved in the sixteenthcentury proselytization of Mexico—Augustine, Dominic, Francis— were thus equated with the princes of the apostles as their successors, which in turn means that the Christian mission in Mexico was intended to be seen as apostolic. None of the symbolic permutations of the cloister pier program as so far described can be characterized as a concession to indigenous pressure. However, there is another element at work here. It is the prominence of the female saints in this pier cycle, unprecedented in any other extant Mexican sixteenth-century cloister. It cannot be explained simply as the product of a voluntary decision on the part of the friars oblivious to native preferences. By way of comparison, only fourteen kilometers away at the monastery of Yautepec, Morelos, whose cloister was built and painted about 1555–59, the

14 If a Franciscan ventured east from his monastery in Cuernavaca on his way to the Franciscan-dominated valleys of Atlixco and Puebla, he could not get there in one day and could only find monastic accommodation in Dominican or Augustinian houses. Such was the case with the Franciscan Ciudad Real, who stayed with his Commissary General Alonso de Ponce at the Dominican monastery of Oaxtepec in 1586 during the course of the latter’s tour of inspection of Franciscan houses. Ciudad Real (1976) 1: 125. Doubtless they found the image of Francis on pier face 4 to be a welcome, ecumenical sight. The Augustinian friars had monasteries only eight and seventeen kilometers by modern road to the north of Oaxtepec, at Tlayacapan and Totolapan, respectively. 15 Jameson (1895) 1: 179–80; Clement (1971) 250; and Mâle (1984) 384.

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corners are held by male Dominican saints, save for Catherine of Siena, who is paired with the non-Dominican Lucy on the fourth corner pier. Consequently, at Yautepec only one of the four metaphorical columns upholding the universe declares the female principle, and there is no configuration exalting women and men working together as co-sustainers of the faith as at Oaxtepec. Thirty-seven kilometers away at Dominican Tetela del Volcán, Morelos, painted about 1560–63, Catherine of Siena is the only woman in the whole claustral pier cycle. In the first cloister of the Augustinian monastery of Acolman, State of Mexico, painted about 1560, none of the saints on any of the sixteen pier surfaces is female.16 In the Oaxtepec cloister, unlike the others above, a female is paired with a male saint on each corner pier to show that each cornerstone of the Catholic church is sustained equally by both women and men (Fig. 4.1). At Oaxtepec care was taken that each range of piers begin and end with saints of the same sex, bracketing each walk and endowing it with a male or female numen. In this way the first and third sides are defined by male totems, the second and fourth by female ones. The male ranges, one and three, are unanimously male, while those patronized by female terminals are diluted by the inclusion of men on the intermediate piers. Fifteen saints are male, five are female. This relative numerical disparity of females to males at Oaxtepec is no surprise given the degree of male over female dominance in indigenous Mexican society before and after the conquest and in sixteenth-century Spain and Western Europe. Those were the two cultural heritages coming together at Oaxtepec. The fundamental question is why women were given relative prominence at all in a men’s cloister at Oaxtepec and in no other known Mexican claustral pier cycle.

16 It is important here to be very precise. We are talking about images of female saints on the piers that support the cloisters’ four arcades on the garth. Female saints are very prominent in the Tetela cloister and the Acolman first cloister, but only on the continuous walls of the interiors of the cloisters that form the processional theatre, and not on the claustral piers as they are at Oaxtepec. The four corner niche-altars at Tetela have mural-painted retables displaying pairs of female saints from Antiquity, and the continuous walls of the Acolman first cloister display a cycle of six processional corner paintings dedicated to the Virgin Mary. For the dating of the Yautepec and Tetela claustral mural cycles, Franco (1900) 139–40, 165–67, 517; Santiago (1540–87) fols. 26, 31, 38, 45v, 52, 56v, 67–68, 77–77v, 96v; and Acuña (1982–) 7: 260. For the dating of the mural cycle of the first Acolman cloister, see Chapter 12, this volume.

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The attitude toward women was relatively more positive and empowering in indigenous Mexico both before and after the conquest than it was in the minds of the Dominican friars who supervised the construction and decoration of the Oaxtepec monastery. Autochthonous pressure toward the recognition of a powerful rôle for women resulted in concessions toward femininity via the Oaxtepec cloister piers that the Dominican friars did not permit in other artistic commissions of the time in Mexico or Europe. There is little precedent for this recognition of feminine power in the Dominican or monastic subcultures or in the dominant trends of early modern European thought and behavior, as will now be demonstrated. The Dominican Thomas Aquinas has been the single most influential Catholic theologian since the thirteenth century,17 and of course was revered by the members of his own order as the ultimate authority. He defined Woman as a misbegotten male who was created solely to remove the burden of procreation from men so that the latter could devote themselves to the higher intellectual pursuits worthy of ‘the superior sex.’ For him women were morally, mentally, and physically defective; on earth they were raised to the dignity of men only by repudiating their sexuality and embracing chastity.18 With Thomas Aquinas’ Summa as its foundation, this view of the evil ineptitude of women dominated Dominican thought through the period of the Oaxtepec murals’ creation. The friars at Oaxtepec were doubtless aware of their famous contemporary Spanish Dominican intellectual Domingo Soto, who held that women were naturally unfit for the priesthood, in general poor in reason and soft in mind. In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII appointed Dominicans to conduct the campaign against witches, which led to the burning of thousands of selfassertive, independent-minded women in transalpine Europe in the following two hundred years. These Inquisitors wrote “that witches are more likely to be female than male” because of women’s more damnably evil nature. The mendicant orders of Dominican, Franciscan, and Augustinian friars were created to promote an active public min-

17 Reuther (1991) 222, writes that Thomas Aquinas “remains the normative theologian for the Roman Catholic tradition.” 18 Børreson (1981) 157, 172; Bullough et al. (1988) 49 and note 42; and RankeHeinemann (1990) 178, 187–88, 190.

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istry outside of the monastery, but stringent measures were taken to deny this to mendicant nuns, who remained largely sequestered.19

The Implacable Feminist Dynamic at Oaxtepec At Oaxtepec female saints share with males the task of upholding the four corners of the universal Church. There is no precursor for this specific quadrangular bisexual partnership in either Christian or pre-Columbian cosmology. In the former, the bearers of the four corners of creation are the Evangelists, who carried the Word to the four corners of the earth. In late medieval and early modern European sculptural cycles, the only woman to appear regularly with men as a metaphorical pillar of the Church is the Virgin Mary. In central Mexican Nahua cosmology the four male Tlaloque, helpers of the rain god Tlaloc, were at the four cardinal points of the earth.20 Nevertheless, there is ample precedent in Nahua religion, and not in Christianity, for the pairing of male and female deities as at Oaxtepec and for their world-bearing function, if not in a geometric square disposition. Aztec philosophy maintained that the origin of all things was a single dual principle, masculine and feminine. Most of the major gods and goddesses of the Nahua pantheon were members of male-female pairs believed to be engendered by the duality above all creation. One of the vocations of the Lord of Duality was Tlallamánac, “She who sustains the earth.”21 This paper does not assert that the people who marched through the Oaxtepec cloister necessarily carried memories of specific preColumbian goddesses with them, only that they bore into the colonial period their general pre-Columbian heritage of respect for the feminine principle as an ineluctable component of creation. The importance and necessity of female sexual gratification were clearly recognized by Aztec mores, and the sexual act was accepted as a

19 King (1991) 102–3, 144–46; Carmody (1979) 125–26; Mclean (1980) 9; Bullough et al. (1988) 175, 191; and Ranke-Heinemann (1990) 229–31, 236–37. 20 St. Irenaeus of Lyon (1969–82): 3, 2: 160–63; Migne (1844–91) 217: 804; Durandus (1494) fol. 30v; Sigüenza (1907–09) 2: 551–52; Rossi (1981) 25–26 and note 38; Messerer (1964) 103–5; Wind (1976) 52; Transformations of the Court Style (1977) 17–18; and López Austin (1988) 57–58. 21 León-Portilla (1956) 149–55, and 174; and Fernández (1983) 52–56.

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legitimate delight for both genders. These attitudes are diametrically opposed to the general Christian and particularly Dominican disgust with sexuality as a necessary evil and with women as the erotic enticement that lures men away from the heavenly path of intellectual activity and celibacy.22 Pre-Hispanic central Mexican women owned property, were traders, priestesses, and healers, and participated on near-equal footing with men in several craft industries. They could obtain divorce for lack of support or for physical mistreatment and could seek legal relief in other matters.23 In some respects, the power of indigenous Mexican women with regard to men even increased after the Spanish conquest in comparison to pre-Hispanic times. With the Spanish destruction or weakening of much of the regional ruling class of indigenous males, native culture retreated to a local, popular level in which women became crucial repositories for traditional ritual behavior.24 The most powerful and respected women in Aztec society were older women, who were profoundly occupied with the propagation of the cult.25 Their power and their involvement with ritual continued under the friars, surrogates for the pre-Columbian priests, into the viceregal period. This is because a relative handful of invading Spaniards and friars could only deflect and redirect, not destroy, the social momentum of pre-Columbian times. The colonial matrons’ management of Christian cult activities had ample precedent in multiple pre-Hispanic rituals that were primarily or solely enacted by and for women.26 The extremely important and perceptive Franciscan chronicler Mendieta proves that active autochthonous female participation in the cult bridged the gap between the pre-Hispanic and viceregal periods. In 1596, after four decades in New Spain, he noted the unusual power of older native women compared to those in Europe, stating . . . these beatas [saintly women] or matrons have served and helped like mothers in founding and guiding the confraternities that [the natives

22

Ranke-Heinemann (1990) 121. Clendinnen (1991) 157–58, 162–67, 206; Soustelle (1970) 183–84; and Vaillant (1966) 125–26. 24 Gonzalbo (1987) 44–45. 25 Clendinnen (1991) 206–7; Soustelle (1970) 185; and Motolinía (1971) 74–75. 26 Clendinnen (1991) 163; and Sahagún (1989) 1: 91, 113–14, 131–32, 138–40, 195. 23

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in monastery towns] have of the Holy Sacrament and of Our Lady, which are common everywhere. . . . All of these confraternities in some towns are managed to a large degree, or even principally, by these matrons instead of by men. And it seems that this leadership suits them in this land . . . because in this climate the feminine surpasses, in its way, the masculine sex.27

It is now possible to understand why the Dominican friars of Oaxtepec commissioned a mural cycle in the cloister that would represent women to such advantage. It was necessary to recognize and motivate the importance of native women in organizing and strengthening the Christian cult by providing female role models for them and their male companions to view as they went on procession with the Host to the four corner stations. Presumably this was done to curry favor with the local women and men, accustomed to a bisexual model for the duality of the universe, and motivate their continued enthusiasm for ritual activity. Perhaps indigenous women activists demanded this painted recognition of the essential importance of Woman in the Christian cosmos. The friars would not have permitted this unless they were subjected to pressures that outweighed the momentum of their Dominican intellectual tradition anchored by Thomas Aquinas. But why did this relatively liberal concession to femininity occur more strikingly in the Oaxtepec cycle than in other contemporary Mexican claustral pier cycles or altarpieces? One precedent is provided by the Relación geográfica of Oaxtepec dated 1580. It was compiled from the testimony of three indigenous headmen and two elders who indicated that, prior to the Spanish Conquest, there was only one public temple in Oaxtepec’s ceremonial center. It displayed the idol of Ichpuchtli Quilaztle, which can be translated “the Maiden of Regeneration.”28 Quilaztle is simply another of the many manifestations of the great Mother Goddess of pre-Hispanic Mexico. She is identical with Cihuacóatl, who the key Dominican anthropological chronicler Durán states was also called Quilaztli, the goddess of the Xochimilcas, the principal goddess of all of the Nahua cultures.29 It must be recalled that the Xochimilcas and the Tlalhuicas were the

27

Mendieta (1971) 4: 420–21. This citation was translated by the author. Acuña (1982–) 6: 196–97, 202, and note 20. 29 Durán (1971) 210; Markman and Markman (1992) 87–88; and Clendinnen (1991) 177. 28

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two main ethnic groups living together in the Oaxtepec district. Since the Great Goddess was the only major deity in Oaxtepec immediately before the conquest, the ‘only show in town,’ it is no wonder that due obeisance is paid to femininity in the supplanting temple’s cloister mural program. This paper does not assert that the inhabitants of Oaxtepec necessarily still recalled or revered Quilaztli as they filed through the cloister, only that there is ample local pre-Columbian cultural precedent there for the prominent ritual recognition of feminine powers that inevitably conditioned the claustral program. On the other hand, it is not impossible that they still worshipped her, or made a syncretical association of her with the new Christian veneer, for there is substantial evidence that pre-Columbian goddesses continued to be invoked by native peoples throughout central Mexico in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.30

Conclusion Framed by the images of the saints who signified that they were in the metaphorical paradise of the universal Church, the predominantly indigenous throng on procession in Oaxtepec, following doctrine, embodied the pilgrimage on this earth toward the salvation purchased by Jesus’ self-sacrifice. At the four corners of the cloister they were ideally driven to fervor by images that equated Christ’s suffering with its fruit, the Host in its monstrance that they beheld with awe on the altar ledge. Chants, incense, and ephemeral decorations or tableaux at these stations enhanced the momentum toward altered states of consciousness. Facilitating the natives’ ardor was a sense of belonging fostered by Dominican concessions toward an indigenizing pictorial style with which they could identify more strongly and the inclusion of female saints in an empowered configuration more in accord with preColumbian tradition than with the prevailing Euro-Dominican attitude. The cycle communicated to the women of Oaxtepec that they too, by emulating the female saints, were intrinsic supports of the New Church in the New World.

30

Báez-Jorge (1988) 166–71.

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Bibliography Acuña, R., ed. (1982–) Relaciones geográficas del siglo xvi (Mexico City: 1982). Angulo Iñíguez, D., et al. (1945–56) Historia del arte hispanoamericano (Barcelona: 1945–56). Aramburu Cendoya, I., ed. (1966) Las primitivas constituciones de los agustinos (Valladolid, Spain: 1966). Báez-Jorge, F. (1988) Los oficios de las diosas (Xalapa, Mexico City: 1988). Barry, G. (1942) Violation of the Cloister: An Historical Synopsis and Commentary (Washington, D.C.: 1942). Børreson, K. (1981) Subordination and Equivalence: The Nature and Rôle of Woman in Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, trans. C. Talbot (Washington, D.C.: 1981). Browe, P. (1933) Die Verehrung der Eucharistie im Mittelalter (Munich: 1933). Burkhart, L. (1989) The Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenthcentury Mexico (Tucson: 1989). Bullough, V., et al. (1988) The Subordinated Sex: A History of Attitudes toward Women (Athens, GA: 1988). Carmody, D. (1979) Women and World Religions (Nashville: 1979). Cervantes de Salazar, F. (1953) Life in the Imperial and Loyal City of Mexico, trans. M. L. B. Shepard, ed. C. E. Castañeda (Austin: 1953). Ciudad Real, A. de (1976) Tratado curioso y docto de las grandezas de la Nueva España, eds. J. García Quintana and V. Castillo Ferreras (Mexico City: 1976). Clement, C. (1971) A Handbook of Christian Symbols and Stories of the Saints as Illustrated in Art, ed. K. Conway (Detroit: 1971). Clendinnen, I. (1991) Aztecs: An Interpretation (Cambridge, England: 1991). Constitvtiones Ordinis Frartvm [sic] Eremitravm [sic] Sancti Augustini (Mexico City: 1587). Cruz de Moya, J. (1954–55) Historia de la . . . Provincia de Santiago de Predicadores de México en la Nueva España (Mexico City: 1954–55). Cuevas, M. (1975) Documentos inéditos del siglo XVI para la historia de México (Mexico City: 1975). Dávila Padilla, A. (1625) Historia . . . de la Provincia de Santiago de Mexico de la Orden de Predicadores de la Nueva España (Brussels: 1625). De la Rea, A. (1643) Chronica de la Orden de . . . S. Francisco, Prouincia de S. Pedro y S. Pablo de Mechoacan de la Nueua España (Mexico: 1643). Durán, D. (1971) Book of the Gods and Rites and the Ancient Calendar, eds. F. Horcasitas and D. Heyden (Norman, OK: 1971). Durandus, W., the Elder, Bishop of Mende (1906) The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments, eds. J. Neale and B. Webb (London: 1906). Edgerton, S. (2001) Theaters of Conversion (Albuquerque: 2001). Edwards, E. (1966) Painted Walls of Mexico (Austin: 1966). Estatvtos generales de Barcelona . . . de la Orden de . . . Francisco . . . (Mexico City: 1585). Fernández, A. (1983) Dioses prehispánicos de México (Mexico City: 1983). “Fondo Franciscano.” Bound viceregal manuscripts in the Biblioteca Eusebio Dávalos Hurtado del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City. “Fondo Lira.” Bound viceregal manuscripts in the Biblioteca Eusebio Dávalos Hurtado del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City. Forsyth, I. (1986) “The Vita Apostolica and Romanesque Sculpture: Some Preliminary Observations,” Gesta 25 (1986) 75–82. Franco, A. (1900) Segunda parte de la historia de la Provincia de Santiago de México (Mexico City: 1900). Gonzalbo, P. (1987) “Tradición y ruptura en la educación femenina del siglo xvi,” in C. Ramos Escandón, et al., Presencia y transparencia: La mujer en la historia de México (Mexico City: 1987).

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Heitz, C. (1963) Recherhes sur les rapports entre architecture et liturgie à l’époque carolingienne (Paris: 1963). Irenaus of Lyon, St. (1969–82) Contre les hérésies, eds. A. Rousseau and L. Doutrelau (Paris: 1969–82). Jameson, A. (1895) Sacred and Legendary Art, ed. E. Hurll (Boston: 1895). —— (1901) Legends of the Monastic Orders, ed. E. Hurll (Boston: 1901). Jiménez de Cisneros, G. (1965) Obras completas, ed. C. Baraut (Montserrat, Spain: 1965). Kaster, G. (1968–76) “Benedikt XI,” Lexikon der christlichen ikonographie (Rome: 1968–76). King, M. (1991) Women of the Renaissance (Chicago: 1991). Kleiner, F., et al. (2001) Gardner’s Art through the Ages (Fort Worth, TX: 2001). Kubler, G. (1948) Mexican Architecture of the Sixteenth Century (New Haven: 1948). Lechner, M. (1968–76) “Osanna Andreasi von Mantua,” Lexikon der christlichen ikonographie (Rome: 1968–76). León-Portilla, M. (1956) La filosofía náhuatl (Mexico City: 1956). . . . Liber processionum . . . (Seville: 1494). Lockhart, J. (1992) The Nahuas after the Conquest (Stanford: 1992). López Austin, A. (1988) The Human Body and Ideology: Concepts of the Ancient Nahuas, trans. T. and B. Ortiz de Montellano (Salt Lake City: 1988). Mclean, I. (1980) The Renaissance Notion of Woman (Cambridge, England: 1980). Maldonado Jiménez, D. (1990) Cuauhnáhuac y Huaxtepec: Tlalhuicas y Xochimilcas en el Morelos prehispánico (Cuernavaca, Mexico: 1990). Mâle, É. (1984) Religious Art in France: The Thirteenth Century, ed. H. Bober (Princeton: 1984). Markman, R. and P. Markman (1992) The Flayed God: The Mesoamerican Mythological Tradition (San Francisco: 1992). Mendieta, G. de (1971) Historia eclesiástica Indiana (Mexico City: 1971). Messerer, W. (1964) Romanische Plastik in Frankreich (Cologne: 1964). Migne, J.-P., ed. (1844–1891) Patrologiae Cursus Completus . . . Series Latina (Paris: 1844–91). Motolinía, T. (1971) Memoriales, o libro de las cosas de la Nueva España y de los naturales de ella, ed. E. O’Gorman (Mexico City: 1971). Mullen, R. (1975) Dominican Architecture in Sixteenth-Century Oaxaca (Tempe, AZ: 1975) Ordinarivm Sacri Ordinis Heremitarum Sancti Augustini (Mexico City: 1556). Panofsky-Soergel, G., ed. (1979) Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and Its Art Treasures (Princeton: 1979) Paso y Troncoso, F. del, ed. (1905–42) Epistolario de la Nueva España 1505–1818 (Mexico City: 1905–42). Phillips, R. (1993) “Processions through Paradise: A Liturgical and Social Interpretation of the Ritual Function and Symbolic Signification of the Cloister in the SixteenthCentury Monasteries of Central Mexico” (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1993). —— (1999) “La participación de los indígenas en las procesiones por los claustros del siglo XVI en México,” Relaciones 20, no. 78 (1999) 227–50. Processionarium . . . ordinis predicatorum . . . (Seville: 1519). Ranke-Heinemann, U. (1990) Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven, trans. Peter Heinegg (New York: 1990). Réau, L. (1955–59) Iconographie de l’art chrétien (Paris: 1955–59). Reuther, R. (1991) “Catholicism, Women, Body, and Sexuality: A Response,” in Women, Religion, and Sexuality, ed. Jeanne Becher (Philadelphia: 1991). Rossi, M. (1981) “La correlazione di problema statici, proporzionali, e simbolici nelle prime proposte per la costruzione del tiburio del Duomo di Milano,” Arte Lombarda 58/59 (1981) 25–26.

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Sahagún, B. de (1989) Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva España, eds. A. López Austin and J. García Quintana (Mexico City: 1989). Santiago (1540–87) “Actas provinciales de la provincia de Santiago de México, 1540–87,” ms. 142 of the Hubert Howe Bancroft Collection of the University of California, Berkeley, consulted by the author at the Fondo de Microfilm, Biblioteca Eusebio Dávalos Hurtado del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City, Fondo Miscelánea, roll 89. Sartor, M. (1992) Arquitectura y urbanismo en Nueva Espana siglo XVI (Mexico City: 1992). Sauerländer, W. (1972) Gothic Sculpture in France 1140–1270, trans. J. Sondheimer (London: 1972). Schapiro, M. (1985) The Sculpture of Moissac (London: 1985). Schiller, G. (1966) Ikonographie der christlichen kunst (Gutersloh, Germany: 1966). Sigüenza, J. de (1907–09) Historia de la Orden de San Jerónimo (Madrid: 1907–9 [1605]). Soustelle, J. (1970) Daily Life of the Aztecs on the Eve of the Spanish Conquest, trans. P. O’Brien (Stanford: 1970). Strnad, A. (1968–76) “Antoninus Pierozzi von Florenz,” Lexikon der christlichen ikonographie (Rome: 1968–76). Timmers, J. (1968–76) “Agnes von Montepulciano,” Lexikon der christlichen ikonographie (Rome: 1968–76). Transformations of the Court Style: Gothic Art in Europe 1270 to 1330 (Providence: 1977). Vaillant, G. (1966) Aztecs of Mexico (Harmondsworth, England: 1966). Wind, G. (1976) “The Benedictine Program of S. Giovanni Evangelista in Parma,” Art Bulletin 58 (1976) 521–27.

PART TWO

TAKING POSSESSION: APPROPRIATIONS OF THE NEW WORLD/FEMALE BODY

CHAPTER FIVE

ABUSED AND BATTERED: PRINTED IMAGES AND THE FEMALE BODY IN VICEREGAL NEW SPAIN K. Donahue-Wallace

An 1806 Mexican etching (Fig. 5.1) features a young woman lying dead in an open field. The eyes of her severed head gaze up to Heaven. Her body is splayed diagonally across the foreground with her remaining attached hand upraised in a gesture of supplication. The skirts of her fashionable gown are pushed up and her bodice is unbuttoned. A dead child suckles at her breast. The inscription at the bottom of the print reads, “This pitiful woman was killed and destroyed in a field for resisting the brutal desires of (rebelling Haitian) Blacks and the child died of hunger at her side seeking his mother’s dead breast.”1 The gruesome etching, which appeared in the Mexican edition of the story of Haiti’s slave rebellion (1791–1803), offers a vivid example of the exploitation of female bodies in viceregal prints. Its presence in the text was designed to strike fear in the hearts of elite Mexicans for two reasons. First, the image employed a female body, a familiar and potent symbol of civilized society, destroyed in an act of outrageous brutality. Second, the print was executed using a medium that colonists recognized and accepted for embodying truth, which helped the image to transcend the realm of artistry and become a supposedly trustworthy document. Seen in this context, the female body in the print screamed of the breakdown of social order in the loudest possible voice. The following paragraphs interrogate the circumstances surrounding the use of prints of female bodies as symbols of sacred and secular principles and metaphors of social order deployed by civil and ecclesiastical elites to promote a normative concept of womanhood. The

1

[Dubroca] (1806) n.p.

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Fig. 5.1 Manuel López López, Fue muerta y destrozada. . . . 1806, etching. Courtesy of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas, Austin. Photo by the author.

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study assumes that in colonial New Spain, as elsewhere, the body functioned as the point of intersection between society and the individual, and that due to its universality, representations of the body were deployed as an effective mode of communication by both parties.2 It does not attempt to recover the realities of lived existence, but only the prescriptive visions of bodies promoted by the prints’ patrons. The investigation likewise explores the role of printedness and the potency of the printed medium for communicating such messages. The essay specifically examines how representing the abuse of—or actually abusing—female bodies in prints offered the opportunity to make a spectacular statement about religious, political, or social values due to the meanings associated with both women’s bodies and printed materials. Early modern Latin American art participated in a gender discourse that inscribed upon women’s bodies a narrow definition of ideal femininity. Voluptuous bodies operated as personifications of abstract secular and religious principles. Dressed in nuns’ habits or modern gowns, the bodies became female saints who obediently acquiesced to the will of God as brides of Christ or martyrs for the faith. Portrait sitters decked in modest or lavish fashions embodied feminine virtue, motherhood, and family wealth. And while the nude bodies that occupied European canvases for the pleasure of their male viewers were rare in Latin America, women’s bodies in casta paintings provided fertile territory for the creation of new races of people—the fecund wombs of colonization. The casta paintings likewise deployed women’s bodies as signs of racial and economic stability, illustrating New Spain’s orderly heterogeneous colony by their (usually) good behavior, work ethic, and love for their children. Wealthy, chaste, fecund, pious, and virtuous, the female body embodied the principles upon which colonial society rested; colonial scholar Kristine Ibsen has gone so far as to claim that women’s bodies were considered the colony’s most precious natural resource.3 While of course actual women presented more diverse identities than works of art portrayed, viceregal artists and their patrons repeatedly employed the visual arts to communicate a normative notion of womanhood

2 This understanding of the body is informed by my reading of Porter (1992); and Stallybrass (1986) 123–42. 3 Ibsen (1998) 254.

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that promoted the social and political status quo; this was as true of prints as it was of paintings. Printed images arrived in the Americas with the conquistadores. By the mid-sixteenth century, Mexican artists added their own efforts to the imported woodcuts and engravings circulating in the viceroyalty. The volume of local prints increased steadily over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. By 1767, Mexico City alone had at least a dozen print publishing firms operated by independent printmakers and book publishers.4 Near the end of the colonial era, artists from the Royal Academy of San Carlos contributed their brand of classicizing and ennobling images to the market. The vast majority of prints sold in Mexican shops displayed sacred themes, as Mexican ecclesiastics, like their contemporaries in Europe, exploited the didactic potential of the printed image. The cheap paper prints embodied the principles of the Catholic Reformation, and carried carefully crafted messages of the faith into intimate domestic spaces. The medium’s low cost and inherent multiplicity allowed ideas and images to circulate quickly and broadly. Printed images appeared in luxury publications, on popular broadsheets hung in public, and on small, single-leaf prints. Although many of the ephemeral works have been lost to history, documentary evidence demonstrates that woodcuts and engravings belonged to colonists ranging in stature from imprisoned slaves to wealthy merchants and from beggars to creole ladies. These colonists hung them on walls in their homes, pasted them in books, wore them on their bodies, and carried them in their clothing. Church records reveal that ecclesiastical authorities were aware of the print’s broad appeal, and exploited its potential to reach a wide audience. Myriad indulgence-granting prints produced in the name of the ecclesiastical hierarchy provide a case in point. A handful of additional examples suffice to demonstrate how Church officials deployed prints in their interests. The sixteenth-century printmaker Juan Ortiz worked for Dominican patrons in 1572 when he created the Virgin of the Rosary that would soon cause him to appear before the Inquisition.5 The cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe likewise owed

4 5

See Donahue-Wallace (2001) 337–44. See Ortiz’s trial in Fernández del Castillo (1982) 142–216.

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part of its popularity to the codified iconic and narrative images made in the seventeenth century for texts by Miguel Sánchez and Francisco de Florencia. The Jesuit-operated press at the Colegio de San Ildefonso printed thousands of religious images until its 1767 closure. In 1776, publisher José Antonio de Hogal produced one thousand illustrated pamphlets that the Bethlemite order distributed to promote devotion to Saint Francis of Paula.6 And although the ecclesiastics occasionally expressed misgivings about placing sacred images in popular hands, the regular and secular clergy nevertheless embraced the potency of the printed medium and sought every opportunity to introduce prints of sacred themes into Mexican homes and intimate contact with pious individuals. Printed images were powerful tools. As William MacGregor has noted in the European context, Church and state printing programs led people to trust the authority of their printed images.7 Inquisition records demonstrate that Mexicans believed in and trusted their woodcuts and engravings. A 1773 Mexican edict noted that common folk “believe to be just and holy all that is printed and stamped.”8 A 1784 Inquisition document furthermore warned of the misuse of this gullibility, claiming that unorthodox works might ‘seduce the ignorant’ who placed such trust in their prints.9 Secular records similarly reveal a concern for maintaining the authority of prints. Most significant among these were the multiple attempts viceregal authorities made to regulate printed images. From 1627 until the end of the colonial era, the Laws of the Indies included language that placed printed images under the jurisdiction of censoring laws primarily directed at texts.10 Although evidence suggests that neither secular nor ecclesiastical edicts had much affect on Mexican printmakers whose first responsibility was to the market, their repetition demonstrates that civil authorities, like their ecclesiastical peers, recognized the power of prints. It consequently comes as little surprise that when colonial authorities and elite colonists sought to communicate the ideals of womanly behavior and the normative notion of womanhood through the 6

Archivo General de la Nación (hereafter AGN), Inquisición, vol. 1333, fol.

108. 7 8 9 10

On European prints, see MacGregor (1999) 389–420. AGN, Inquisición, vol. 2, f. 27. AGN, Inquisición, vol. 1285, exp. 18, f. 155v. See Donahue-Wallace (2000) 18–23.

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female body, the printed image’s trustworthiness and ubiquity proved handy. Images of holy women numbered among local and imported prints and supported Church agendas. The most common female subject, or any subject for that matter, was the Virgin Mary in her various advocations. Of particular frequency were portraits of local cult figures such as the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Virgin of los Remedios. The prints operated, of course, as reminders of their holy prototypes and also spread interest in cult figures that Church authorities promoted as pan-colonial devotions.11 Part of the print’s attraction for ecclesiastics was its ability to join text and image to direct more effectively the viewers’ experience of the cult figure. The most frequent inscription simply identified the holy subject, thereby avoiding ambiguity and misunderstanding. Inscribed messages of indulgence, requests for donations, and solicitations of prayer also commonly appeared on Mexican prints. The earliest known print of the Virgin of Guadalupe, for example, engraved by Samuel Stradanus in 1615, raised funds for construction of a shrine to be erected in her honor. Its inscription promised forty days of indulgence for purchasing the print and making a pious contribution to the shrine’s coffers. A later Guadalupana instructed viewers to recite the Ave Maria before the engraving in exchange for three hundred days of indulgence. Other inscriptions identified pious patrons or cited passages from sacred texts, all of which augmented the apparent truthfulness of the printed images by associating them with recognized authority figures.12 Beyond such explicit instructions, the images of the Virgin and female saints bore implicit messages of a normative womanhood that also served the purposes of Church and State. The Virgin of Guadalupe and other cult objects represented stereotyped gender and racial identities. She and other holy women found in printed images were silent and subservient.13 They were kind, gentle, and self-sacrificing. They were childbearing vessels who bore no stain of sin. They simultaneously preserved peninsular traditions and represented the aspirations of a new nation.

11

See Gruzinski (1995) 53–77. Interestingly, very few images bore inscriptions identifying royal approval. It seems Mexican printmakers found no economic advantage in gaining royal approval, and civil authorities felt no need to enforce laws requiring authorization. 13 Peterson (1992) 40. 12

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The representation of ideal femininity found in printed images of holy women agreed with the definition of womanhood promoted by viceregal and ecclesiastical authorities. As much recent scholarship has established, both Church and State exploited printed and spoken means to promote a normative womanhood.14 Women were to be either pious and chaste mothers responsible for the Christian upbringing of their children, or virginal nuns who dedicated their lives to God. Either model preserved family honor and promoted social stability.15 The battleground in the struggle to preserve female virtue was the body—one kept chaste, enclosed, and physically restrained. According to Christian tradition, all bodies were sinful, women’s bodies most of all. Early modern behavioral manuals advised readers to employ the mind to train this disobedient and dangerous mortal shell.16 As women were seen to lack sharp minds, their bodies posed a great threat to the social order. Disorderly female bodies performed a host of undesirable and counter-productive behaviors, from ostentatious dress that challenged the social hierarchy to out-of-wedlock sex that burdened the State with illegitimate children. Consequently, the men in their lives—their fathers, husbands, and confessors—were to protect women, not so much for the women’s benefit, but for family honor and the greater social good. Likewise, women had to be trained how to use their bodies appropriately by fathers and confessors, who could use physical force when necessary. Once properly educated, women deployed their bodies in the interest of family honor, remaining chaste and dressing modestly, for example.17 Hence, the treatment of women’s bodies may be understood to have operated as the public face of family honor and the visual sign of social status and respectability. Colonial ideas about the proper (mis)treatment of women’s bodies appear in printed portraits of Mexican nuns, which relied on the power of printedness and the print’s function as model for emulation to construct ideal images of Christian femininity. The engraved 14 The scholarship on women in colonial New Spain is rich. In addition to the works cited in this essay, see Muriel (1992); Lavrin (1978); and Socolow (2000). 15 Here I use ‘honor’ according to both of its Spanish definitions: honor meaning “social status,” and honra meaning “virtue,” as defined by Johnson and LipsettRivera (1998) 3. 16 Porter (1992) 217. 17 Johnson and Lipsett-Rivera (1998) 12.

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portraits appeared in biographies published by male ecclesiastics. The clerical authors based their texts on the vidas (autobiographical journals) nuns wrote for their confessors.18 The published versions, abridged by their male authors, operated as models of emulation for other nuns and lay readers; they also functioned as documentation for canonization efforts when the need arose. Formulaic and repetitious, the printed biographies embodied and reinforced the notion of ideal Christian womanhood: obedient, pious, cloistered, and, above all, chaste. The nuns’ printed biographies emphasized the strategies the exemplary nuns employed to overcome the perceived moral weaknesses of the female sex. From the first chapter addressing her childhood, the text demonstrated that even in her youth the future nun did not succumb to temptation. On the contrary, her body remained carefully controlled as the girl, almost from birth, denied and violently abused herself. Starvation, self-mortification, and a bizarre host of behaviors proved her faith and supposedly preserved her chastity. Even when her confessor, whom she otherwise obeyed completely, demanded that she moderate her abusive actions, the future nun persisted. Once in the convent, her self-abuse usually intensified as her body provided the opportunity to demonstrate physically her piety. As Ibsen explained, “the manifestation of devotion through the manipulation and, often, the self-inflicted pain of the body was . . . the most tangible—albeit equally dangerous—means of asserting sanctity.”19 And while it has been suggested that bodily self-abuse described in vidas represented the women’s attempts to assume some control over their lives,20 and they may very well have operated as such in life and in the manuscript autobiographies, the printed biographies did not describe the behaviors as transgressive. Textual and visual representations of self-abuse solely operated in the biographies as signs of pious devotion and obedience to God. The fact that all printed nuns’ biographies included lengthy and explicit passages describing these behaviors suggests that this type of bodily abuse was widely accepted as the path to ideal Christian womanhood, even if confessors and Church authorities publicly condemned it.

18 19 20

On vidas, see Arenal and Schlau (1989). Ibsen (1998) 252. Ibid., 259–62.

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The printed portraits that accompanied the biographies likewise refashioned the realities of the nuns’ lives and likenesses into images of ideal Christian femininity. The engravings, which presented the nun in bust- or full-length views, offered the opportunity to give visual form to the model described in the text that followed. Hence it is more productive to understand the portraits as allegories rather than specific likenesses, even if they generally captured the physicality of the sitter. Instruments of self-abuse appear in several printed portraits of Mexican nuns. José Mota’s engraving of Madre Gerónima de la Asunción (Fig. 5.2), found in her 1713 biography, places the gaunt and tortured sitter in the center of the composition. Her sunken eyes gaze heavenward and her hands are clasped before her breast. On the table before her rest the symbols of her devotion: The Crucifix, the skull, and the hour glass, the last two items representing meditation on death and the passage of time all mortals suffer. Between the nun and her devotional items lie four instruments of self-abuse: a scourge, shackles, a crown of thorns, and a belt with spines. Gerónima’s biography, compiled by Fray Ginés de Quesada, narrated Gerónima’s extreme self-abuse as she tore the flesh of her back, stabbed herself with knitting needles, and wore a wire shirt that made the skin fall from her body.21 In a similar example, Josepha Antonia de Nuestra Señora de la Salud’s 1750 portrait by José Morales places the sitter beside a table bearing a cross, skull, prayer book, and scourge that again bridges the distance between the holy woman and her devotional aids. In the engraved portrait accompanying her 1765 biography, Sor Sebastiana Josepha de la Santísima Trinidad (Fig. 5.3) kneels in prayer before a table that likewise bears instruments of self-abuse. In this case the scourge and spiny belt rest on the table in front of an image of a prone Christ child in an ornate niche. At the same time, Sebastiana’s portrait, like several printed nuns’ portraits, emphatically identified its sitter’s cloistered status. The large grated window piercing the wall of her cell prohibits her exit from the Convent of San Juan de la Penitencia where she was enclosed.

21 The descriptions of Gerónima’s abuses appear throughout Ginés de Quesada (1713).

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Fig. 5.2 José Mota, Madre Gerónima de la Asunción. 1713, engraving. Courtesy of The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. Photo by the author.

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Fig. 5.3 José Morales, Sor Sebastiana de la Santísima Trinidad. 1765, engraving. Courtesy of The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.

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It is important to note that instruments of bodily self-abuse and obvious signs of cloistering rarely appeared in painted nuns’ portraits. Hence we must consider these devices as strategies privileged in the printed medium. It would seem that as printmakers and biographers reconstructed the nuns’ likenesses for widespread printed distribution, they had the opportunity to exercise greater artistic license than could portrait painters because the printed portrait spread well beyond the nun’s colleagues and relatives. Or perhaps the nature of the printed portrait accompanying the biography demanded that engravers bring together a variety of signs to summarize an entire life, rather than the painted portrait’s moment—usually profession— of the sitter’s history. Whatever the reason, the engravers augmented the range of attributes found in painted nuns’ portraits (table, book, Crucifix, habit), summarizing further the symbols of ideal Christian womanhood. Like the biographer, the engraver reinvented his sitter to represent notions of pious femininity in a widely understood visual language. Seen in this light, the scourge operated not only as a preview of the bodily abuses described in the text, but also as a sign that functioned in support of the portrait’s allegorical role. Whereas Gerónima, Sebastiana, and their biographers described self-flagellation as penance, allowing the nuns to suffer as Christ suffered for them, the artistic tradition of the scourge referred to sexuality. The scourge represented chastity in the language of book illustration inherited from early modern emblem books. Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia recommended representing Castità as “a modest, honest-faced woman, holding a whip in one hand as if she would correct herself . . . on her Girdle is written CASTIGO CORPUS MEUM, I chastise (sic) my body.”22 Substantial scholarship exists proving that colonial artists were fully familiar with the language of emblems and that their literate viewers appreciated emblematic references.23 Hence it stands to reason that the scourge assumed more than one meaning in the printed portraits, and conveniently permitted the representation of the largely invisible virtue of chastity while it simultaneously referenced aspects of the narrative it accompanied.

22

Ripa (1709) 12. Italics original. Sebastián (1995) 56–82. See also Chapter II by Michael J. Schreffler in this volume. 23

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Abusing themselves behind the convent walls meant that Gerónima, Sebastiana, and other nuns’ bodies no longer posed a danger to the colonial social order. Yet the similar placement of the scourges between the holy women and the tools of their devotion seems significant as well. It appears that this location emphatically stated that self-abuse and chastity were part and parcel of normative Christian femininity; to reach God, the nuns first had to abuse their bodies. In Sebastiana’s case, bodily abuse was also her ticket to intellectual activity, as represented by the quill pens, ink pots, and books on the shelf above her. The grate over the window (or the key sticking from a locked door in the engraved portrait of María Ignacia Azlor de Echeverz, founder of the Holy Company of Mary convent, known as La Enseñanza, in Mexico City) vividly exemplified the ideal disposition of female bodies. It also permitted access to Sebastiana’s scholarly life and María Ignacia’s administrative responsibilities. At the same time, the printed portraits employed inscribed passages to describe their sitters. Sebastiana’s portrait, for example, reads, “True Portrait of the Venerable Mother Sor Sebastiana Josepha de la Santísima Trinidad of the Black Veil of the Convent of San Juan de la Penitencia of Mexico where she was born, died October 4, 1757, at 48 years old.” The declaration of truthfulness, which was also employed in painted portraits, partnered with the assumptions regarding printedness to convince viewers of the veracity of the ideas embodied by the image. The illustrations therefore served as efficacious and authoritative opportunities to embody the normative notion of Christian womanhood and to disseminate this vision widely among literate colonists whose internalization of its message was essential to preserving the status quo. While self-abuse in the name of religion was accepted, and even promoted, by colonial authorities, violence in civil society was a trickier issue. Violence was a potent tool for the imposition of order in the viceroyalty, as it was in Europe. Colonists lived under the threat of physical force, from the Spanish armies dispatched to quell indigenous uprisings to the Inquisition’s autos de fe that threatened public humiliation and, occasionally, death for crimes against the faith. Creole men had the right to carry swords and, by implication, the right to use them when provoked. Even violence against women had its place in colonial culture. Like the ecclesiastic and civil authorities who raised their metaphoric hand to unruly colonists, husbands disciplined their wives for perceived transgressions against family

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honor. Richard Boyer has shown that this behavior was sanctioned in confessional manuals so long as it was moderate and corrective.24 In other words, like the nuns’ self-abuse, a disciplinary beating brought a disorderly wife into alignment with her expected role. On the other hand, abusive behaviors that violated the normative idea of womanhood—either by or against women—were roundly condemned, and colonial authorities punished assailants, rapists, and other transgressors against women’s bodies.25 It is within this context that the print described at the beginning of this discussion must be understood. The woman’s dismembered body appeared in the Mexican edition of Louis Dubroca’s Vida de J. J. Dessalines, which chronicled the 1791 Haitian slave rebellion, the establishment of the independent Haitian republic in 1804, and Dessalines’s bloody reign through 1805. The history was published in 1806 by Mexican newspaper editor Juan López Cancelada as a special supplement to his Gaceta de México. The book contained ten etched illustrations by Mexican printmakers. Four are José Simón de la Rea’s reproductions of portraits of Haiti’s revolutionary leaders: Toussaint L’Ouverture, Henri Christophe, Georges Biassou, and Jean-Jacques Dessalines. Six narrative illustrations, drawn and etched by Mexican academic Manuel López López, chronicle historical moments, including Dessalines’s imperial coronation, L’Ouverture contemplating his deeds, and the French general Heudoville addressing a rebel leader. Three of the narrative etchings represent attacks on white colonists. The first shows Christophe’s assault on Cape François, with French men surrendering while their wives and children cling to their upraised arms. The second illustration represents the woman killed by rebel troops and the dead baby at her side. One aggressor remains after her brutal attack, peaking out from behind a rock and brandishing his weapon. The third image (Fig. 5.4), which accompanies a chapter titled “Portrait of J. J. Dessalines,” portrays the rebel and emperor himself holding aloft the head of a white woman and brandishing a sword. Her severed hand and discarded clothes, suggestive of her pre- or post-mortem rape, lie on the ground behind him. López Cancelada, in his prologue and introduction to Dubroca’s racist and sensationalized tale, explained the nature of the illustrations. 24 25

Boyer (1989) 256. Lavrin (1978) 71.

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Fig. 5.4 Manuel López López, Desalines (sic). 1806, etching. Courtesy of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas, Austin. Photo by the author.

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He acquired the portraits from a Mexican merchant and commissioned Rea to reproduce them for inclusion in the text. This was necessary, he said, so that Mexican readers might get to know the ‘monsters’ it described.26 He also hired López to place the portraits of L’Ouverture and Dessalines into different narrative scenes.27 In other words, Cancelada and his engraver selected the passages to illustrate according to their readings of and aspirations for the text. Hence, to understand their selections, we must interrogate their intentions for the book. López Cancelada published Dubroca’s text as a warning to New Spain’s Spanish population. The Haitian blacks rose up against their oppressors and employed horrific violence toward French colonial authority. As Oscar Castañeda Batres has noted, Cancelada’s introduction to the history clearly admonished creoles and peninsular Spaniards to take care, because they too were outnumbered by Indians, blacks, and castas.28 López Cancelada feared that squabbles between creoles and gachupines (peninsular-born Spaniards) left New Spain vulnerable to rebellion. The text’s lengthy descriptions of the Haitian rebels’ bad behaviors and internal squabbles vividly illustrated the degradation that would befall the colony and its Spanish residents if non-European rebels were to assume power. The editor’s choice of passages to illustrate comes as little surprise when seen in this light, as López Cancelada appealed to his readers’ ideas about women’s bodies to demonize the Haitian rebels. The raped and dismembered women had not transgressed against society and did not require spousal discipline; the violence against them was not socially condoned. In fact, with her child at her breast, the woman lying in the field embodied the ideal of Christian womanhood—the good mother who cared for her child until her last moments—even if she was French. Dessalines’s attacks on white women were heinous acts not only for targeting the weakest members of society, but for their violation of the idea of womanhood in

26 Juan López Cancelada, “Prologo,” in [Dubroca] (1806). The portraits likely came from European editions of Dubroca’s text, such as the 1802 Paris edition with L’Ouverture’s portrait engraved by Francois Bonneville. 27 The disparity in levels of participation explains why Rea inscribed only grabó next to his name, identifying his merely reproductive role, whereas López identified his activities as designer and engraver, inscribing each of his narrative scenes “Manuel López López lo dibujó y grabó en México.” 28 [Dubroca] (1806) 17.

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racial and economic terms—as a black man attacking white women, as a poor man raping rich women, as a slave turning against his masters. And even though these scenes are vastly outnumbered in Dubroca’s text by a host of other military and political events, the editor and his artist dedicated one third of the narrative images to violence against women. The destruction of female bodies not only embodied the innate brutality López Cancelada and colonial elites attributed to non-white peoples, but also visualized the destruction of civilized society. Raped and dismembered, the women’s bodies personified the dishonor and destruction of the State; the dead child left no room for redemption. To appreciate fully the impact of López Cancelada’s horrific narrative illustrations we must again consider their context: the images appeared in printed form, added at great expense to the typographic story. Clearly the Mexican editor relied on the popular perception of prints as bearers of truth as he placed his illustrations in the text. He furthermore exploited this naiveté by conflating reproductions of likenesses, made ostensibly either from life or first-hand accounts, with narrative illustrations made from his own reading and understanding of the text. The portraits lent credibility to his invented images of brutalized women. This is particularly true for the illustration of Dessalines holding aloft the woman’s severed head, as it was placed at the beginning of the chapter presenting a portrait of the Haitian rebel. The illustration’s inscription reads simply “Desalines (sic),” as if the brutal deed summarized Dessalines’s character. López Cancelada therefore doubled the truthfulness of his image, appealing to the belief in prints and in the supposed truthfulness of portraits. At the same time, this and other illustrations lent credibility to the text by elevating the story to something that Mexican readers could see with their own eyes. And since the images with which he chose to reinvent the story disproportionately privileged violence against women, the prints operated as spectacular and convincing illustrations of the destruction of civilization and the innate incivility the editor attributed to non-white peoples. With the national welfare resting on the popular internalization of constructed images of the female sex, it is not surprising that the Holy Office of the Inquisition became involved when Mexicans directed decidedly irreverent behaviors toward prints of holy female bodies. To end this interrogation of abused female bodies in prints, therefore, we shall turn the tables and examine not the representation

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of violence against women’s bodies, but violence against prints themselves—against images of the female bodies that presented the normative vision of Christian womanhood and, by extension, the very values upon which the colonial state rested. Mexicans abused printed images of holy persons, both male and female, in many bizarre ways. They ripped them, whipped them, threw them, burned them, dismembered them, used them in scatological acts, and wore them on their bodies. A recent survey of 211 Inquisition trials revealed that irreverent behaviors directed toward paintings and sculptures included many of the same practices.29 The study identified the most frequent target to be paintings and sculptures of Christ on the Cross and, in a distant second place, the Virgin Mary. In Inquisition cases specifically addressing abusive behaviors directed toward prints, on the other hand, the most frequently identified subject was the Virgin of Guadalupe. If we assume that the attacks were shaped, in part, by the availability of images, the disparity makes sense from a material perspective. Simply put, Mexicans were surrounded by Crucifixions and prints of the Virgin of Guadalupe, making them handy targets. Unfortunately we must set aside the question of whether the frequency of attacks on prints of the Virgin of Guadalupe reflected the volume of Guadalupana prints or aggression directed specifically against this icon of Mexican religiosity. Currently available documentation is insufficient to penetrate the attackers’ intentions to this degree. We may, however, interrogate how the ideas of womanhood and the power of prints may have played a role in these iconoclastic outbursts. Three Inquisition cases involving the abuse of prints of the Virgin of Guadalupe reveal the nature of the attacks. The first involved a mestiza maid named Antonia, whose creole employer, Ana Gertrudis de Ortega, denounced her before the Holy Tribunal in 1745.30 According to Ortega’s testimony, one night Antonia made blasphemous statements about the saints. Suddenly the maid produced a print of the Virgin of Guadalupe and spit on it. Horrified, Ortega called a friend to assist her. In his own testimony, Ortega’s friend confirmed her account, noting that he of course was not present for the actual moment of spitting. He felt free, however, to explain that

29 30

Ramírez Leyva (2000) 177–178. AGN, Inquisición, vol. 892, fol. 348v.

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Antonia’s act was likely motivated only by Antonia’s womanly passions, not her misunderstanding of the faith. In a 1783 case, Juana Mansilla, described as a parda, or “mixedrace woman,” was sent to the tribunal by her confessor. Juana had received a pair of shoes as a limosna (alms) from a merchant named don Felipe. When she took the shoes to be repaired, the shoemaker discovered an engraving of the Virgin of Guadalupe (Fig. 5.5) tucked inside one of the shoes.31 The print, not surprisingly, was sweaty and damaged. When the cobbler brought the print to Juana’s attention, he told her that only a Jew would stick an engraving of the Virgin of Guadalupe in a shoe. Juana immediately turned the paper image over to her confessor who sent her to the Inquisition. The ecclesiastics were predictably very concerned that the print of the Holy Patroness of New Spain was damp and ripped, and made special note of this fact in their records. The third example involved a native or mestizo man named Romualdo Sierra from Tacuba. In 1795, María Desideria Alarcón asked for an audience with the Inquisitors, at which she testified that she had second-hand knowledge of a most unpleasant occurrence. María had been told that Romualdo used an engraving of the Virgin of Guadalupe to clean excrement from his body. As if that were not sufficient affront to the sanctity of the Mother of the Mexican nation, Romualdo spoke blasphemous words against her. The behaviors described in these and other Inquisition cases were, for obvious reasons, clear deviations from the implicit and explicit code of conduct in viceregal New Spain. And they certainly transgressed against the normative behaviors associated with women’s bodies, both in person and in print. Here was the model of femininity treated more like a battered wife than the Mother of the Mexican nation. How are we then to understand the acts within the discourse of ideal womanhood and the authority of print? Analyzing the events is complicated by questions surrounding whether the outbursts truly occurred or constituted tales invented to discredit enemies before the Inquisition. None of the cases progressed beyond witness testimony, and—perhaps fortunately in light of the nature of the crimes—only the print from the shoe remains as physical evidence of abuse against an engraving of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

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AGN, Inquisición, vol. 928, exp. 7, fol. 324v.

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Fig. 5.5 José Morales, The Virgin of Guadalupe. 18th c., engraving. Courtesy of the Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico City.

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But even if the denunciations were invented, the fact remains that someone, either the accused or the accuser, understood that abusing a print of the Virgin of Guadalupe made for a spectacular opportunity to garner attention, as evidenced by the accusers’ complaints and the Inquisition’s interest. Attacking a printed image as part of a general heretical outburst provided Inquisitors with a tangible and physical act to investigate: whereas words vanished as soon as they were spoken, a ripped or soiled print remained to testify to the heresy. And when the damaged image represented the icon of Mexican national identity, the stakes were even higher. Whether the abusive displays were real or invented, they nevertheless reflected the body discourse described in earlier paragraphs, but this time with a new wrinkle. The attackers (or their accusers) understood the potent associations of printed images of this female body as supposedly truthful symbols of colonial womanhood and, by extension, of an orderly and divinely sanctioned colonial society. They abused the images in bodily terms, spitting on one, wearing the second against a dirty foot, and smearing the third with excrement. Hence we may understand these acts as the confrontation of Bahktin’s classical body—the perfectly formed representation of absolutist (or colonial in this case) ideals—and the grotesque body, which celebrated raw humanity and opposed reasoned civility.32 The abusive events therefore became the violent confrontation of the ideal and the real, whereby the constructed image of womanhood was assaulted by the inescapable earthiness of lived existence as frustrated colonists lashed out against this symbol in bodily terms. The images of the Virgin of Guadalupe were brought into this mundane realm, and therefore made available for these grotesque displays, by their material, and it stands to reason that the nature of the printed images contributed to the attacks. First, the print’s ubiquity meant that this holy image transcended the boundaries of normal art-viewing contexts and came into intimate contact with a decidedly unschooled body of art collectors. The Mexican Church encouraged individuals to keep prints in their homes and on their persons, and to form emotional bonds with the intercessors they represented. This fostered a level of intimacy between viewer and print that necessarily resulted in close contact between the image and the

32

Stallybrass (1986) 124.

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body. Not surprisingly, the line between acceptable and unacceptable behaviors toward the printed image was easily crossed in this context. If the Church promoted wearing a printed image next to one’s heart as a sign of faith, certainly placing it below the foot made a potent statement of displeasure. Second, the printed image’s perceived truthfulness and official aura undoubtedly contributed to the nature of the (real or invented) assaults. Lashing out against prints may be understood as the desperate act of the impotent peon, whose interactions with the institutions the print represented were invariably oppressive and denigrating. The maid, the mixed-race man, and the (supposed) Jew existed on the lower rungs of Mexico’s socio-ethnic hierarchy, with little or no true opportunity to improve their condition. Hence, like the nuns who perhaps abused their own bodies to assume some margin of control over their regulated lives, the prints’ assailants turned against their own images to vent their frustrations. And while Inquisition authorities recognized these abuses as attacks on holy art and the traditions of the Church, they also acknowledged that there was little they could do. The prints were simply too small, too cheap, and too easily concealed to permit enforcement—and perhaps that too figured into the assailants’ acts. Let us now return to the etching of the dismembered woman in the field. The preceding paragraphs have demonstrated that this illustration gets at the very heart of colonial ideas about women’s bodies and about the nature of prints. Both may be best understood as potent symbols that were available for deployment in support of personal or institutional agendas. Ripped, cut, shredded, and violated, the bodies and prints embraced the normative notion of womanhood and manipulated it. Playing upon colonists’ loyalties, beliefs, and fears, the prints of abused female bodies communicated a host of meanings that reinforced the colonial status quo in an intimate and at the same time hugely public way.

Bibliography Archivo General de la Nación, ramo Inquisición. Arenal, E., and S. Schlau (1989) Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in Their Own Works (Albuquerque: 1989). [Dubroca, L.] (1806) Vida de J. J. Dessalines: Gefe de los negros de Santo Domingo; con

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notas muy circunstanciadas sobre el origen, carácter y atrocidades de aquellos rebeldes desde el principio de la insurrección en 1791 . . ., ed. J. López Cancelada (Mexico City: 1806). Donahue-Wallace, K. (2000) “Prints and Printmakers in Viceregal Mexico City, 1600–1800” (Ph.D. diss., University of New Mexico, 2000). ——. (2001) “Nuevas aportaciones sobre los grabadores novohispanos,” in Barroco Iberoamericano: Territorio, arte, espacio, y sociedad, vol. 1, ed. A. M. Aranda (Seville: 2001). Gruzinski, S. (1995) “Images and Cultural Mestizaje in Colonial Mexico,” Poetics Today 16, no. 1 (1995) 53–77. Ibsen, K. (1998) “The Hiding Places of My Power: Sebastiana Josefa de la Santísima Trinidad and the Hagiographic Representation of the Body in Colonial Spanish America,” Colonial Latin American Review 7, no. 2 (1998) 251–270. Johnson, L., and S. Lipsett-Rivera (1998) eds., The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame and Violence in Colonial Latin America, Diálogos series (Albuquerque: 1998). MacGregor, W. (1999) “The Authority of Prints in Early Modern Europe,” Art History 22, no. 3 (1999) 389–420. Peterson, J. F. (1992) “The Virgin of Guadalupe: Symbol of Conquest or Liberation,” Art Journal 51 (1992) 39–47. Porter, R. (1992) “History of the Body,” in New Perspectives on Historical Writing, ed. P. Burke (University Park, PA: 1992). Quesada, Ginés de (1713) Exemplo de todas las virtudes y vida milagrosa de la Venerable Madre Gerónyma de la Assumpción . . . (Mexico City: 1713). Ramírez Leyva, E. (2000) “La conculcación en algunos procesos inquisitoriales,” in Inquisición novohispana, vol. 2., eds. N. Quezada, M. E. Rodríguez, and M. Suárez (Mexico City: 2000). Ripa, C. (1709) Iconologia or Moral Emblems, ed. P. Tempest (London: 1709). Sebastián, S. (1995) “Los libros de emblemas: Uso y difusión en Iberoamérica,” in Juegos de ingenio y agudeza: La pintura emblemática de la Nueva España (Mexico City: 1995). Lavrín, A. (1989) ed., Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America (Lincoln, NE: 1989). Stallybrass, P. (1986) “Patriarchal Territories: The Body Enclosed,” in Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe, eds. M. Ferguson, M. Quilligan, and N. Vickers (Chicago: 1986). Valdés, J. E. (1765) Vida admirable y penitente de la V[enerable] M[adre] Sor Sebastiana Joseph de la S[antísima] Trinidad . . . (Mexico City: 1765).

CHAPTER SIX

RECLAIMING TLATILCO’S FIGURINES FROM BIASED ANALYSIS María Elena Bernal-García

In 1953 the great Mexican artist Diego Rivera unveiled a mosaic mural for the façade of the Teatro de los Insurgentes in southern Mexico City, The Theatre in Mexico, a Popular History.1 On the upper right corner a dance group moves freely in uncluttered space. The ensemble is composed of three svelte women holding hands, their long braids flying in the air as a result of their lively movements (Fig. 6.1). From hips to toes they sport skin-tight decorated trousers or leotards that approach body-painted designs in appearance. For the average modern observer, the trio is reminiscent of a women’s chorus line, a form of entertainment popularized in Mexico by 1930s Hollywood movies. For a specialist in the preclassic period (2500 BCE–250 CE) of Mesoamerican art history, the dancers are clearly modeled after the small solid 8 to 15 cm. high clay female figurines unearthed mainly at Tlatilco during the 1940s. Rivera and his friend Miguel Covarrubias were two of the many Mexican artists and collectors who first saw and bought these pieces from the workers at the brick factory set, half-knowingly, over the pre-Hispanic site of Tlatilco in the suburbs of Mexico City. Due to their high aesthetic quality, their diminutive size, and the uncontrolled looting of the privately owned lot, hundreds of whole figurines and thousands of fragments soon found their way into innumerable personal collections in Mexico, the United States, and Europe.2 For the Insurgentes dance ensemble, Rivera borrowed the bodily features of the Tlatilco Type D1 figurines along with the extended arms, earplugs, and long braids of a pair of sculptures apparently

1 El teatro en México, una historia popular. Mosaic, 12.85 × 42.79 m., Teatro de los Insurgentes, 1951–1953, México, D. F. For this mural see Rochfort (1993) 175–79. 2 Covarrubias (1943) 40–41; and Covarrubias (1957) 24.

Fig. 6.1 Diego Rivera. The Theatre in Mexico, a Popular History. Mosaic, 12.85 × 42.79 m., 1951–1953, Teatro de los Insurgentes, Mexico City. Detail. Drawing by the author at the site.

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found together and believed to represent ceremonial dancers (Figs. 6.2 and 6.3).3 For the tri-faced dancer in the middle, the muralist mixed Greek mask prototypes with two-headed figurines found at Tlatilco and other Mesoamerican sites in the Valley of Mexico and outside it. When it came to depicting the dancers’ lively movements, Rivera was undoubtedly influenced by an outstanding piece then in Covarrubias’s collection (Fig. 6.4). The figurine represents an extremely wide-hipped woman spinning about her own axis. She wears a short, almost horizontal skirt below her waist as do many other Tlatilcan female figurines. The dance pose and the skirt prompted Covarrubias to conceptualize this piece as a dancer. Soon other artists and scholars followed suit and began addressing this piece as a ‘ballerina.’4 Rivera used Type D1 female figurines as the main source for the dance group for two dissimilar but complementary reasons. The first was aesthetic, the figurines’ plastically naturalistic style and dynamic qualities; second, the biased gender views inherent to most 19th and 20th-century academic writing in Mexico, the United States, and Europe. Because professional and non-professional alike labeled the figurines ‘pretty ladies,’ Rivera surely thought this an apt pre-Hispanic category to parallel the representation of twentieth-century women, particularly those working in the entertainment business.5 The sticky tag became the lens through which most specialists came to see and address the D1 figurines until today, simultaneously suggesting that the sculptures—and Tlatilcan women by extension—represented ideals of female beauty manufactured largely to satisfy ancient and modern male desires and tastes. Thus the many feminine representations found in Tlatilcan burials were assumed to represent ‘companions for the dead’ for the remains of male individuals. In reality female figurines were interred more often with female than with male skeletons.6 The next step in this progression of erred sexist assumptions was to consider most of these female figurines as of mothers representations 3 Anton (1969) 5 first reported that the two ‘dancing’ figurines had been unearthed together. 4 Covarrubias (1943) 45, (1950), plate without page or number, and (1957) 24. In 1950 Covarrubias labeled her ‘danzarina.’ After Covarrubias’s death, this figurine made its way into the Museo Nacional de Antropología. Rivera (1949) in Cardona Peña (1981) 110; Bernal (1950) 16; Piña Chan, Romano Pacheco, and Pareyón Moreno (1952) 111; Westheim (1980) 192, 204; Furst and Furst (1980) 26. 5 The Literary Review (1936) 20–21. 6 Piña Chan (1955) 68; and Laporte (1971) 343.

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Fig. 6.2 Tlatilco. Type D1 Female and Male Figurines. Clay with paint, 1500–300 BCE Drawing by the author after C. Thomson (1971) Fig. 14.

Fig. 6.3 Tlatilco. Pair of Female Figurines. Clay, 15.5 cm. high, 1500–300 BCE Drawing by the author from the originals in the Museo Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.

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Fig. 6.4 Tlatilco. Whirling Type D1 Female Figurine. Clay with red, white, and yellow paint, ca. 11 cm. high. Drawing by the author from the original in the Museo Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.

Fig. 6.5 Zacatenco. Burial 19. Drawing by the author after George C. Vaillant (1931) “Excavations at Zacatenco,” Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 32 (New York: 1931) 189.

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and then earth-fertility symbols. By painting with such a broad brush, scholars preempted space for alternative inquiries that might better clarify the Tlatilcan figurines’ aesthetics, functions, and iconography. It also propitiated a myriad of other truly fantastic and obtuse labels like ‘naked feminine figure,’ ‘nude girls,’ ‘topless girls and women,’ ‘Venus of Tlatilco’ and ‘Lady of Tlatilco.’ Not surprisingly, this discourse never affected the analysis of Type D1 male figurines for which rather discrete, accurate, and proper appellations were employed, like ‘man,’ ‘male figure,’ ‘chief,’ ‘shaman,’ and ‘sorcerer.’” In truth, the counterparts to the epithets applied to the female figurines were never used. There were no ‘pretty lords,’ ‘handsome gentlemen,’ ‘Apollo of Tlatilco,’ ‘Lord of Tlatilco,’ nor even ‘nude men,’ although some male figurines display as little clothing as many of the female sculptures (Fig. 6.2). Nonetheless, the treatment granted to the female representations eventually affected the study of the male figurines. To explain the phenomenon of gender discrimination behind the screen provided by the ‘pretty lady’ tag imposed on the Tlatilcan female figurines, I will trace and examine the label’s introduction in modern scholarship, the reasons behind its acceptance in some of the most prestigious academic circles, and its profound negative impact on the study of the preclassic cultures that occupied the Valley of Mexico. Finally, I will propose a different path to better understand Tlatilco’s exceptional artistic manifestation in Mesoamerican history.

Emergence of the ‘Pretty Lady’ Tag Even though Tlatilco is believed to have been the first “cosmopolitan town in the Valley of Mexico, the richest and most important,” it was the last of the basin’s preclassic settlements to be found and studied. Others in its vicinity, and influenced by it, like Zacatenco, Ticomán, and El Arbolillo, were excavated in the 1930s by several Mexican and American archeologists. In fact it was the figurines’ presence that led archeologists to discover these preclassic sites. Tlatilco’s figurines were unearthed in the 1930s and early 1940s from a field near San Juan Tlatilco, a town in the Municipio of San Bartolo Naucalpan, state of Mexico. Tlatilco is a Nahuatl toponym meaning “Place of Mounds,” apt for a site located on the western piedmont of the Sierra Las Cruces, over a set of natural alluvial terraces.

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In 1942 Covarrubias was finally able to convince the Mexican government’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) to control the looting and start excavations at Tlatilco.7 Tlatilco’s origins are puzzling because the town seems to have appeared suddenly as an already sophisticated and well-organized community. Ochoa Castillo sets its occupation to the early and middle preclassic periods (1800–400 BCE), and its most productive phase between 1300 and 900 BCE.8 Given that three quarters of the Tlatilcan figurines were not found in a burial context, it remains to be seen if they were also related to house construction or agricultural fields.9 In 1922 Nuttal described a high-quality ‘sub-gravel’ preclassic Valley of Mexico female figurine with ‘delicate’ features, first catalogued by Hay in 1918–19, as Type D1. In 1928–32 Vaillant, an archeologist who became highly influential, excavated the sites of Zacatenco, Ticomán, and El Arbolillo, all near Tlatilco, while he refined Hay’s figurine classification. Vaillant accumulated thousands of heads and whole figurines to better understand the chronology of the Valley’s preclassic period. Hay and Vaillant initiated the mislabeling of Type D1 female figurines. For his 1923 article Hay chose photographs of an intact D1 female figurine, as well as a broken torso, to represent the fine artistic production of these newly found cultures. When in 1931 Vaillant published his first excavation in context of a type D figurine at Zacatenco, he wrote: “The charm of this type, according to European aesthetic ideals, has brought it considerable attention, and it is known vulgarly as the ‘pretty lady type.’ ” As Hay before him, Vaillant chose a D1 female figurine, this time a head fragment, to illustrate his article on Zacatenco.10 When in 1943 Covarrubias wrote the first article in the literature exclusively dedicated to Tlatilco, he lifted Vaillant’s 1931 ‘pretty lady’ 7 Covarrubias (1950) 155; Covarrubias (1943) 41, translation corroborated by John Sullivan, personal communication 14 February 2005; García Moll and Salas Cuesta (1998) 15. The excavated site measures about 8000 m. square. From 1942 to 1969 INAH undertook four periods of excavation at Tlatilco. Covarrubias promoted the first two; García Moll (1991) 10–15. 8 Séjourné (1952) 55; Romano (1962) 415; and Ochoa Castillo (1982) 2, 160, 194–95. 9 This point cannot be clarified unless the Tlatilco reports for seasons I, II, and III are published. 10 Nuttall (1922) 4–5; Reyna Robles (1971) 23; Vaillant (1934) 24; Noguera (1975) 72–74, 102; Hay (1923) 259–71; and Vaillant (1931a) 34.

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phrase to single out Type D female figurines. Writing in English for Paalen’s brilliant and internationally important magazine Dyn, Covarrubias states that type D, . . . by far the most abundant at Tlatilco, shows a people with delicate features—large slanting eyes, small turned up noses and fine mouths— that have earned them the name of ‘pretty lady type’ by which it was known to Mexican archaelogists.11

From then on nearly every specialist would quote an indeterminate group of archeologists to defend the classification’s accuracy. Covarrubias failed to cite Vaillant’s 1931 article while vaguely attributing the phrase to a group of suddenly Mexican archeologists. However, because the artist spoke and wrote English, he quoted Vaillant’s phrase exactly as it had been written twelve years earlier. In contrast and in the same year (1943), Noguera examined the Gulf Coast Olmec manifestations in the preclassic Valley of Mexico, writing that “among these [objects] the ‘pretty woman’ type, or Vaillant’s D1, prevails.”12 Although here Noguera acknowledges Vaillant’s work, he not only changes the phrase’s noun from ‘lady’ to ‘woman,’ but fails to fully credit Vaillant for its invention by omitting his colleague’s publication date and title. In his second 1950s article on Tlatilco, Covarrubias mistranslates ‘pretty lady’ into ‘pretty woman.’ That same year Westheim cites Covarrubias’ 1943 essay, applying the ‘pretty lady’ classification to all Type D figurines. Covarrubias’ posthumous 1957 book coined a third rescension, ‘pretty girl.’13 Thus, in just twenty years of academic communication the Tlatilcan female figurines diminished in rank and age. The trend climaxed in 1976 with Gendrop’s graciosas mujercitas, “charming little women.”14 Violating all proper art historical methodologies, he singled out a reclining D1 female figurine as ‘Venus.’ Although Gendrop was a sufficiently well-trained art histo-

11 Covarrubias (1943) 46. The first ambitious survey of Mexican pre-Columbian art, written by Toscano and published in 1944, had no coverage of Tlatilco. 12 Mujer bonita in the original Spanish text; Noguera (1943) 511–512. 13 Covarrubias (1950) 159; Westheim (1950) 169, 173; and Covarrubias (1957) 28. 14 The translation of the very subjective Spanish word graciosas into English is imprecise. Depending on the context, it can mean amusing, funny, charming, attractive, or cute. Galimberti Jarman and Russell (2003) s.v. gracioso. In Gendrop’s phrase the meaning is obviously shaded toward charming, attractive, or cute.

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rian to know that his Tlatilco ‘Venus’ and its preclassic artistic tradition could not have been known to the Spanish painter Goya, he let his lyrical exaltation for the female nude get the best of him by positing the tiny figure as an eternal ideal of beauty latent in the mind of man and therefore an atavistic antecedent of Goya’s Naked Maja.15 Gendrop should have heeded Bandi and Maringer, who had long before asserted that to label the Paleolithic Woman of Willendorf ‘Venus’ is ‘plainly absurd.’16 The same observation applies to the Tlatilcan female figurines so tagged. After 1950 this ‘Pretty Lady’ construct morphed into many other forms, each more inaccurate and demeaning than the preceding. The allusion after each such reference to unnamed ‘archeologists’ cloaked the label with the aura of scientific accuracy.17 Notable exceptions to this discourse are Nuttall, Porter, Adams, and Kubler.18

The Implications of Western Feminine Stereotypes for the Misinterpretation of Type D Figurines In 1962 Kubler declared, with most scholars tacitly agreeing, that the ‘finest examples’ of Valley of Mexico preclassic figurine art come from Tlatilco. He proceeded to illustrate his assertion with a D1 double-faced female effigy. Three years later Coe, a Yale colleague, stated that types D1and D4 were “among the most beautiful objects of their size in all of the New World.”19 Compared to Type D1, Type D4’s most salient characteristics are its spherical buttocks and round face. Hence the two types usually illustrate most books and articles to represent the twenty-six formal varieties of figurine found at the site, even though Type D2 hollow figures appear in greater

15

Gendrop (1970) 10–11, and Fig. 16. Bandi and Maringer (1953) 28 17 Westheim (1950) 173; Westheim (1962) 34; Piña Chan, R., A. Romano Pacheco and E. Pareyón-Moreno (1952) 42; Séjourné (1952) 59; Barba de Piña Chan (1956) 89; and Coe (1962) 55. More recently Tate (1996) 51, García Moll and Salas Cuesta (1998) 33; and Ochoa Castillo (2004) 10. 18 Bernal-García (1988) 177–184. Uriarte (2003) 135–140 substituted the ‘pretty lady’ label with ‘feminine figurine.’ Also see the highly technical archeological report on Season IV Tlatilco burial excavations by García Moll, et al. (1991). 19 Kubler (1984) 48 and Fig. 3; and Coe (1965) 26. 16

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quantities, and the rare K-abstract is just as beautiful as are D1 and D4.20 Moreover, K-abstract has not been found anywhere else in Mesoamerica and could be as representative of Tlatilco as Types D1, D2, and D4. According to Ochoa Castillo, D and K with their variants define the Tlatilcan tradition, with types D more than doubling the amounts extant of types K.21 Types D1 and D4 were hand-modeled with details applied as bits and fillets of clay, a technique commonly known as pastillaje or appliqué. They generally show slender bodies, short arms, and wide thighs. Sometimes hands and feet are indicated by folding the clay at the tip of arms or legs, or by incision to characterize fingers or toes. Both men and women display exotic coiffures, with women usually wearing long hair-strands, braids, knots, or bangs; the male figurines frequently display shorter hair.22 Apparently the tiny sculptures were modeled to be seen from the front where most details appear, even though their backs show great mastery in handling relationships between line and volume. At times pigments (white, red, yellow, black, and violet) were applied to different parts of the body and/or garments. Women are often shown nude or wearing skirts or pants, latticed headdresses or hats; most men wrap themselves in loincloths although some may sport fuller garments and wear helmets, hats, or wigs. Both sexes adorn themselves with earplugs but women more often use necklaces. It is not known if the figurines were meant to stand or recline, but in burials they were usually found lying down on their backs or chests. Some were set standing inside a tall vessel, others reclined over a bowl.23 As expressed by Kubler and Coe, the main reason why Type D1 female figurines became so appealing to those who first saw them 20 Type D2 figures measure 15 to 50 cm in length and are generally made of hollow clay. These are not considered in this study. 21 Ochoa Castillo (1982) 74–88, 193. In her sample of 738 figurines, 83.57% belong to types D and K. Of these, more than twice as many, 454 or 60.18%, were classified as Type D compared to 174 or 23.39% for Type K. Variant D1A was represented by 114 pieces with variant D2 at 192. Ochoa’s sample agrees with Covarrubias’s earlier observation about Type D2 being the most abundant at Tlatilco; Covarrubias (1950) 159. This type is also the most abundant in Laporte (1971) 162: 1530 out of 2640 or 58.8%. 22 There are exceptions and it is sometimes very difficult to classify figurines according to their sex. For example, men wearing loincloths also show a long braid, or a skirted figurine may lack breasts. 23 For example, García Moll, et al. (1991) Burial 93, items 7, 8, 9; and García Moll and Salas Cuesta (1998) 38.

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was their naturalistic appearance with regard to other types, and a favorable comparison with familiar concepts of beauty. Vaillant thought Type D figurines deserved the ‘pretty lady’ label due to their congruence in form and proportion with ‘European aesthetic ideals,’ and Covarrubias believed “the majority [in the Type D1 category] are pretty, even by European standards, and often they are reminiscent of early Greek art.”24 Since neither man could know how handsome Tlatilcan women or men actually were, their models came specifically from classical Greek and Roman statuary and commonly accepted European notions of feminine beauty. Hence, since all of the authorities had been inculcated with the ideals of beauty pertaining to Western Antiquity, throughout the following decades most scholars confirmed Vaillant’s and Covarrubias’s appreciations.25 Other less serious specialists took the already stretched comparison between Tlatilcan and European women to the limit. Gutierre Tibón, an Italian philologist whose work is still much admired in Mexico, believed Tlatilco D1 figurines looked like “little French, English, or Scandinavian” females, much unlike the “traditional cliché portrait of the Mexican Indian woman” (emphasis mine).26 Of the large group of scholars who envisioned ideals of human beauty in the figurines’ bodies, only Ignacio Bernal sought an autochthonous model for Type D female figurines. It is a passage from the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca, where Huémac, last king of Tula, orders the Nonoalcas to bring him a woman “with hips four palms in width.” While the Nonoalcas reported that they could not find one single female of such girth, Bernal asserted Tlatilco’s wide-hipped figurines could have amply satisfied the king’s wishes.27 Examined more closely, the archeologist’s observation about this episode rather corroborates that wide-hipped indigenous women were hard to find in Huémac’s time (1200 C.E.), and most likely the same was true during the preclassic era.28

24

Vaillant (1931a) 34; and Covarrubias (1943) 46. E.g. Barba de Piña Chan (1956) 169; Gendrop (1970) 11; and Reyna Robles (1971) 23. 26 Tibón (1967) 17. 27 Bernal (1976) 132; and Kirchhoff, et al. (1976) 133–134. 28 Besides, there are other sources for pre-Columbian canons of beauty such as Sahagún’s informants’ description of the god Tezcatlipoca’s impersonator for the Toxcatl festivities; Sahagún, (1981[1582]) I: 114–15, 153. 25

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These inadequate labels concealed socially accepted stereotypes about women. To address these ingrained formulas, five English dictionaries published over the course of the last eighty years were consulted.29 In two of these the word ‘pretty’ refers to those things and persons “beautiful in a dainty or diminutive way,” especially “said of woman or children as opposed to handsome.” The word is particularly applied to ‘beautiful women’ according to two of the four dictionaries, where the concept of ‘beautiful’ defines “a combination of qualities, such as shape, proportion, color, in human face or form, or in other objects, that delight the sight and other senses, including the intellect and the moral.” An alternative adjective to describe a beautiful person is ‘handsome,’ an adjective that bespeaks ‘dignity’ and ‘stateliness.’ For this reason, the word ‘handsome’ is applied more often to humans than to animals, and most commonly to men than to women and children. The contrast between these three terms produces an aesthetic hierarchy whereby ‘handsome’ finds its place on the highest step and ‘pretty’ on the lowest. Hence the term ‘pretty’ returns grown-up women to the dependent status of children. Today these terms have been redefined but still reflect much the same schema. In the 2005 Pocket Oxford Dictionary ‘beautiful’ and ‘pretty’ become rather neutral adjectives, but a ‘beauty’ names a woman, not a man, and as an adverb ‘pretty’ means ‘to a certain extent’ or ‘fairly,’ reiterating the traditionally relative inferiority of the designation ‘pretty’ next to other standards of beauty. ‘Handsome’ may be said of a man when he is ‘good-looking,’ but a woman needs to be “striking and impressive rather than pretty” to deserve the adjective. The reason why dictionaries link the concept of ‘beauty’ with women more often than with men is that women need to rely on their physical beauty for success and survival to a greater extent than men do. According to linguist Robin Lakoff, attractiveness is essential to a woman because “in every aspect of her life, a woman is identified in terms of the men she relates to,” and most men desire a beautiful woman for both ideal and realistic purposes.30 Beauty is considered unnecessary to male bodies because the concept of woman as a beautiful artifact is a metaphor that serves a particular purpose 29 Fowler and Fowler (1925), Little, et al. (1955); Stein (1966); American Webster (1981); and Soane, et al. (2005). 30 Lakoff (1975) 31.

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in male idealistic thinking. The rationale is summarized in a couplet written by seventeenth-century poet James Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham: “Beauty is Heaven’s most bounteous gift esteem’d, Because by love men are from vice redeem’d.” This is a Neo-Platonic vision fabricated to counteract what were feared to be overly sensual perceptions of an act or person. It is related to Virgil’s formulation that ‘love conquers all,’ that is, spiritual love vitiates animal passion. Stewart, quoting Sheffield’s verse, asserts that English seventeenth-century female portraits were ambiguously seen as pin-ups or virtues, as goddesses or bawds, by nineteenth-century English society.31 This concept of the spiritual love that ‘conquers all’ inspired Goethe’s Faust. In the story, Gretchen’s pubescent love for old Faust leads her to premature death so that her lover’s mistake, selling his soul to the devil in exchange for scientific knowledge and glory, could be pardoned by the Almighty. In spite of the play’s interpretation of the ‘eternal feminine’ as the loving sacrificing spirit of women, several twentieth-century Mexican scholars misapplied the poetic but nonetheless patriarchal idea to the supposedly neverending vanity of women as seen in the preclassic figurines. One example should suffice. In 1976 Bernal wrote: happily for us, the figurines were produced in incredible numbers . . . naked women are shown—eternally feminine—with hands and bodies painted, and adorned with nose and earrings, necklaces and headdresses.32

If the word ‘pretty’ places women in a dependent situation, the word ‘lady’ does almost nothing to reverse the situation. Although the word ‘lady’ may in certain contexts correspond to ‘gentleman,’ and even address a ‘ruling woman,’ it more often denotes a woman subject to a man’s attentions, whether a wife, a mistress, or a prostitute. In fact, any woman may be called a ‘lady’ while not every man may be called a ‘lord.’ Lakoff notices that in professional relationships, the more demeaning the job, the more the person holding it is apt to be called a lady, hence a ‘cleaning lady’ but never a ‘cleaning gentleman’; ‘lady doctor’ is today considered an insult. Thus, “if in a particular sentence both ‘woman’ and ‘lady’ might be 31 32

Stewart (1974) 3–8. Bernal (1976) 101. My translation from the Spanish.

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used, the use of the latter tends to trivialize the subject matter under discussion, often subtly ridiculing the woman involved.” Politeness may be advanced as an explanation for the use of the term ‘lady’ in such a given context, but most often this type of “politeness is used to imbue with dignity a person or concept that normally is not thought of having dignity.”33 Given these fluctuations in meaning, over time the word for ‘lady’ has lost its specificity, a process called ‘universalization,’ one that occurs to women’s titles with overwhelming insidiousness if compared to those applied to men. Schulz also shows that basically all female nouns have degenerated in one way or another into ‘prostitute’ since “in common language, the word’s pejorative connotations override those of its politeness.”34 These are surely the reasons why most scholars studying the Mesoamerican preclassic period have found no contradiction in applying the ‘pretty lady’ denomination to the Tlatilcan female figurines. Moreover, the term ‘lady’ not only became universalized to represent all women (including those inhabiting the Valley of Mexico three thousand years ago), it also has become homogenized since “it refers to females of any status or age,” as McConnell-Ginet proposes. By universalization and homogenization, female terms generally lose their gender or role specificity while words to designate men seldom degenerate in such manner.35 In the case of the Tlatilcan figurines, the language employed to describe those females in the Type D1 group is not applied to their male counterparts, which are never called ‘boys’ or ‘pretty boys.’ Thus it was easy for Covarrubias and Coe to exchange the phrase ‘pretty lady’ for ‘pretty girl’ and ‘little ladies,’ respectively.36 Hence, the ‘pretty lady’ label situates even Tlatilco’s adult high status women within a blurred social and human condition that denies them the power to make decisions or exercise control over the forms, contexts, and quantities of the statuettes through patronage. Under this narrow ‘pretty within beautiful’ construct, it is not surprising that Covarrubias believed that Tlatilcan figurines were “models of feminine coquetry, displaying a variety of hair and headdress styles, and body paint,” while Bernal affirmed that “in grace and 33 34 35 36

Lakoff (1975) 20–25. Schulz (1975) 65. McConnell-Ginet (1980) 9. Covarrubias (1957) 28; Coe (1984) 54.

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simple sophistication nothing in Mexico compares with these representations of an ideal feminine beauty.”37 In his patriarchal ignorance, Westheim concocted this chain of errors and unsubstantiated assumptions: These figurines almost always represent women, naked women. For the men who modeled them in clay, and for the public who would admire their art—also a masculine public—woman, naked woman was the phenomenon that before all, excited and fulfilled their fantasies. Erotic fantasy, erotic dream, adopting form and character . . . [the female figurines] had no other meaning than the expression of the desires and yearnings which were the goal of the other sex . . .38

Unfortunately, the ‘Pretty Lady’ pathology stains not only the figurines but also the understanding of the women that they may have represented or the conceptions they symbolized. By considering the sculptures trivial in function and subject matter, scholars assumed that Tlatilcan society discriminated against women in the same manner that traditional western civilization has. The end product of such a discourse is that both figurines and women become unworthy of more than superficial study.39

Distortions in the Iconographical Interpretation Coe affirmed in 1965 that the tiny sculptures did not “function beyond serving as company for the dead in a future life, and for that reason they represented the good things in life, like pretty women.” The statement assumed that the protagonist skeletons in all of Tlatilco’s burials were male, even though the one burial illustrated and documented in 1957 by Covarrubias was of a female accompanied by twenty figurines, nineteen females and a feline, distributed in three heaps around her body. Later, Season IV’s excavations would demonstrate that more female than male burials contained female figurines.40 In spite of such data, the natural sequel 37

Covarrubias (1957) 24; Bernal (1969) Fig. 4. Westheim (1950) 171–172. My translation from the Spanish. 39 McConnell-Ginet (1980) 10. 40 Coe (1965) 45; Covarrubias (1957) 23, Fig. 5; and Laporte (1971) 309–324. García Moll, et al. (1991) lists a total of 213 burials found in Season IV. Of these, only a small percentage, 9.38% (20 individuals) were buried with figurines. Within these twenty, eight corresponded to female skeletons (40%), three to male (15%), 38

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to the generalized assumption about the female figurines as companions for the dead male produced further hamstrung interpretations. Mostly these entailed women’s reproductive functions as mothers and fertility symbols, a predictable outgrowth from nineteenth-century anthropological thought, which seldom studied ‘primitive’ women, and then only to highlight their maternal instinct.41 Consequently, from a sample of ninety-six publications that appeared between 1911 and 1985, fifty-seven mention ‘mothers’ as the preclassic figurines’ principal referent.42 However, until this day there is no count of how many statuettes represent pregnant women or hold children in their arms. Of the fifty-nine obviously female figurines in Season IV’s excavation reports, there is not one female figurine holding a child, although three appear to be pregnant.43 Nonetheless, the sentimental Victorian-resonating presence of pregnant or child-sustaining feminine images has determined their inclusion in most books and museum exhibitions, creating the false impression that they were archetypal of the preclassic. The motherhood theme and the figurines’ exuberant forms, together with the lack of more precise data from Tlatilco’s excavations, led 68% of the fifty-seven publications to assert that the female figurines functioned as fertility symbols.44 Lately the idea has become controversial. Two recent publications adhere to it, but a third questions the scientific bases for a fertility cult at Tlatilco.45 As early as 1952, however, Séjourné had proposed that D1 female figurines represented maize in its human form. The Mesoamerican belief that maize flour was the main stuff out of which the folk were created has been amply documented in the academic literature. Séjourné compared the figurines’ red manes with corn’s red filaments, and their bodies’

another two belonged to adult individuals too deteriorated to determine their sex (10%), one to a child (5%), four to infants (20%), and two to fetuses (10%). 41 Fee (1973) 30, n. 11. Following Schlegel (1977) 7, the emphasis on female figurines as representations of mothers is due to the highly valued role of women as the medium through which men reproduce themselves and enrich their patriarchal connections. 42 Bernal-García (1988) 14 and Fig. 2. 43 Count based on García Moll, et al. (1991). The burials and items are: 8–6, 121–14, and 128–3. 44 Bernal-García (1988) Fig. 2. 45 Uriarte (2003) 137 and Ochoa Castillo (2004) 10 in distinction from García Moll and Salas Cuesta (1998) 34–35.

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different colors with those of maize grains.46 Naturally then, the double-headed figurines would stand for the double-ear of corn, a symbol of abundance and regeneration in Mesoamerican cultures. Another feasible interpretation of the double-headed figurines is that they may stand for the person’s companion spirit emerging from its earthly state in shamanistic practices.47 Aside from the fertility symbolism, the majority of scholars believe that female figurines wearing hip-height skirts, and sculptures of both sexes wearing pants with tiny spheres clustered around their legs (compare Figs. 6.3 and 6.4), depict ceremonial dancers.48 The spheres would represent seed rattles providing a musical beat to accompany the dancers’ motions. Versions of this costume survive to the present. They are used in religious occasions, most famously the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe (whose antecedent is the Aztec goddess Tonantzin, “Our Mother”). Such dances and the music that accompanied them were normally very compelling. According to Fray Diego Durán, the natives believed that both sound and dance miraculously enabled those bones made of sweet paste to turn into Huitzilopochtli’s ‘own flesh and bones’ during the December feast of Panquetzaliztli.49 Participants in such choreographed prayers dispel Anton, Dockstader, and Westheim’s gratuitous self-gratifying secular fantasies of ‘bacchante-like dancers’ in a dance which is not social, individual nor sacred [but performed to] . . . entertain [a] public, undoubtedly masculine, to fascinate it with the [grace of feminine] movements as well as with their sexual appeal.50

An Alternate View Given the scant data that exists about Tlatilco, it is tempting to study the figurines’ iconography within the all inclusive “female is 46 Séjourné (1952) 55. Later, Furst and Furst (1980) 26 also linked the figurines with maize farming. Covarrubias (1943) 45 had already noticed the near constant of the figurines’ red hair. 47 Stone-Miller (2004) 59. In Central Mesoamerica the most famous two-headed female is the deer-goddess Itzpapalotl (Obsidian Butterfly). 48 Piña Chan (1955) 29. 49 Durán (1967 [1550]) I, 29. 50 Anton and Dockstader (1968) 15–16; and Westheim (1980) 192. My translation from the Spanish.

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to nature as male is to culture” paradigm.51 Nevertheless it is possible to advance some tentative correctives. Despite what some scholars envisioned based on modern parameters of artistic behavior and production,52 the first step is to recognize that whatever their sexual or gender attributes, the Tlatilcan figures were not produced solely to satisfy the artisans’ individual yearnings for self-expression. To the contrary, Furst notes how the careful disposition of vessels, jewels, seals, mirrors, and figurines about an interred body suggests a complex ritual fit for persons of rank. The practice also reveals that certain Mesoamerican mythic and religious concepts were already well established by at least 1200 BCE.53 Cognizant of the profound ritual implications of the Tlatilco figurines, an iconographic analysis of the wide-hipped female figure revolving on her own axis will now be attempted (Fig. 6.4; the rest of this essay will simply characterize her as ‘the whirling dancer’). Relationships for this object will be established with other local and distant preclassic cultures, and with postclassic and early modern Mesoamerican beliefs. Although this diachronic span is indeed enormous, studies generally agree that a common thread links the basic belief systems of these disparate cultural periods. This wide-ranging iconographic sweep is obligatory in a case such as Tlatilco’s, where the preponderance of the information is provided only by the visual appearance of the statuettes themselves and the scant data from the site. The whirling dancer was purchased by Covarrubias before the first official excavations began at the site, and hence lacks a proper context. It was surely one of the artist’s favorite pieces, for it did not fail to appear in every one of his publications about Tlatilco.54 Like most Tlatilcan figurine sculpture, if seen from the front it projects, despite its diminutive size, a monumental volume that transmits a vitality equaled only by the site’s zoomorphic vessels and globular ollas, and twenty-four centuries later by Aztec stone sculpture.55 This tectonic power necessarily harmonizes with the fluid, lyrical quality of the contour line. It is the smooth transitions between 51

See Ortner (1974) for a discussion of this overall classification. Covarrubias (1950) 159–160; Covarrubias (1957) 30; Westheim (1950) 169; Westheim (1972) 12; and Bernal (1979) 14. 53 P. Furst (1998); and Romano (1962) 415. 54 Covarrubias (1943) plate IX. 55 See Kubler (1984) 48–49, 105–107. 52

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line and volume that grant this, and other figurines, the sense of spontaneity for which they gained their deserved renown. As with most types found at Tlatilco, the figurine’s round forms turn rather flat if seen from the sides. Hence most scholars believe they were meant to be seen from the front, even though their backs are as exquisitely modeled and sometimes contain abstract symbolic designs. Covarrubias describes this figurine as “an exceptionally fat woman . . . in a dance pose,” and further speculates about the possibility that her white skirt was ‘worn for dancing.’ Decades later Kubler observed how the figure seems to ‘dance and caper.’56 Indeed the figurine spirals from feet to raised arms in a continuous upward movement akin to a top revolving upside down. That the figurine projects such a lively pose becomes ever more surprising when one observes that her forms are arranged based on interlocking triangles, some of them restraining the illusion of movement rather than liberating it. Her legs, two massive triangular pillars set on their axes, precariously support her voluminous body. A third triangular negative space between the legs acts simultaneously to fix her to the floor and lighten her weight until the massed flesh propels her into the air like a conical volcano with its wide horizontal base along the line of her hips and navel. From that base, accentuated by her narrow, fluttering skirt, the fleshy abdomen thins out until it reaches her neck and mouth. At this point, the head, topped by a hair-knot, sharply deflects the movement to the viewer’s left, transmitting and dissolving the weight into the crossed arms above that accentuate her twirl. The head itself becomes a shuttlecock moving round and round. Such a complex combination of static and dynamic movement, positive and negative space, around a central axis may be unique in the history of art. Three other Tlatilco figurines show the same pose albeit with cruder formal resolution (not illustrated). Fortunately, one was found in context, but unfortunately its sexual determinants are rather ambiguous. García Moll and his colleagues classify it as a male. The figurine appears to be wearing a zoomorphic mask and a loincloth together with an atypical ‘skirt,’ apparently made of several soft, hanging stripes. It was found interred with a nine-month-old baby. The sculpture formed part of a fourteen-figurine lot arranged in three groups

56

Covarrubias (1943) 45; and Kubler (1984) 48.

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about the infant’s body. The masked whirling figurine was placed by itself over the baby’s ribs as if to preside over the other three figurine clusters.57 Masks pertained to the shamanistic milieu, and many male figurines from Taltilco wear them. They were also found in burials, and many appear associated in a life-dead dichotomy as several authors have observed. The whirling dancer (Fig. 6.4) may be wearing a mask, similar to many found in tombs. If not, she certainly reveals ‘Olmec’ style cloud-like decorations under her eyes. These signs may be associated with crying rituals associated with rain-making. Replication of postures, as in this subset of whirling figures, must have meant something to preclassic societies. For example, an ensemble of seven miniature figurines, most likely part of a necklace, displays five squatting, one sitting with legs extended, and one standing. Each one rests its hands on different parts of the face or body. This necklace was placed as an indirect offering to a young adult. This person must have been important since its burial contained other luxurious items: Eleven jadeite and one rock-crystal beads, plus other fine objects like a bottle and several clay tecomates. Other miniature figurines found at Tlatilco during Season IV stand with their hands covering their ears, or sit with hands over their thighs, abdomen, hips, or shoulders.58 Two of these poses, in particular, show crosslegged seated personages with hands over each knee, or seated and standing with arms across the chest. More striking postures are displayed by certain Tlatilco vessels. These represent back-bending male shamans in extreme poses endured in the quest toward alternate states of being. This dorsal inclination “acts to position the shaman between states, preventing gravity from claiming him in any definitive way and allowing him to participate simultaneously in human bodily verticality and animal corporeal horizontality.” Besides representing shamans in transformation, the vessels most likely were used to hold psychotropic drinks to hasten or strengthen the trance.59 57 García Moll, et al. (1991) Burial 86, items 5 and 15, pp. 49, 113 and 215; and Masterworks of Mexican Art, from Pre-Columbian Times to the Present (1963) 5; and Reyna Robles (1971) pls. 41–9. 58 García Moll, et al. (1991) 66 and 151, Season IV, Burial 8, item 6, Burial 27, item 15, Burial 86, item 6, Burial 93, item 17, Burial 95, items 21, 24, 25, and 26, Burial 104, item 27, Burial 108, item 1, Burial 117, item 3, Burial 121, item 14, Burial 128, items 2–3, Burial 130, item 2, and Burial 144. 59 P. Furst (1967); P. Furst (1968); Reilly (1989); Tate (1996) 47–49; and StoneMiller (2004) 56–57.

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Tlatilco provides one of the finest exemplars of these containers, found near the hip of a middle-aged male skeleton. Furst, who has long studied the use of psychotropic substances in Mesoamerica, believes that Tlatilco shamans used them, since a pipe made of clay was found at the site, surely to smoke wild tobacco (Nicogena rustica), another psychotropic plant.60 There is evidence of this practice also at contemporary San José Mogote, Oaxaca. In Structure 6, probably a men’s gathering house, archeologists found a centrally placed, lime-plastered storage pit incorporated into the floor . . . filled with powdered lime, perhaps stored for use with a ritual plant such as wild tobacco . . . jimson weed . . . or morning glory [datura].61

In the 16th-century, the Zapotec, Mixtec, and Maya used wild, pulverized tobacco mixed with powdered lime for divining, curing, and increasing physical strength before raids. Marcus and Flannery believe that tobacco had the same functions and uses throughout Mesoamerican history. Although there is a span of more than two millennia between the middle preclassic and the postclassic/early viceregal periods, shamanistic beliefs and practices have proven to be extremely consistent in Mesoamerican cultures through the centuries and in places as distant from each other as the Valley of Mexico and Oaxaca. It is still one of a shaman’s principal duties to keep the world’s forces in balance, expressed by the Tlatilco back-bending male vessel, with head at the center of spread arms and legs in the form of a diagonal cross. All scholars agree that this bodily configuration represents a cosmic figure for the center and four cardinal and/or solstitial directions. It is a quincunx symbol that manifested itself throughout Mesoamerican history in different forms, called “movement” or ollín by the Aztec and other classic and postclassic Central Mexican peoples. This diagram was symbolic of the mythical fifth era, the one in which we live after the Fifth Sun first rose and lit the earth. The glyph was therefore inextricably associated with the

60 García Moll, et al. (1991), Burial 154. Similar practices were apparently carried out in preclassic Western Mesoamerica, an area that produced a large quantity of contorted male sculptures as discussed by P. Furst (1967) 131 and P. Furst (1998). The pipe is reported to have been found at Tlatilco: P. Furst (2005). According to the same scholar, this kind of tobacco is highly potent and addictive. 61 Marcus and Flannery (1996) 87 and 247, based upon several authorities.

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sun, the spatial configuration of the universe, and the ideal layout of a Mesoamerican settlement. Shamanistic visions were also induced by dancing and a sharp turn of the head,62 traits displayed by the whirling dancer (Fig. 6.4). This movement may have pertained exclusively to female shamans since no male figurines show this position—the masked whirling figurine from Burial 86 does not turn his head sideways. In Tlatilco, ritual positions may have been differentiated by gender, male shamans bending their backs and related to drinking vessels, females whirling and represented by clay figurines. Nonetheless, nothing conclusive may be stated about these proposed categories, since a clay figurine from the Covarrubias collection is of a back-bending female, while a figurine made of stone, apparently found at the Olmec site of La Venta (800–400 BCE), also represents a dorsally inclined woman.63 Considering this information, it is highly probable that both women and men practiced as shamans in Tlatilco, although it remains to be seen if there was gender differentiation based on prescribed ritual movements or poses. At Tlatilco and other preclassic sites in the Valley of Mexico, not only were contorted figurines buried with the dead but the dead themselves were buried in contorted positions. According to Romano and Ochoa Castillo, Tlatilco’s skeletons are in straight and flexed postures in all sorts of positions, with no two burials exactly alike. Burial 122 yielded a male skeleton with legs sharply flexed backwards,64 just like many back-bending male vessels and figurines. There are also interred individuals with positions resembling those of the gesturing miniature figurines described above: Burials 62, 63, 64, 70, 165, 189, 192, and 202. However, the contorted skeletons from Season IV’s excavations contain no figurines and no skeleton arranged in the whirling position.65 Nearby Zacatenco, a settlement within Tlatilco’s zone of influence and time period, did nevertheless yield one skeleton of an elderly adult torso of indeterminate sex whose arms cross above its sharply turned head like the twirling female

62

Stone-Miller (2004) 51, 58. Illustrated in Covarrubias (1950); and Covarrubias (1957) Fig. VI. 64 Romano (1962) 365–366, and Ochoa Castillo (1982) Fig. 4. 65 My thanks to Keith McElroy for his suggestion to compare the figurines’ body postures to the interred skeletons. 63

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figurines from Tlatilco (Fig. 6.5).66 Because Zacatenco’s burials display other postures similar to those present in the figurines found in context at Tlatilco, it may be reasonable to assume that Tlatilco and Zacatenco shared a common belief about these postures’ meaning. The site of Ticomán, which like Tlatilco and Zacatenco belongs to the preclassic Valley of Mexico horizon, yielded six skeletons datable to 300 BCE–CE 250 with legs bent backwards. Two belonged to elderly women, one to an elderly male, another probably to a middle-aged man, and one to a child of seven or eight years.67 Contrasting Tlatilco, Ticomán’s data suggests that women were identified with dorsal inclination as much as males in the late preclassic period. A correspondence between skeletal positions and figurines in burials was found by Marcus and Flannery in Oaxaca’s San José Mogote from the period when it had attained a chiefdom’s level of social organization (1150–850 BCE). In a small cemetery at the site those flexed may represent people of higher rank in comparison with those prone and fully extended, who may stand for people of lesser social distinction. Outside of cemeteries, the figurines at San José Mogote were arranged to enact small ritual scenes like the one buried beneath a lean-to attached to House 17’s entrance. Three were interred supine and fully extended below the shed, their arms crossed over their chests. A fourth was seated with hands on knees on top of the other three. All four figurines wear pendants and ear-spools as symbols of rank. The people who lived in the house and gathered under the lean-to may have had contacts with Tlatilco, since pottery vessels from the preclassic Valley of Mexico were unearthed there. Some of the figurines illustrated by Marcus and Flannery also show extremely similar positions to those of Tlatilco.68 Another indicator of shamanistic traditions among Mesoamerican early and middle preclassic sites is the presence of mirrors in burials, houses, or public buildings, since mirrors facilitate the experience of seeing into a reality different from common experience.69 Of the

66 67 68 69

See Vaillant (1931a) 189, illustrating skeleton number 19. Vaillant (1931b) Map 1, Figs. 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, and 16. Marcus and Flannery (1996) 97–99, 104, and Figs. 92 and 93. Stone-Miler (2004) 60–61.

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213 burials excavated during Tlatilco’s Season IV, only twelve contain mirrors, all made of hematite. These burials’ most salient characteristic is their numerous and sometimes rich offerings, a clear indicator that the individuals interred held a high-ranking position. Of these twelve interments containing mirrors, six belong to adult males, three to adult females, two to adults of indeterminate sex, and one to a young person. This information suggests that fewer women than men were associated with mirrors and possibly shamanistic activities. Although the three female burials all contained female figurines, none of the male burials with mirrors did. This data would indicate a preponderance of female figurines as the agency for female corpses’ success in the afterlife. To this sample may be added the woman’s skeleton illustrated by Covarrubias, for one small hematite mirror was found under her skull, another close to her hip.70 At the contemporary site of Tlacolula, also in Oaxaca, a tomb contained a couple with offerings differentiated by sex. The woman’s burial contained an iron ore mirror and the man’s a bowl carved with a depiction of the lightning-serpent. Moreover, in a small neighborhood cemetery at San José Mogote, most were buried fully extended, face down, with one or more pottery vessels and a single jade bead in their mouths. However, only men’s vessels were distinguished from the rest by showing a lightning-serpent decoration like the one present with the male at Tlacolula. At Tomaltepec, another Oaxacan site, “one high status woman . . . was buried with a magnetite mirror.”71 Hence, in preclassic Oaxaca women appear to be associated with mirrors and men to vessels showing the lightning serpent, a relationship absent at Tlatilco. Mirrors and lightning serpents are both related to sparkling light, the faculty of sight, reflected images, and shamanistic connections reached through lightning forces and reversed similes.72 Mirrors were also worn as pendants at Tlatilco, as was customary among people of rank in preclassic cultures. Two of the three young adult female cadavers were buried with a perforated mirror at their side. This indicates that they were worn during life. One of these burials, Number 27, contained four female figurines, the majority with voluminous bodies, wearing obsidian and hematite mirrors 70 71 72

Count based on García Moll, et al. (1991); and Covarrubias (1957) 23, Fig. 5. Marcus and Flannery (1996) 96–97 and 102. Stone-Miller (2004).

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on their chests, another indication that the woman interred wore the mirror as a pendant when alive. Another hematite mirror fragment was placed near a jade earplug belonging to a middle-aged Tlatilcan male, forty to forty-five years-old. The contorted white-slipped male clay figure in the quincunx pose later known by the Aztecs as their cosmic model of ollín is outstanding among the offerings. It is no coincidence that the burial also contained two small mushroomlike sculptures made of clay, forms sometimes interpreted as phallic symbols. No other burial excavated during Season IV contains this kind of sculptural form, a fact that marks this man as a special individual, probably a shaman and ruler. In classic and postclassic Mesoamerican myths, the sun’s first appearance in the eastern horizon is preceded by a ritual where deities consume hallucinogenic mushrooms and alcoholic beverages, pulque in Central Mexico, and leaders in Mesoamerica’s history were intrinsically associated with the sun of the Fifth Era.73 A pattern emerges that connects extreme bodily positioning and the use of mirrors by people of rank at Tlatilco. At least some of these may have practiced as shamans. With the information provided here it is impossible to discern a gender division in the practice of wearing mirrors, but it is clear that only a female burial contains a pendant mirror and female figurines wearing them. Finally, the association between a dorsally inclined male figure vessel, the presence of mirrors worn as symbols of rank or shamanistic practice, and phallic or mushroom-like sculptures, strengthens the probability that the quincunx spatial determinant characteristic of Mesoamerican town planning was already present at Tlatilco.

Tlatilcan Female Figurines and Earth Fertility Symbolism The generic ‘fertility’ or ‘earth fertility’ symbolism adjudicated to most Type D figurines is accurate as far as it goes. However, upon further investigation the fertility concept becomes much more complex than that envisioned by much of the academic literature until now. Figurines of Type D1 may not only have acted as a representation 73 García Moll, et al. (1991) 33, 68–69, 184–185, and burials 27 and 154, items 5 and 14; and Bernal-García (in press), based on J. Furst (1978) 204–205. Pulque is made from the agave’s sweet, milky juice.

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of corn-cobs, as Séjourné suggested,74 but as fertility charms to increase food production. In the early seventeenth century, indigenous peoples in New Spain still believed that small stone figures placed inside granaries had the power to augment the year’s maize crop and keep it from spoiling while in storage. The small figures, made of stone or clay, were considered extremely valuable possessions, so much so that they were passed from parents to children through generations, and their owners risked severe punishment by zealous Spanish priests if caught with them. Sometimes these figurines came in groups of five and were wrapped in cloth inside a box. The number here is important because it represents the pre-Columbian quincunx model of the universe. For this reason it was the custom to place the figurines at the four corners of a corn field or a house for its dedication ceremony.75 The wide-hipped, whirling female figurine may have also symbolized the mythical earth/mountain when it flowered and became bountiful.76 One of the vegetal metaphors for this stage of the earth’s flourishing appears to be the large calabash related to today’s pumpkin (Cucurbita Pepo). In the 17th-century manuscript cited above, Hernando Ruíz de Alarcón, Catholic priest and extirpator of idolatry, describes the occasion when a woman saw him coming while she was cooking. She immediately hid two of her fertility sculptures inside a nearby calabash pile.77 The episode may be dismissed as irrelevant if it were not for the metaphors relating women’s buttocks to large calabashes in Mesoamerican lore. Obscure to us and the Spanish chroniclers, these indigenous tropes appear rather incomprehensible at first sight. For example, Huemac’s demand for a woman with “hips four palms in width” becomes understandable only when the phrase is treated within the pre-Hispanic system of metaphors. Such is the reason why in the twelfth century the Toltec king’s assistants could not find a single woman to meet his seemingly flamboyant desires. None existed, and only the educated king could understand his trope. Huemac’s petition coincides with the Toltecs’ quest for a new place to live, a reborn city channeling the 74

Séjourné (1952) 55. Furst and Furst (1980) 26; and Ruíz de Alarcón (1948–1952 [1629]) 1: 377, 2:32, 105; and Duran (1967) vol. 1, 247–248. 76 On female association with the earth/mountain construct in Peru, see C. Damian, Ch. 3, this volume. 77 Ruíz de Alarcón (1948–1952 [1629]) 2: 33. 75

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mythical and bountiful earth/mountain settlement imperatives.78 A clue to the riddle is found in the Maya Zuyúa incantations, a series of symbolic formulae for religious and political initiation in question and answer format recorded in the Chilam Balam de Chumayel. One of these compares a large calabash to “an old woman . . . whose buttocks are seven palms” in width, even wider than the four palms requested by Huemac. According to the same Maya document, the old woman was a ‘maize-field keeper.’79 Given the function of ‘fertility’ figurines to guard granaries and cornfields in Central Mexico, the role of the old, wide-hipped woman in Maya society comes as no surprise. Back in Central Mexico, Huemac’s riddle may be solved when the Nahuatl word for a “certain kind of calabash, edible and very good,” tamalayotli, is analyzed.80 Etymologically, the compound noun literally means “calabash like a maize bun,” from ayotli, “calabash,” and tamalli, “maize bun wrapped in dry maize leaves and cooked in an olla.” Moreover, tamalli is the qualifying noun in the word for “buttocks,” tzintamalli, literally “the seat’s maize buns,” where the word tzintli names the hips, anus, and/or a woman’s vulva. In general the word denotes the “seat” or “beginning” of something. For example, when tzintli is paired with tetl, “stone,” it names the foundations of a house, tzintetl.81 The relationship between a woman’s buttocks, more adipose and rounded than a man’s, and the concept of ‘beginnings’ is not surprising given women’s procreative function, which Mesoamericans associated with the earth’s and the bounty of seeds a calabash holds in its interior. In fact, the word for turtle, ayotl, is almost identical to ayotli, calabash. The turtle was one of the Maya zoomorphic metaphors for the bountiful earth/mountain,82 a metaphor also present in Central Mexican images. It is therefore theorized that the wide and round-hipped female figurines classified Tlatilco D1, together and in particular with Type D4, functioned in the preclassic belief system as metaphors for calabashes and the bountiful earth. This metaphor leaves unexplained, however, the iconographic basis for 78

Bernal-García (1993) 178, 356; and Bernal-García (2001, in press). Mediz Bolio (1952) x, 56. 80 Ruíz de Alarcón (1948–1952 [1629]) 2: 105); and Molina (1977) 3v. 81 From tzintli, anus; Molina (1977) 3v, 90v, 152v; López Austin (1996) I: 128; and John Sullivan, personal communication, 22 September 2005. 82 Taube (1988). The turtle-earth also appears in the Codex Borgia: Seler (1980 [1904]) III: 18. 79

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the D1 male figurines with wide hips and thighs—although they are not as ample as those of the female figurines—unless one considers that the bountiful earth/mountain was also attributed with certain masculine traits. For example, the earth/mountain Tlaltecuhtli could be addressed as Lady or Lord of the Earth.

Conclusion It is necessary to set aside the ‘Pretty Lady’ dialectic used by the pioneering scholars of preclassic Mesoamerican art if progress is to be made toward the real appreciation of the figurines and their contexts, both female and male. The traits of Type D1 and D4 sculptures have led to their monopolization of the aesthetic discourse to the detriment of diverse other preclassic Valley of Mexico statuette types. By assuming that the female effigies and the women of Tlatilco existed principally to gratify their male counterparts’ ideals of femininity, the function of the sculptures was distorted into the paradigm of female afterlife companions for complacent deceased males. Due to the biased preferences of the critics, the relatively rare representations of pregnant or child-holding women were illustrated in publications as typical. Within the context of twentieth-century linguistic usage, the word ‘pretty’ (or in Spanish, bonita) demeans adult women into the status of children. United with the perfidiously apparent ‘dignity’ of the word ‘lady,’ its deleterious impact is magnified. The tag also prevents careful distinctions between role and class that must be made if the analysis is to be truly professional and exhaustive. Lumping all feminine representations together under a term, ‘lady,’ that became universalized in western civilization to characterize all women without distinction, blinds specialists to questions of female patronage or participation in the statuettes’ creation. The interpretation of the male figurines also suffered from the gynecic stereotypes. They were envisioned as avatars of inactive individuals waiting to be served and entertained in a society where diligent and caring men were rather scarce. The figurines are related to questions of fertility, but the ‘Pretty Lady’ model blunted more profound investigation by assuming that ‘fertility’ simply equates with female capacity to produce children. The effigies of both sexes are likely linked with maize and its primal Mesoamerican resonances of survival and revival. Details of their

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attire plausibly refer them to shamanistic dance and ritual practices that are a far cry from the patriarchal vision of female dancers in a chorus line for purely male titillation. This shamanistic imprint appears to result in statuette postures that are not casual but instead are semaphores transmitting significance. Dorsally inclined anthropomorphic hollow vessels that are part of the Tlatilco figurine complex, aided by the psychotropic beverages that they may have contained, could indicate the shamans’ quest for superior states of consciousness. It is suggestive that preclassic Valley of Mexico cadavers were arranged in contorted postures that appear to mimic the shamanistic configurations of the effigies. The whirling dancer’s motion with her tilted head may also refer to the alternate states of being and linkage with the divine sought by shamans. This is one piece of evidence among several that points toward the impact of both female and male shamans on Tlatilco art. Another is the prominence of mirrors associated with high class female and male burials in the preclassic Valley of Mexico, reinforced by their predominant or perhaps exclusive association with women in preclassic Oaxaca interments. Mirrors signify the capacity to peer into alternate realities and are thus crucial apparel for shamanistic practices. Just as placement of the effigies in just the right configuration was likely believed to ensure the regeneration of the buried corpses, it is theorized that they were also held to protect the perdurability of the house upon its dedication or of the maize crop in the granaries and the fields. The ample hips and mountainous shape of the whirling female statuette’s torso probably held associations with the regeneration implicit in the figure of the flowering earth/mountain, while her buttocks may have connoted the prodigiously fertile calabash containing its plethora of seeds. In this dialectic, wide and roundhipped female preclassic figurines in the Valley of Mexico would have served as metaphors for calabashes and the bountiful earth.

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Schulz, M. (1975) “The Semantic Derogation of Women,” in Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance, eds. B. Thorne and N. Henley (Rowley, MA: 1975) 64–75. Séjourné, L. (1952) “Una interpretación de las figurillas del Arcaico,” Revista Mexicana de Estudios Antropológicos 13 (Mexico City: 1952) 49–63. Seler, E. (1980) Comentarios al Códice Borgia (México City: [1904] 1980). Smith, B. (1968) Mexico: A History in Art (New York: 1968). Soane, C., et al. (2005) Pocket Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: 2005). Stein, J., ed. (1966) The Random House Dictionary of the English Language (New York: 1966). Stewart, J. D. (1974) “Pin-ups or Virtues? The Concept of the ‘Beauties’ in Late Stuart Portraiture,” in English Portraits of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, eds. J. Douglas Stewart and H. W. Liebert (Los Angeles: 1974) 6–43. Stone-Miller, R. (2004) “Human-animal Imagery, Shamanic Visions, and Ancient American Aesthetics,” RES, Anthropology and Aesthetics 45 (2004) 47–68. Tate, C. E. (1996) “Art in Olmec Culture,” in The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership. (Princeton: 1996) 47–67. Taube, K. A. (1998) “A Prehispanic Maya Katun Wheel,” Journal of Anthropological Research 44, no. 2 (1998) 183–203. Thomson, C. (1971) Ancient Art of the Americas from New England Collections (Boston: 1971). Tibón, G. (1967) Mujeres y diosas de México: Parviescultura prehispánica en barro (Mexico City: 1967). Toscano, S. (1944) Arte precolombino de México y de la América Central (Mexico: 1944). Uriarte, M. T. (2003) “Interpretación iconográfica de la escultura del Altiplano Central,” in B. de la Fuente, L. Stahnes Cicero, and M. T. Uriarte, eds., La escultura prehispánica de Mesoamérica (Mexico City: 2003) 135–140. Vaillant, G. C. (1931a) “Excavations at Zacatenco,” Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 32 (1931) 1–197. —— (1931b) “Excavations at Ticomán.” Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 32 (1931) 199–451. —— (1934) “Excavations at El Arbolillo,” Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 35 (1934). Westheim, P. (1950) Arte antiguo de México (Mexico City: 1950). —— (1962) La cerámica del México antiguo: Fenómeno artístico (Mexico City: 1962). —— (1972) Prehispanic Mexican Art (New York: 1972). —— (1980) Ideas fundamentales del arte prehispánico en México (Mexico City: 1980).

CHAPTER SEVEN

EL ENCUENTRO DE CORTÉS Y MOCTEZUMA: THE BETROTHAL OF TWO WORLDS IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY NEW SPAIN Ray Hernández-Durán

Introduction During the Spanish viceregal period in the Americas, historical representations played a prominent role in fueling the imaginations of Americans and thus participated in the formulation of identity and its expression, in particular, among creole and mestizo elites. Colonial art historians have long recognized the active presence of historical images in New Spain, most recently by noting that secular painting was dynamic and reactive to the shifting socio-political environments of the viceroyalties.1 According to John Urry, how societies remember the past particularly reflects transformations in and of the present . . . what is thus the past is constructed in the paramount reality of the present . . . while the present is viewed as real, the past and future are ideational or . . . representational.2

By stating that perceptions of the past and future are ideational, Urry points out that memory’s basis is in the imaginary. The idea that present concerns determine how one perceives and/or reconstructs the past speaks of history as a metaphor. Historical narratives, then, although constructed around actual events and figures, are malleable and can take numerous forms, particularly when dealing with multiple authors working at different times and places. If history is determined, in large part, by the present, what kinds of references would be included, how would they be configured, and why? For instance, which aspects of lived experience and/or dominant

1 2

Carrera (2003) xvii. Urry (1996) 46–48.

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ideologies in New Spain inform the visual references in viceregal history paintings? An anonymous eighteenth-century painting titled El encuentro de Cortés y Moctezuma is an ideal case for discussion because it presents a distinct interpretation of a ubiquitous historical subject in the American viceroyalty. The image depicts the initial meeting between the Mexica leader, Moctezuma, and the Spanish conquistador, Fernando Cortés (Fig. 7.1). This event was documented and represented in both written and pictorial forms throughout the Spanish viceregal period. Beginning with the eyewitness account by the conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo, references to this meeting include such things as the pictorial illustration in Diego Durán’s Historia de las Indias de Nueva España (1579–81), the later description by Antonio de Solís in Historia de la conquista de México (1684), and Juan Correa’s late seventeenth-/early eighteenth-century painted version on the Biombo del encuentro de Cortés y Moctezuma. Representations of this encounter typically portray the leaders facing one another and surrounded by their respective entourages. In certain cases, the two men are depicted in close proximity as they exchange introductory gestures. In the pictorial record, Doña Marina, one of Cortés’s indigenous interpreters and his concubine, is present only in certain instances; for example, we find her image in manuscripts, such as the sixteenthcentury Lienzo de Tlaxcala and the Florentine Codex. In the historical narrative of the Conquest, however, she is understood to have been a constant presence at pivotal moments in the succession of events, including the initial encounter. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, recalling the precise moment of the historic meeting, wrote: When Cortés was told that the Great Montezuma was approaching, and he saw him coming, he dismounted from his horse, and when he was near Montezuma, they simultaneously paid great reverence to one another. Montezuma bade him welcome and our Cortés replied through Doña Marina wishing him very good health. And it seems to me that Cortés, through Doña Marina, offered him his right hand, and Montezuma did not wish to take it, but he did give his hand to Cortés and then Cortés brought out a necklace which he had ready at hand . . . and he placed it round the neck of the Great Montezuma and when he had so placed it he was going to embrace him, and those great Princes who accompanied Montezuma held back Cortés by the arm so that he should not embrace him, for they considered it an indignity.3 3 Díaz del Castillo (1933) 273. The emphasis of text in italics is my own and describes the exact moment depicted in the anonymous eighteenth-century painting.

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Anon., El encuentro de Cortes y Moctezuma, fragment. 18th c., oil on canvas, Priv. Col.

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If we compare the latter section of this excerpt to the painting, we note a discrepancy between the sequence of events described by Díaz del Castillo and the anonymous artist’s depiction of the same event. The two leaders, portrayed in full length, occupy the central picture space and stand in extreme proximity; they face one another and gaze into each other’s eyes. Cortés, without Marina by his side, exhibits a deferent posture as he embraces the Nahua leader, who holds the necklace in his right hand. A mixed crowd of Spanish conquistadors and members of the Mexica monarch’s entourage flank the principal characters, creating a balanced composition. Jaime Cuadriello identified the emblem Concordia, which signifies a conciliatory, diplomatic gesture, as an iconographic source for this image.4 In the compilation of emblems by Andrea Alciati, ‘Concordia’ is represented by two men on a battlefield, who stand in the foreground of a landscape populated by tents and banner-wielding soldiers on horseback.5 The men stand face to face, as equals, and shake hands. Other than this physical gesture of friendship, no items are exchanged, although the act can be seen as an exchange of mutual recognition and understanding. The emblematic image is accompanied by an epigram, which reads as follows: Of kings, and Princes great, lo, Concord joins the hands, and knits their subjects’ hearts in one, and wealthy makes their lands. It bloody broils doth hate, and Envy down doth thrust, and makes the Soldier learn to plow, and let his armor rust.6

Quoting Otto Vaenius, Cuadriello notes the significance of the embrace as a spiritual fusion that “renounces personal interests for the benefit of understanding the diversity of the other and accepting that in two distinct bodies, one soul and will can reside.”7 The postures of these two men, Cuadriello adds, too, recall Judas’s kiss and his betrayal of Christ, in light of the melancholic expression on Moctezuma’s face, attributed to his recognition of the prophesied downfall of the Aztec empire and his own demise. If we understand the joined hands in Concordia as a form of agreement that establishes not only a truce but a new alliance, the 4

Cuadriello (2001) 263–292. Alciati (1608). 6 The English translation comes from The English Emblem Book Project, located at the following website: http://emblem.libraries.psu.edu/whitn076.htm 7 Cuadriello (2001) 277–278. 5

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encounter painting’s quotation of the emblematic model underscores its reading as a contractual agreement that produces a new sociopolitical body. This type of gesture can also be compared to instances in which tokens are offered, which, if accepted, seal a social contract with the added significance that acceptance of a gift obligates the recipient to the giver.8 Such exchanges can occur in a variety of settings, which include diplomatic introductions, signings of peace treaties, investment ceremonies, and betrothal rituals. In spite of the multiple contexts in which these kinds of transactions occur, visual representations of such acts may evince formal and symbolic commonalities. With colonial visuality and the act of gifting as common foundations, I suggest that this encounter scene can be viewed as a symbolic union with formal correspondences to betrothal depictions. I propose, furthermore, that interpreting this image as such reveals what appear to be references to what we recognize today as conditions that constitute identity, namely class (or rank), race (i.e. phenotype), and gender. Although a female presence is clearly absent in the image, references to gender and gendering play a dominant role in this painting via codified depictions of ideas of masculinity and maleness. The gendered aspect is not one necessarily, or solely, tied to biology but to certain social practices and iconographic conventions that reflect contemporary ideas of power and its expression. Certain elements in the painting also possess racial allusions, most evident in the varying phenotypes among the figures depicted. Given these two immediate iconographic features, I ask if the manner in which the subject is represented corresponds to a developing socio-political identity and the manners in which it was socially or culturally manifested in eighteenth-century New Spain. The painting, approached with these questions in mind, serves as a point of departure for a discussion of four aspects of Novohispanic culture that engage the issue of identity. These include the following: 1) the practice of marriage and its representation; 2) the conceptualization and performance of gender; 3) ideas revolving around ‘race’ and miscegenation; and 4), the intersection of all of these elements as part of an emergent American, particularly creole, (proto-) national awareness and agency.

8

Appadurai (1986) 3–63; and Mauss (1990).

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Any consideration of this image must recognize that we are dealing with two separate yet related things: the first, an actual historical event, primarily documented in narrative form; and the second, an image that, although referencing the historical event, draws from a larger visual language. Although based on a meeting between two leaders, the depiction can be read in relation to pictorial conventions that structure certain representations, in this case those dealing with exchanges, contracts, and/or unions. In terms of unions, we turn to established iconographic vocabularies. Although Adam and Eve represent the primordial couple as the parents of the human race, Mary and Joseph exemplify the act of marriage in the Christian context. Representations of this sacred union were codified in medieval Europe and are found in painted form as well as in print format. Examples of the latter, which found wide currency in the Americas as compositional models during the colonial period, include works by such artists as Albrecht Dürer. An engraving by Dürer that depicts the marriage of the Virgin and Joseph situates the ceremony in a temple. Standing in profile and facing one another, the union is officiated by a rabbi, who, positioned between the couple, faces the viewer as he guides the exchange of vows. A Novohispanic example of the same subject is The Betrothal of the Virgin by the seventeenth-century painter Sebastián López de Arteaga (Fig. 7.2). The bride and groom stand in quarter turn and face each other. A token, symbolizing their mutual contract or agreement, is passed from Joseph to Mary under the watchful eye of the rabbi, who is presented in a frontal pose. The exchange is publicly proclaimed to a community of one sort or another. In López de Arteaga’s painting, angelic hosts witness the ritual. Paintings of this subject by other artists, in spite of stylistic variations, include the same iconographic motifs, which are ever present in standard depictions of this episode from the Life of the Virgin. The formal elements in this image, which signify a contractual exchange, are also present in the encounter of Moctezuma and Cortés: a complementary dyad, an intermediary, witnesses, and a gift. But for whom would such a symbolic union have been relevant? The encounter painting, given its secular content and compared to commensurate historical representations, such as those found on biombos, was most probably displayed either in a private residence

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Fig. 7.2 Sebastian Lopez de Arteaga, Los desposorios de la Virgin, 17th c., oil on canvas, Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City.

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or in a government or civic building (Fig. 7.1). Paintings of the betrothal of Mary and Joseph would have been embedded in altarpieces situated in religious spaces such as churches or convents, or perhaps private chapels. Betrothal scenes, as all religious images, represented an ideal to be emulated. This is of special significance given that marriage tended to be a social act which was primarily contained within the upper echelons of Novohispanic society. Beyond the Church’s promotion of marriage as the legitimate coupling and proper context for sexual activity and procreation, elites had vested interests in carefully regulating marriages among their sons and daughters. Society in eighteenth-century Mexico City was composed of a highly diverse ethnic population, stratified by social rank and color. The vertical hierarchy was dominated by peninsulars and creoles, followed by mestizos or individuals of mixed blood. At the bottom of this caste system were indigenous peoples, blacks, and presumably Asians. Although racial mixing was prevalent between Spanish men and native women in the early colonial period, once the viceroyalty was established and Iberian women migrated to the Americas, a white upper class began to emerge. This elite class sought to maintain distance from the darker, impoverished segments of the population for two main reasons: to maintain limpieza de sangre, or purity of blood, and to preserve and increase wealth and status. Since marriage to lower castes would not offer any socio-economic benefits, kinship ties became vital for the augmentation and transmission of wealth and property, as well as whiteness. As such, virginity was a highly valued commodity for elite white women as it was through them that these networks flowed. Although chastity was promoted as an ideal for all women, it was of utmost import to elites. For the lower classes, neither chastity nor marriage appear to have been significant; rather, plebeians mocked what they perceived to be Spanish values and behaviors.9 Attitudes towards marriage, however, were not fixed throughout the viceregal period. During the first century or so of Spanish rule, individuals possessed some freedom in selecting their marriage partners with little external influence. Over time, as the boundaries separating color and class became increasingly

9

See Cope (1994) 68.

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blurred, parents, with the support of the Church, took more active roles in choosing their children’s spouses, motivated not by affection but by economic and social interests.10 What becomes evident is that through marriage, the relationships among members of a certain class were strengthened, producing a more cohesive group in terms of enhancing networks, preserving socio-economic power, and defining social identity. The recognition of marriage, and consequent kinship ties, as a contributing factor to a sense of communal identity among elites is vital to our understanding of the reception of the historical encounter as a union that symbolized the point of origin to a specific segment of the Novohispanic population.

The Performance and Representation of Gender An inversion is evident in the encounter painting, distinguishing it from conventional representations of the same scene in which Cortés is normally the object of veneration instead of the Aztec monarch. This observation implies that the painting may possess some kind of subversive design, raising further questions concerning typical illustrations of this meeting, the significance of such (re)ordering, and the possible relation of such symbolism to larger social values and practices.11 Jaime Cuadriello considers this shift by looking at similar colonial depictions of the encounter, where Cortés expresses awe and a respectful demeanor in the presence of Moctezuma and his court, and suggests that the patron, given the choice of subject matter and its form of representation, was noble and indigenous, thus explaining the painting’s ‘vindicatory and celebratory’ nature.12 Another approach in considering what an inversion of representations of Moctezuma and Cortés implies includes looking at this image through the lens of gender, not in terms of sex but of power relations, as culturally conceived, socially experienced, and, most importantly, pictorially rendered. The perception and expression of gender is distinguished, first, by biological sex and evident morphological traits, followed by signifiers

10 Seed (1988) 1–13. On marriage among Spanish elites in Mexico, also see Barteet, Ch. 15, this volume. 11 See Cuadriello (1999) 80. 12 Cuadriello (2001) 282–284.

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located outside of and framing the body, such as dress and behaviors demonstrating adherence to ‘appropriate’ cultural values. In the early modern period, these values would have included virginity, chastity, honor, virility, loyalty, and bravery. Gender categories defined social status and guided social relations, determining the power dynamics between individuals. Such categories and the relationships they framed were viewed as natural and/or divinely ordained phenomena. The culturally constructed nature of gender in the colonial social field, however, can be seen in those exceptional instances where gender coding appears fluid and not a simple issue of biology. Exemplifying this phenomenon is Catalina de Erauso, otherwise known as the Lieutenant Nun.13 In 1599, Catalina de Erauso escaped the confines of a Basque convent in Spain and altered her appearance by cutting her hair and dressing in men’s clothing. He then migrated to the Americas, where he traveled throughout the Viceroyalty of Peru, including both Peru and Chile. After a trip to Spain, he returned to the Americas, settling in New Spain, where he lived until his death. Catalina served the Spanish crown, fought in battles, dueled with men, killing several in the process, as well as seducing women along the way. The interest on behalf of mixed race individuals in marrying their daughters to Catalina expresses the significance ascribed to his perceived status, not only as male, honorable, and courageous, but as Basque and white. An important element in Catalina’s social identity was his clothing. As Marjorie Garber notes in the foreword to the translation of de Erauso’s memoirs: One thing that is very striking about the memoir is the materiality of clothing, and its value. Recall that this is a time period far removed from the mass production of garments and the availability of readyto-wear. Clothing was wealth and even identity . . . Catalina’s payment from benefactors and employers is frequently a suit of clothes, and she describes these gifts with distinct pleasure and gratitude. They help to transform her, again quite literally, into another person with a new status as well as a new gender.14

Even after his true biological sex was revealed, two facts facilitated the continued acceptance of his anomalous male status: As a bio-

13 14

Erauso (1996). Erauso (1996) ix.

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logical woman, her virginity, and thus her honor, was intact; and as a Spanish subject in the Americas, he had been loyal to the Crown and its imperial interests abroad. Thus we have an individual in this case whose gender was not determined by his physical reality but by a combination of personal choices, reflecting his resistance to accepted gender norms for women and his subsequent election to adopt male forms with the appropriate performative realignments. Such gendered elements are only legible when contrasted with their difference.15 As such, of greatest import in the performance of gender was its exercise in terms of power relations, whereby power and expressions of power are anchored to a polar configuration. Within this framework, power was synonymous with maleness and masculinity, while its lack was not female or feminine, as one might expect, but embodied in the form and practice of the passive homosexual.16 In heterosocial contexts, variations in status were made evident through the recognition of sex differences which were augmented by cultural signs, such as the formal characteristics constituting overall appearance, i.e. clothing, adornment, posture, and behavior. All of these coding mechanisms, alluding to physical traits, were culturally predetermined and socially inculcated into individuals from childhood. In cases where we find homosocial contexts, relations between men were defined by status differences linked to such things as regionalism, socio-economics, and ethnicity. Other codes and attributes had to be present in order to distinguish and manifest power differences between individuals, who, presumably, shared the same natural status and privileges. From a contemporary perspective, three things are evident in considering the significance of gender in Novohispanic social dynamics: One, when gender and its expression are at issue, what we understand today as racial and class status are also present; two, power, or its imbalance, was the basic matrix through 15 Judith Butler suggests that the signification of gender exists only in relation to oppositional constructs, whereby gender is a relation or set of relations and not individual attributes. She adds that persons only become legible as gendered when they conform to recognizable standards of gender intelligibility in any given historical-cultural context, producing what she calls a ‘matrix of intelligibility.’ According to Butler, within this matrix, then, one is one’s gender to the extent that one is not the other gender, which presupposes and enforces a binary configuration. This kind of formulation appears to describe, in part, the kinds of gender constructions found during the early modern period in the Americas; see Butler (1990). 16 Behar (1989) 181–184.

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which gender was perceived, understood, and exercised; and three, the male-female dichotomy was employed as a conceptual or symbolic framework, which could be applied to any subject, regardless of biological sex, as a way of imbuing social identity with certain values, thereby determining appropriate exchanges. The binary of dominant-superior and submissive-inferior can be viewed as gendered in various instances, where gender signifies power differentials, just as ‘race’ can be seen as standing in for social rank. The codes employed to mark identity in its gendered state in social practice find parallels in the realm of images. In colonial visual cultures, such ideas and values were captured by pictorial references to visible, recognizable expressions, which can be read as constituting what Judith Butler terms a ‘matrix of intelligibility,’ in this case, iconographic. This matrix included such things as costume, gesture or behavior, and relationships between individuals, suggested by appearance, posture, setting, and placement in the composition. The use of gendered pictorial constructs to convey cultural and racial power differentials developed fairly early in the postcontact Americas. A late sixteenth-century image, which has been discussed in terms of gender and colonialism, is an engraving by Johannes Stradanus, titled Discovery of America: Vespucci Landing in America (see Fig. 10.2). The print depicts the Italian explorer, who, having reached shore and disembarked, comes upon a nude female reclining in a hammock. The recumbent figure, stirred by this intrusion, is situated in a wild, exotic environment identified as such by tropical flora and fauna and the presence of cannibalism, an ancient trope for the barbaric Other.17 The female figure, unlike the explorer, is not a portrait of an individual but an allegorical or generic representation of the Americas. The nude female body, presented in an anonymous, dormant, and primal state, is vulnerable to the European’s gaze and to his intrusive presence. This kind of gender identification, extending to include all things indigenous and later American, continued throughout the viceregal period, where we find visual references to the gendering of Europeans in relation to the Americas as masculine, dominant, and active, while indigenous peoples were configured as feminine or childlike, submissive, and passive.18 If we

17 18

See Rabasa (1993) 23–48; and Schreffler (2005) 295–310. Tzvetan Todorov notes that Ginés de Sepulveda, the Spanish philosopher who

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compare an earlier representation of Cortés with the later encounter painting, we note how the later artist re-inscribed traditional pictorial formulae of this historical figure in a way that can be interpreted as a gendered form of expression.19 An anonymous portrait of the conquistador from the seventeenth century portrays him according to established elite male portraiture conventions. The viewer’s low perspective, the subject’s full-length stance in three-quarter turn, his martial attire, his posture, and the conspicuous presence of military accoutrements convey a sense of authority and action. Dressed in armor, his left hand rests on the hilt of his sword while his right grasps a rod signifying militant authority. Typical of such portraits is a table situated directly behind the subject on which rest gauntlets and a plumed helmet. Floating above this arrangement is a heraldic emblem displaying his coat of arms as proof of noble status. The subject’s stance with left foot forward and the armor with weapons project a sense of military and political prowess. This power can be interpreted as masculine authority, a gendered form of power reified by the phallic qualities of the rod and hilt. Viewed in comparison to the image of Cortés in the eighteenth-century history painting, the contrast is striking. The difference can be attributed in part to the status of one image as a

debated the Dominican bishop of Chiapas, Bartolomé de las Casas, in Valladolid in 1550, concerning the nature of the ‘Indians,’ following Aristotelian thinking, structured his perception of difference along a simplistic duality of good and bad, whereby the Spanish were identified with fathers and husbands, i.e. male/good/superior, and Amerindians with women/bad/inferior. Todorov states: “It is futile to speculate whether the image of woman has been projected on the foreigner or the foreigner’s features on woman . . . what matters is their solidarity;” see Todorov (1984) 151–154. 19 The development of pictorial conventions to signify gender, and their subtle realignments to suggest multiple gender roles, can be found in other viceregal works, as in Miguel Cabrera’s mid-eighteenth-century portrait of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Cabrera’s portrayal of Sor Juana, renowned for her intellectual prowess and exemplary life, is not of a novice about to enter a convent nor is she deceased; she is an accomplished intellectual and community leader. The nun is seated in her study, surrounded by her immense collection of tomes. The painting has been interpreted as masculinizing the scholar-nun, even denaturing her, in light of the framing space normally reserved for male figures. Such an interpretation, however, reifies the male-female dichotomy, eliding the fact that convents and a religious life provided many women an alternate space and lifestyle ordinarily denied them. As such, scholarly pursuits were not entirely outside the sphere of women but represent one dimension within a wider range of women’s social lives in colonial society. For a recent discussion of the significance of gendered settings in portraits of clergy, see Donahue-Wallace (2005) 103–135.

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portrait of the conquistador, following the conquest, while the other is a historical representation of events that preceded it (Fig. 7.1). What is unmistakable is the passive posture of Cortés in the later work, in which case a distinct power dynamic is implied. In the anonymous painting, the conquistador places his arms around Moctezuma’s shoulders while the Aztec monarch stands in a masculine and dignified manner. Moctezuma does not wear the token, as observed by Bernal Díaz del Castillo, but clasps it in his right hand. The Spaniard’s deferential attitude and his gift suggest the voluntary relinquishing of his authority, at that moment, to the Mexican leader; however, the contractual significance of the exchange, authorized by the acceptance of the proffered necklace, implies an unspoken obligation to the conquistador, foreshadowing the Aztec ruler’s hospitality and eventual submission. In various conquest period portrayals of this scene, Doña Marina is also present, not only as Cortés’s interpreter, but also as his indigenous female complement. This pairing, over time, becomes symbolic of their status as the progenitors of the mestizo population, an American version of Adam and Eve. Marina’s absence in the encounter painting, where she normally mediates contact between the men, emphasizes the phallus-centered aspect of the historic meeting. This is an event defined by men and the image emphasizes its masculine character.

Marriage, ‘Race,’ and Miscegenation In spite of Marina’s absence in this painting, where her presence commonly suggests mestizaje as a byproduct of her intermediary role, the artist appears to have embedded contemporary conceptions of difference in the image through the phenotypic variation of three principal figures, suggestive of miscegenation. Although in terms of narrative and historical significance Moctezuma and Cortés take central stage, there is a third figure who stands out from the crowd based on his interaction with the primary dyad. This figure is the Aztec nobleman, who, standing directly behind Moctezuma, protectively places his hand on the monarch’s right arm. This figure, as has been suggested, may represent one of Moctezuma’s nephews— Cuitláhuac or Cacamatzin—who belonged to the group of princes Díaz del Castillo described as rebuffing Cortés’s advances to the

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emperor due to their impropriety. In terms of racial distinction, what stands out are two specific features: one, the gradation in coloring among the unidentified Aztec, Moctezuma, and the Spanish conquistador, and two, the coloring of the crowd surrounding the foregrounded figures. Such references to phenotype were not unique in eighteenth-century New Spain. A genre of painting reflecting this interest, which has recently been receiving much attention is caste painting, or pinturas de casta. Viewed as reflecting the racial make-up of the viceroyalty, caste paintings are valued, in part, as documents that seem to provide some idea of Novohispanic clothing, trades, and leisurely activities. Although it was a painting genre whose production spanned a century and evinces changes over time, especially in response to the gradual effects of Bourbon reforms, at its foundation caste painting pictorially reifies an ideology of difference which is anchored to stereotyped traits viewed from the top down, and often from the outside in. As such, caste paintings do not necessarily represent what one would actually see in the streets of Mexico City as much as an elite perspective focused on social rank and quality, and a deviation from these traits through the progressive dilution of presumably pure, white, Spanish blood. Typical caste representations consist of 16 distinct vignettes comprised of a formulaic blending of two parents of differing racial status. The series are either painted on separate canvases or in a chart-like configuration on one panel, where the vignettes follow a developmental trajectory. The process begins with the union of a white, Spanish male and an elite, Christian, Indian female, producing a mestizo/a; this union is opposed to mating with the nomadic ‘barbarians’ from the northern provinces of New Spain, Apaches, Comanches, Chichimecas. The next stage in the sequence is the mixture of the product of the previous pairing, the mestizo/a, with a white Spaniard, producing a castizo/a.20 Often, within this pattern, the more diluted and darker the blending becomes, the poorer and, occasionally, the more violent and criminal the offspring turns out. The inclusion of a male and a female, along with the presence of a child who is phenotypically different from its parents, naturally suggests biological reproduction, alluding to the complementarity of such a pairing and its proper reflection of the natural order of things.

20

Estrada de Gerlero (1996) 42–57.

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Iconographically, these images are reminiscent of representations of the holy family, specifically those depicting Joseph, Mary, and the Christ child in the carpenter’s workshop, a subject, too, found in colonial religious painting.21 This observation can be linked to more recent interpretations, such as those made about the history painting in question, of religious overtones in secular works of art. The formulaic designations in these images, based on a pre-existing nomenclature, confirm that the depictions are not portraits of individuals but exemplars standing in for larger generic groups. What this conveys is that caste paintings were mediated pictorial expressions of ideas that pre-existed the paintings. These ideas were themselves anchored to and reified by language, which was an interpretation of certain aspects of an observed and/or lived social experience. Of significant import to this body of material is reception. Who was the intended audience? Many of these series were commissioned by peninsulars and taken back to Europe as examples of American types; however, many also remained in the viceroyalty and in the homes, one presumes, of elite creoles and mestizos. Would such images have possessed similar meanings in both contexts? Consideration of the conceptual elements underlying many of the caste series in the Americas would suggest a possible, if not probable, function as agents in an increasing awareness of a communal identity and shared history among Americans of a certain class. Although caste paintings, at first glance, seem to represent difference, based on their fragmented taxonomies, the presence of miscegenated offspring who are components of successive hybrid categories clearly implies a link between all of the artificial groups, illustrating not simply a concatenation of distinct types but a deeper ontological continuum.22 By

21 María Concepción García Sáiz and Ilona Katzew have identified European prints and genre scenes as subject and compositional sources for caste paintings. However, some sources could have been more local in nature; see García Sáiz (1996) 30–41; and Katzew (1994) 729–740. 22 Although race is a continual process and not a state, caste paintings portray each racial category as discrete and static, where A plus B always equals C, with no variation. Additionally, caste paintings, given their taxonomic configuration, not only privilege the white Spaniard male with an Indian female, as the point of origin for American reproduction, but they also present the illusion of an equal distribution of types throughout colonial society. For a more sophisticated analysis of race, which, although centered on the United States, is useful as an interpretive paradigm for the study of castes, see Omi and Winant (1994) 53–69.

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picturing all segments of Novohispanic society, simultaneously, could it have been possible that a sense of community was engendered in the American imaginary of viceregal elites in Mexico City?23 A caste painting by Luis de Mena, dated approximately 1750 and thus fairly contemporary to the encounter painting, speaks to this tendency (Fig. 7.3). De Mena’s painting is divided into four registers. At the very top, we note two scenes depicting areas in the environs of Mexico City: to our left, we see a group of matachines (native dancers who perform during religious celebrations) dancing in front of a church; to our right, we see individuals from different social classes partaking in leisurely activities. The two central registers portray 8 of the usual 16 caste categories. At the bottom we see a colorful still life composed of local American fruits. The Virgin of Guadalupe silently watches over this amalgam, privileging this location and its inhabitants by her presence. Not surprisingly, de Mena chose to begin the caste sequence with the union of a Spaniard and an Indian; however, and quite suggestively, the Spaniard in this representation is not a white male but a white female who has coupled with an Indian. The Indian, however, is not depicted as a civilized or Christianized indigenous male but in the form of the barbarian nomad derived from earlier allegorical depictions. This move produces an inversion, yet again, of a dominant mode of representation, as well as integrating a normally marginalized category. The entire composition speaks to an experience tied to time, place, and socio-cultural identity, an identity which was not Spanish or European but distinctly American, possibly indigenous and noble. Given the sensitivity to phenotype and social rank in the Novohispanic mentality, manifested as such in social practice, language, legal discourse, and imagery, could there exist a correspondence between the anonymous encounter painting and the concept of a caste structure that reflects a common concern of time and place? Unlike caste paintings where the presence of complementary malefemale pairings and miscegenated offspring denotes biological reproduction, in the case where we have two males represented, as in the encounter depiction, how could such an idea have been conveyed? Although Moctezuma was Nahua, his skin color appears to fall,

23

Anderson (1991); and Rama (1996).

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Fig. 7.3 Luis de Mena, Cuadro de Castas con la Virgen de Guadalupe. Ca. 1750, oil on canvas, Museo de America de Madrid.

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following caste formulae, somewhere between Cortés’s paler hue and the unidentified Aztec nobleman’s darker skin tone. Three additional features are noteworthy of consideration: One, the linking of the three male bodies by the hands that are placed on the central figure’s arm; two, the presence of a basket of native fruits, presumably an offering to the strangers within the historical narrative but possibly a reference to American fertility and reproduction, as in de Mena’s work; and three, the symmetrical placement and similar coloring of the Aztecs and Spaniards in the background, who, in spite of their contrasting garb and ethnicities, can be seen as a single collective. This conjoining of forces seems to be further emphasized by the crossed weapons positioned directly above the figure of Moctezuma, whose representation resembles a mestizo, unlike the Spaniard and Indian of lesser rank. Additionally, the configuration of the central figures positions Moctezuma’s body as a site of disputation between the Mexicans and the Spanish; however, his body also appears to become a site for the merging of difference. Finally, by focusing on the event unfolding before their eyes, the spectators in this scene call attention to their shared experience and thus the new social body’s raison d’être. If we consider the emblematic association in the encounter painting and look at the epigram appended to the concord emblem, we find that the message contributes to this reading of the background figures as constituting a nascent community. The first sentence, and relevant excerpt, of the epigram reads as follows: “Of kings, and Princes great, lo, Concord joins the hands and knits their subjects’ hearts in one.”24 The phrase, as has been noted, suggests the formation of a single community as a result of the symbolic gesture made by the two leaders. This appears to be the primary meaning that the emblematic association contributes to our reading of the encounter painting, validating its interpretation as a union, and thus, its comparison to the conceptually and formally similar betrothal scene. However, what was the significance of this sixteenth-century event in the eighteenth-century?

24

See The English Emblem Book Project website.

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In the seventeenth century, reflecting many of his compatriot’s opinions, the creole intellectual Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora expressed his disdain for the mixed race, plebeian masses of Mexico City; however, he admired the Americas’ pre-Hispanic past. The appropriation of a glorious Aztec historical legacy became a rhetorical device utilized by the creoles as an argument for their sovereignty as a class and a nation. Exemplifying this pride in the indigenous past as essential to the expression of a Mexican identity was the adornment of a triumphal arch, documented by Sigüenza, built to mark the entrance of the Spanish viceroy into Mexico City, not with portraits of European monarchs or Classical allegorical figures but with images of Aztec rulers. The argument for creole sovereignty stemmed in large part from what had been the longstanding marginalization of American-born whites and elite mestizos from top imperial administrative and ecclesiastic posts, as well as from various commercial ventures. A limited education also contributed to a lack of preparation, guaranteeing the creole classes’ marginalization in its own homeland. It was maintained by peninsulars that, with few exceptions, the American character was weak and expressed a certain intellectual lethargy. The creole response to peninsular critiques was varied. In 1755, as a reaction to Spanish accusations of the creole’s lack of accomplishment, Juan José Eguiara y Eguren published Biblioteca Mexicana, a bibliographic dictionary of Mexican authors. Although Eguiara focused on the biographies of specific individuals to prove the degree of intellectual development among creoles, an important element in this publication was the inclusion of indigenous cultural achievements. The creoles’ confidence in their identity as Americans and in their cultural accomplishments resided, in part, in the growing awareness of Mexican antiquity and its perception as an important foundation for Mexican culture.25 New Spain also had a brilliant classical past of its own, the Aztec, just like Europe had the Greek and Roman civilizations.26 The cultural blending that occurred between native

25

Brading (1973) 27–37. This is not unlike eighteenth-century European academic art production, where the ancient Greek and Roman past becomes a model for the representation of contemporary national virtues and patriotism, primarily in the Neo-Classical style. 26

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cultures and that imported by Iberian and other immigrants yielded an experience and worldview distinct from the European. The coopting of pre-Hispanic symbols provided the tools with which American elites could disassociate themselves from Spain and thus more ably defend their rights. The apparition of the Virgin, furthermore, validated the Americas as a sovereign creole homeland, justifying that class’s resistance to continued Spanish control. The concentration of power in the peninsular class was intentionally orchestrated in order to prevent a possible insurrection by the subjects in the American kingdoms, as well as to increase and preserve the Crown’s authority and wealth in the Americas. The result was a continual sense of frustration among Novohispanic elites that motivated much tension between them and the Spaniards. What began as a distinct American experience in the sixteenth century, by the eighteenth century had become a fully developed identity with political aspirations. Significantly, since most Novohispanic intellectuals were members of the clergy or were educated by them, colonial thought was often expressed in religious terms, such as in Sigüenza y Góngora’s promotion of the idea identifying Saint Thomas with Quetzalcoatl.27 Given the alleged prophecies of the return of the god in the guise of a white man, Cortés’s arrival in the same year dedicated to the Mexican deity legitimized the belief that these events—the arrival of the Spanish, the conquest of Mexico, and the formation of a new society—had been mandated by divine providence. Although mestizaje, in terms of racial mixing, was viewed as something to be avoided by white elites in the later viceregal period, the idea of blending, particularly as a historical fact of the sixteenth century, seemed to capture the unique properties of the American experience. For elite intellectuals the growing interest in sovereignty stemmed from the dream of a Mexican nation, composed of a noble indigenous past and a distinctly American yet westernized present, led by creole interests.28 The expression of this creole-cum-American identity in painting was accomplished in a variety of ways that demonstrate what

Although in the Americas the reigning pictorial idiom continued to be Baroque, a focus on history as a source for national identity and pride is similar and conveys common, growing interests in political sovereignty. 27 For a sustained discussion of Cortés and Quetzalcóatl, see Lafaye (1976). 28 Benítez Grobet (1982) 127–140.

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T. H. Breen, discussing colonial U.S. portraiture of the same period, describes as “the business of constructing a visual imagination out of the materials and experiences of everyday life.”29 Although clearly engaging established narrative and iconographic vocabularies, the anonymous artist of the encounter, consciously or not, generated forms that conveyed new meanings, revealing a combination of his own, his patron’s, and his society’s cultural assumptions and desires in that process of self-fashioning.

Conclusion Mestizaje, in the eighteenth century, served as a link that bridged the pre-Hispanic past with the elites of the then present. From the late nineteenth century through the early twentieth century, mestizaje was gradually reoriented and reconnected to miscegenation and transculturation, which was now presented as central to Mexico’s experience and status as a free and modern nation. It wouldn’t be until the early twentieth century, however, that the mestizo rubric would be expanded to embrace all native-born Mexicans, regardless of color, becoming the lynchpin for modern Mexican identity. An early expression of this idea took form in the work of the historian Justo Sierra. In 1916, Sierra wrote: The descendants of the Indians and Spaniards were the mestizos or castes, more numerous each day, of an unsettled and active nature, and destined, over time, to become the true owners of the nation.30

Claudio Lomnitz Adler, presenting a more recent, critical approach, addresses nineteenth-century racial politics in Mexico’s early national development, the discussion of which presents striking similarities to some of the ideas pictorially rendered in eighteenth-century caste painting but with certain modifications indicative of later cultural politics:

29 Breen (1990) 326–327, refers to the selective construction of identity via representations as ‘self-fashioning.’ 30 See Sierra (1925) 64.

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Despite the egalitarian rhetoric of liberalism, the ideal of whiteness did not disappear in nineteenth-century society. The dissolution of the castas into a ‘mestizo race’ . . . did not detract from the idea that whiteness was still the only position where wealth and high status were in homeostasis . . . the use of the term ‘Indian’ became synonymous with a combination of material poverty and cultural ‘backwardness.’ Class distinction was again framed in racial terms, so that poor mestizos . . . were called ‘Indians’ by the upper classes, while rich mestizos were ‘whitened.” Thus, the complex racial dynamics of the colonial period were simplified in the nineteenth-century into a bipolar model (Indians/whites) with an intermediate class of ‘mestizos.’31

In modern Mexican national discourse, the historic encounter between the Old and New Worlds yielded a hybrid modern Mexican identity, typically conceived of as the product of the male-female coupling of Cortés and Marina. In the anonymous eighteenth-century history painting, this mythologized union was captured in the bodies of the two male leaders. Such a focus on the masculine nature of Mexico’s political power appears to reflect, too, concurrent ideas of gender. Following Independence, during the early years of Mexican nationalism, we find the gradual production of a national history. Within the emerging narrative, one of the approaches to distinguish the historical periods framing the pivotal moment surrounding the birth of Mexico as a nation was a gendering process, whereby the colonial, Spanish, Baroque was perceived as decadent and/or feminine, while the Mexican, academic, and national was masculine and modern.32 We see the continuation of power relations in this configuration, where gender symbolically conveys the inevitable dominance and superiority of one over the other. The male figures expand the idea of reproduction and mestizaje, beyond that seen in images of Cortés and Marina, to include power and authority by highlighting the masculine character of the event. Of relevance is a more recent pictorial precedent that validates the reading of the anonymous history painting as a symbolic union with shared iconographic references to betrothal paintings. The work in question is a representation of the encounter by Diego Rivera, dating from the first half of the twentieth century, which is located in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Recognizing the broader valences not only

31 32

See Lomnitz Adler (1992) 276. See Widdifield (1996).

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of images but of representations of the encounter, Rivera painted the historic scene utilizing the compositional arrangement found in European and viceregal betrothal images. The painting, a grisaille mural at the Palace of Cortés, depicts Moctezuma and Cortés in profile and full-length perspective, facing one another. Standing between them, in a full-length frontal pose, we find Marina. Like the rabbi in the betrothal paintings this panel so closely resembles, Marina, through her intermediary role, unites the two men, who clasp hands as she gesticulates. Although this modern work clearly quotes viceregal betrothal images, it must be noted that the earlier eighteenth-century painting, although not a betrothal representation per se, contains the relevant iconographic elements that allow it to be read as a union, suggesting a shared pictorial vocabulary stemming from a common conceptual foundation. What we can discern in this remarkable eighteenth-century image is a transposition of emphases via the inversion of pictorial conventions, suggesting an intentional re-visioning of this pivotal historical event. Quite telling is that the coeval, layered references to identity that emerge in the reading of this Novohispanic painting recall contemporary discourses of intersectionality, which propose that the discernible grounds for identity, such as gender, race, class, etc., are interpolated and must be viewed in relation to one another.33 Whether or not Rivera knew the anonymous history painting is uncertain; however, what is certain is the shared idea of the historical joining of two cultural-political powers, which through the course of time would give rise to the modern Mexican state. Upon closely examining the anonymous painting, we find ourselves, once again, being drawn in as witnesses to the solemn union of ‘New’ and ‘Old’ Worlds with its implications of confrontation, negotiation, new alliances, and permanent changes.

Bibliography Alciati, A. (1608) Andreae Alciati V.C. Emblemata (Leiden: 1608). Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities (New York: 1991). Appadurai, A. (1986) “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value,” in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. A. Appadurai (Cambridge: 1986) 3–63.

33

See Crenshaw (1996) 355.

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Behar, R. (1989) “Sexual Witchcraft, Colonialism, and Women’s Powers: Views from the Mexican Inquisition,” in Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, ed. A. Lavrín (Lincoln, NE: 1989) 178–206. Benítez Grobet, L. (1982) La idea de la Historia en Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora (Mexico City: 1982). Brading, D. A. (1973) Los orígenes del nacionalismo mexicano, tans. S. Loaeza Grave (Mexico City: 1973). Breen, T. H. (1990) “The Meaning of ‘Likeness’: American Portrait Painting in an Eighteenth-century Consumer Society,” Word and Image 6, 4 (October–December 1990) 326–327. Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: 1990). Carrera, M. M. (2003) Imagining Identity in New Spain: Race, Lineage, and the Colonial Body in Portraiture and Casta Paintings (Austin: 2003). Cope, R. D. (1994) The Limits of Racial Domination: Plebeian Society in Colonial Mexico City, 1660 –1720 (Madison: 1994). Crenshaw, K. (1996) “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” in Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement, ed. K. Crenshaw, et al. (New York: 1996). Cuadriello, J. (2001) “El encuentro de Cortés y Moctezuma como escena de Concordia,” in El amor y desamor en las artes, ed. A. Herrera (Mexico City: 2001) 263–292. —— (1999) “El origen del reino y la configuración de su empresa,” in Los pinceles dela historia: El origen del reino de la Nueva España, 1680–1750, intro. R. Tovar, et al. (Mexico City: 1999) 50–107. Díaz del Castillo, B. (1933) The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico, 1517–1521, trans. A. P. Maudslay (London: 1933). Donahue-Wallace, K. “Bajo los tormentos del tórculo: Printed Portraits of Male and Female Clergy in Eighteenth-Century New Spain,” Colonial Latin American Review 14, 1 ( June 2005) 103–135. Eguiara y Eguren, J. J. (1944) Prólogos a la Biblioteca Mexicana, annot. A. Millares Carlo (Mexico City: 1944). Erauso, C. (1996) Memoir of a Basque Lieutenant Nun Transvestite in the New World, trans. M. Stepto and G. Stepto (Boston: 1996). Estrada de Gerlero, E. I. (1996) “The Representations of ‘Heathen Indians’ in Mexican Caste Painting,” in New World Orders: Casta Painting and Colonial Latin America (New York: 1996) 42–57. García Sáiz, M. C. (1989) Las castas mexicanas: Un género pictórico Americano (Madrid: 1989). —— (1996) “The Artistic Development of Casta Painting,” in New World Orders: Casta Painting and Colonial Latin America (New York: 1996) 30–41. Katzew, I. (1994) “Los cuadros de castas: Noticias sobre Fuentes posibles en grabados y pinturas europeas,” in Arte, historia e identidad en América: Visiones comparatives, vol. 3, XVII Coloquio Internacional de Historia del Arte (Mexico City: 1994) 729–740. Lafaye, J. (1976) Quetzalcóatl and Guadalupe: The Formation of Mexican National Consciousness, 1531–1813, trans. B. Keen (Chicago: 1976). Lomnitz Adler, C. (1992) Exits from the Labyrinth: Culture and Ideology in the Mexican National Space (Berkeley: 1992). Mauss, M. (1990) The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. W.D. Halls (London: 1990). Murray, S. O. (1995) ed., Latin American Homosexualities (Albuquerque: 1995). Omi, M., and H. Winant (1994) Racial Formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1990s (New York: 1994). Rabasa, J. (1993) Inventing America: Spanish Historiography and the Formation of Eurocentrism (Norman, OK: 1993).

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Rama, A. (1996) The Lettered City, trans. and ed. J. C. Chasteen (Durham, NC: 1996). Schreffler, M. J. (2005) “Vespucci Rediscovers America: The Pictorial Rhetoric of Cannibalism in Early Modern Culture,” Art History: Journal of the Association of Art Historians 28, 3 ( June 2005) 295–310. Seed, P. (1988) To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts over Marriage Choice, 1574 –1821 (Stanford: 1988). Sierra, J. (1925) Historia Patria (Mexico City: 1925). Todorov, T. (1984) The Conquest of America (New York: 1984). Urry, J. (1996) “How Societies Remembering the Past,” in Theorizing Museums: Representing Identity and Diversity in a Changing World, eds. S. Macdonald and G. Fyfe (Oxford: 1996) 45–65. Widdifield, S. G. (1996) The Embodiment of the National in Late Nineteenth-Century Mexican Painting (Tucson, AZ: 1996).

CHAPTER EIGHT

NURTURE AND INCONFORMITY: ARRIETA’S IMAGES OF WOMEN, FOOD, AND BEVERAGE Jenny O. Ramírez

It is the custom among the Chatino Indians of Juquila, in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, that at birth, newborn boys are given a machete by their fathers, and girls receive a metate and malacate (the stone base and stone instrument used to grind maize) from their mothers.1

This tradition not only establishes the future economic and social role of the male and female, but confirms the gendered separation of the masculine world of the outdoors, public, and active life from the feminine arena of indoors, private, and ‘passive’ existence. It reinforces the concept of man as the provider and embodiment of culture and woman as nurturer and symbol of nature. The emphasis on the maternal role of woman is traditionally anchored to her home, supposedly a place of enclosed, safe space. As the public workplace outside the home became the domain for men, women found themselves consistently relegated to the private, domestic sphere. Certainly the virtuous good wife and mother exemplified not only her own moral integrity but also that of her family, village, and polity. The kitchen was most notably the quintessential internal space that defined the culminating qualities of woman. The locus of nourishment and nurture, the kitchen, as well as the related spaces of taverns, banquet tables, and market, could be interpreted as the spatial manifestation of the fecundity of the female.2

1

Chassen-López (1994) 27. Tuñón (1998) Cap. 3, “Las mexicanas en el siglo XIX,” 97–99; Navarro and Korrol (1999) 66, 68–69; Marroni de Velázquez (1994) 219–23; and Lewis (1972 [1951]) 98, 319–22. All of these sources emphasize the gulf between the traditional late viceregal and nineteenth-century Mexican male’s prototypical ideal of female domesticity and subservience, as imagined by Arrieta in his paintings, and the social, lived reality. 2

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Nineteenth-century Mexican painter José Agustín Arrieta explored this traditionally feminine realm. Finding inspiration for his subject matter in his Puebla homeland, Arrieta repeatedly depicted food, drink, and their close connection to women. Exploring Arrieta’s world of females and food not only reveals the artist’s interest and concern for the nineteenth-century Mexican woman, but also for the traditional religious, social, and sexual connotations of the indigenous symbols of maize and pulque.3 By constructing genre scenes of women shown cooking, buying, and serving food, Arrieta not only confirmed the feminine secular role of nourishing mankind, but often elevated it to iconic status, as exemplified by his china poblana images. Embracing European models, especially the themes of Dutch and Spanish genre and still life, Arrieta meticulously and realistically rendered his poblano ambient.4 The verisimilitude of his works was a conduit for beliefs and values, particularly about women, in his midnineteenth-century provincial setting.5 Arrieta was born in 1803 in Santa Ana Chiautempan, state of Tlaxcala, Mexico, and grew up in a family of humble means. He moved to the nearby city of Puebla to attend its Academy of Fine Arts, where he was schooled in the European academic painting style. European works, most commonly available in graphic reproductions or plaster casts of sculptures, provided models to be emulated in both technique and subject matter. Key for Arrieta were reproductions of Dutch and Spanish genre and still life paintings, in which interest and portrayal of local customs and people were emphasized. Perhaps these European models were the impetus behind his rejection of the Neoclassic allegorical academic mode. Instead he chose to turn inward to paint subjects found in the local Puebla

3 The word maize refers to Zea Mays, a tall, annual cereal plant that in American English is normally called “corn” but is not the same plant as the “corn” mentioned in the English translations of the Bible. Maize has been the single most important staple food in Mexico since early pre-Hispanic times. Pulque is “a thick, white, Mexican alcoholic drink made from fermented maguey juice . . .” Stein (1966) under “corn” (first meaning) and “maize,” and Galimberti Jarman and Russell (2003) under “pulque.” 4 The adjective poblano/poblana refers to something of, from, or characteristic of the Mexican city of Puebla de los Ángeles or the surrounding state of Puebla that takes its name from the capital city. Galimberti Jarman and Russell (2003). 5 References to illustrations of Arrieta’s oeuvre in this essay are to those in Castro Morales (1994), who provides the most extensive treatment of the artist in text and plates.

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barrios around him.6 Arrieta also painted many religious images of saints to adorn church interiors as well as portraits for the aristocracy, but it is in his cuadros de costumbres, his works featuring the folk, that we can appreciate his true originality and affinity for everyday man and woman. There was not much money to be made in genre, but Arrieta seems to have sacrificed potential wealth and notoriety for the pleasure of painting the world he knew, immediately around him, until his death in 1874.7 In this discussion of Arrieta’s images of females, food, and drink, a selection of these paintings will first be surveyed and related to European models. Once defined, key differences between scenes by Arrieta and their European counterparts will be stressed to demonstrate how Arrieta’s scenes grew out of Mexican cultural history, both pre-contact and early modern. Arrieta painted many still life works that immediately connect him to the Dutch and Spanish traditions. In Europe these cuadro de comedor and mesa revuelta (dining room and variegated table) scenes typically feature meticulous realism and concern with surface textures, color, light, and shade as well as themes of the transitory nature of wealth, abundance, and worldly pleasures.8 Arrieta’s depictions of heavily laden tables, by contrast, evidently do not imply underlying messages of the passage of time, transience of the human body, futile materialism, or the vanitas subtext so frequently conveyed in Dutch discourse.9 Nevertheless, they do connect with seventeenth-century Dutch interiors of women as they sew, cook, and circulate within the domestic sphere. Arrieta’s Cocina poblana or “Puebla Kitchen” of 1865 reveals the activities and hierarchies of women within the social construct of food preparation.10 It can be compared to the Dutch work by Hendrick

6 Barrio is the Spanish word for a distinct neighborhood in a town or city. Galimberti Jarman and Russell (2003). 7 Ortiz Angulo (1995) 137–40, informs us that the artist died in poverty, likely due in part to the fact that “he did not make a living by painting portraits of the wealthy, but dedicated himself to painting taverns, still lives of flowers, typical poblano interiors, especially the famous kitchens of the area.” 8 For example see Jordan and Cherry (1995). 9 Van Lil (1998) 431, 460–74; and Janson and Janson (2001) 568–70. 10 No illustrations or plates of Arrieta’s paintings will be published with this essay. His paintings are well known and accessible in the public domain, especially in Castro Morales (1994). Permission was sought for the reproduction of the Arrieta paintings discussed in this essay, but it was not granted by the governing authorities.

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Sorgh, Portrait of Jacob Bierens and His Family (1663). In the latter various provisions tumble across the floor in the foreground—fish, vegetables, cooking utensils, and a shopping pail. The family members industriously occupy their traditionally prescribed gender roles. The husband holds a plate of fish, symbolizing his obligation and ability to provide sustenance for the family. The wife and daughters prepare the food: they judiciously manage the bounty provided by the breadwinner.11 In Arrieta’s kitchen we see only females, but the sexual hierarchy prevails here as well. As in the Dutch work, provisions and utensils occupy the foreground, providing a still-life vignette. Two women on the left prepare food while the woman on the floor grinds corn with the metate and malacate. On the right is the interesting tableau of a lighter skinned blonde woman who holds a tethered turkey while an elderly lady tugs at her shoulder and appears to whisper a private matter to her. On one level this may indicate, as Stacie Widdifield has convincingly argued with regard to another Arrieta creation, an “awareness of racial heritage.” She asserts that the juxtaposition of white skin and youth to age and darker skin could be read as “the process of mestizaje—that is, the increasing presence of the mestizo in Mexico—which brought to the surface, and to representation, an inevitable re-picturing of the national.”12 Cocina poblana can also be interpreted to represent mother-in-law hegemony, a long-standing custom involving the daughter-in-law’s servitude to her in-laws. Due to patrilocal residence, the motherand daughter-in-law relationship was highly compelling. A young bride often went to live with her husband’s family, assuming the role of a grown daughter in respect and obedience to her surrogate parents, the in-laws. The mother-in-law assigned chores to her, mainly the labor-intensive and burdensome tasks of grinding corn, making tortillas, washing and ironing clothes, and apparently in this case butchering and cleaning the turkey.13 Her dress, fair skin, and stance, however, suggest she is de jure the mistress of the house, although de facto she is beholden to the older woman. This dynamic is also patent in Arrieta’s undated Vendedora de frutas y vieja (Fruit Vendor and Old Woman). 11 The theme of Dutch women and domesticity is cogently treated by Franits (1993). 12 Widdifield (1996) 122–32. 13 Stern (1995) 92, 207; Socolow (2000) 150–51; and Navarro and Korrol (1999) 12.

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The famous Dutch drinking scenes or “merry companies” relate to Arrieta’s subject matter. For example, in his La pulquería of 1851 the predominantly male members of the barrio celebrate a political and military victory of a Mexican faction, as signified by the broadsheets that lampoon the opposition.14 As compared to Dutch merry companies, this work contains a more political narrative, to be sure, but is congruent with Dutch scenes that celebrate men with alcoholic beverages. Here, a woman joins in the raucous singing and celebration, suggesting a female incursion into the political, public male domain. Along with Dutch influences, Arrieta was aware of prints of Spanish works as well. In his undated Interior de una pulquería, men enjoy their sisal elixir in the familiar tavern setting while the two women serve them food and beverage. On the wall, Arrieta appropriated Velázquez’s Feast of Bacchus (1629), a suitable mythological scene for a drinking establishment and a marker pointing toward one of the influences on the poblano painter. Velázquez created a number of genre scenes in the early seventeenth century that were called bodegones, a Spanish term to denote genre pictures with figures, food, and beverage, deriving from the word for a humble eatery.15 Velázquez’s Old Woman Cooking Eggs (1618) and The Water Vendor of Sevilla (1620) carefully capture arranged objects with extraordinary realism and virtuosity.16 The chiaroscuro, predominance of earth tones, interest in varied textures, and elevation of common people to the subject of fine art are reflected in Arrieta’s output, particularly his El mendigo (The Beggar). Arrieta did not describe the meanings of these bodegones other than to indicate that they were simply visual transcriptions of the poblano world around him. Nevertheless, the fact that his protagonists for this genre tend most frequently toward the downtrodden— lepers, beggars, the poor, children, attendant maids—suggests, if not concern for their plight, at least a championing of their suitability as subject matter. Guillermo Prieto, the nineteenth-century liberal politician and writer, visited Arrieta in his studio in 1849 and was amazed to find that, after spending a day making the rounds of the

14 Pulquería in Mexico literally means an establishment that serves pulque, but it came to mean any plebeian bar or saloon serving alcoholic beverages including pulque. 15 Tufts (1985) 23; and Wind (1987) 1–19. 16 Brown (1998) 86–87, 108–109, and Pl. 150.

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city of Puebla, the artist was indeed painting what he encountered on a daily basis. Prieto concluded that “Arrieta’s paintings of the local customs and folklore were examples of his true genius,” judging them straightforward yet very intricate and picturesque.17 It is appropriate to compare Arrieta’s bodegones to Dutch and Spanish prototypes because he was clearly influenced by them. The European antecedents, however, do not completely account for the motifs depicted in his oeuvre. Despite his skillful ability to paint in a Neoclassic manner, his popular paintings of poblano denizens have a particularly archaizing strain. This can be verified simply by comparing them with the virtuoso academicism that he demonstrated in such paintings as the undated Mesa revuelta that displays the porcelain figure of the nearly nude Christus patiens next to a marble or plaster medallion with a high-relief male bust. In his paintings of folk customs and behavior, the artist consciously seems to have set aside what he learned at the academy to produce images that were more provincial and naïve in technique and closer to the folk tradition of the private religious votive panels called ex-votos or retablos. In this deliberate determination he strangely prefigures the artistic choices of Frida Kahlo, María Izquierdo, and other prominent Mexican artists one century later. Arrieta’s interest in the lives of poblanas and their inseparable connection to food and drink further reinforces his conscious rejection of what was academic, Neoclassic, and thus perceived at the time by the Mexican ruling class as “modern,” “constructive of better morals,” and “progressive,”18 pointing instead to the past, especially the pre-Columbian past. Two undated works that demonstrate this are Un matrimonio feliz (A Happy Marriage) and Agualojera (Woman Water Vendor).19 In these the woman is the dominant subject of the painting and the man is the chief benefactor and receptor of her fare. Both women hold either a food item or a drink, either a tamal, primarily made of maize, or a glass of pulque. Tamales and pulque

17

Cabrera (1963) 69. For this endorsement of academic art by the Mexican nineteenth-century elite, see Fernández (1983). 19 Both of these paintings are reproduced in color plates in Castro Morales (1994), Pl. 11, p. 34, and Pl. 52, p. 100, respectively. Neither oil-on-canvas painting is dated and both are in private collections. Un matrimonio feliz measures 143 × 95 cm. Agualojera measures 115 × 89 cm. 18

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appear throughout Arrieta’s popular paintings and refer to his indigenous roots. Both derive from the pre-conquest history and mythology of the Mexican people. Maize was domesticated in the PueblaOaxaca region, likely around 4300–3500 BCE. It was prepared for consumption by boiling it with lime, then grinding the kernels with a metate to form a dough or masa that could be toasted to make flat cakes known as tortillas or steamed and boiled to create tamales. Maize, then, for at least the last six thousand years has been the staple of the Mexican diet, the bedrock of Mexican civilization itself.20 The Aztecs believed that the god Quetzalcoatl fittingly climaxed his creation of humanity by providing it with the means of its survival, maize.21 Women received the god’s gift and took over its preparation, confirming the paradigm of male as provider and female as nurturer. Conversely, the mythical roots of pulque were more predominantly feminine. The principal pre-conquest alcoholic drink throughout central Mexico, pulque is drawn from the maguey plant. This large cactus requires eight to ten years to mature and then produces sixty to ninety gallons of juice for pulque over a period of a few months. The juice is extracted and allowed to ferment in vats to produce a frothy brew with an alcohol content of about four percent. Pulque was held to be invented by the gods, and consequently its precontact use was reserved primarily for festivals and rituals in service of these gods.22 A close association between maguey-pulque, fertility, and agriculture is suggested by the importance of Mayahuel, the goddess of pulque, who appeared in earth-mother form with four hundred breasts.23 The association of pulque with divine femininity was repeated and assimilated into the symbol of the Virgin of Guadalupe, who was proclaimed the mother of the maguey. In viceregal times pulque, although never completely estranged from its religious past, began to be drunk more frequently and in a more secular context. From its ancient origins, then, the beverage was associated with the female

20

Coe and Koontz (2002) 12 and 30–33. Brundage (1982) 93–95; Nicholson (1985) 80–81; Brundage (1983) 78; and Coe and Koontz (2002) 30. 22 Taylor (1979) 32–34. 23 Brundage (1983) 158; and Nicholson (1985) 68. 21

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and with fertility. This nexus persisted in the nineteenth century on a broader economic and social scale. Women played an important role in the sale and distribution of pulque. They were typically the ones in charge of distributing the drink, either at a pulquería or from the doorways of their homes. Although women drank pulque, particularly during fiestas, in general ritual and social drinking were reserved for men. The women would serve the brew, but the men were the recipients of it. The association of female attributes with pulque also carried over to its medicinal use by pregnant women. Women who had just given birth received the drink in order to regain strength and lactate. They also may have used it during the menstrual period to achieve cessation of the blood flow.24 By consistently associating maize and pulque with women, Arrieta confirmed the fecundity of the female and connected her to the ancient Mexican past. His images were a deliberate construction of feminine virtues appropriate to domesticity. The naturalism and conspicuous placement of food and beverage invite the viewer to appreciate these items in their detailed realism and contemplate their meanings as signs of female attributes and virtues. Despite their deliberately archaizing technique, seen in the vibrant local color, stagelike setting, and shallow space, Arrieta’s depictions of kitchens, taverns, and markets were shaped by a firmly established system of beliefs and values concerning women and their function and placement within the patriarchal social order of the day. Nevertheless, Arrieta moves subtly beyond simple confirmation of women’s subservient social position. By depicting predominantly women in his bodegones, he not only revealed a keen interest in the female realm, but also sympathy or at least cognizance of their plight within their prescribed roles. In China poblana (c. 1865) and La sirvienta (The Servant Woman, undated) a single standing woman holding a platter of food looks out either coyly or beseechingly at the viewer. By minimizing the background, particularly in China poblana, the female takes on a near iconic role.25 Frozen in time, she eternally serves. Like twentieth-century female symbols who sell products, Aunt Jemima on pancake mix boxes and the St. Pauli and Miller Life girls who

24

Taylor (1979) 30–45, 53–54, and 57–63. China poblana is dated to ca. 1865, oil on canvas, 90.5 × 71 cm., priv. col. See Castro Morales (1994), Pl. 142, p. 223. 25

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proudly purvey beer, the female body is turned into a commodity or even sanctified. The china poblana was a local Puebla folk type and distorted generalization that was assuming national significance as a social cynosure embodying essential traits of Mexican womanhood precisely during Arrieta’s lifetime.26 She was popularly known as a seductress, possibly a prostitute. Arrieta has elevated this questionable figure to iconic status while simultaneously confirming the feminine role as server and nurturer of man. The subject of La sirvienta, unlike the China poblana, expresses a sense of weariness and is thus perhaps a sympathetic portrayal of the downtrodden, subservient position of the maid in waiting. Prieto recalled of his 1849 visit to Puebla City that the citizens in the town square would say to him “don’t tire yourself . . . the attendant maids will take care of everything.” He concluded “Here, everyone has an attendant maid.”27 Arrieta’s scenes of women in their domestic environ confirm the male ideal of the traditional roles of women in the poblano countryside, but on another level they consciously probe the edges of those roles. La pensativa (The Pensive Woman, 1851) reveals a crowded and cramped space where a soldier and village man converse, flanked by three women and a child and the obligatory food platter. In the center, a young woman stares off into space. Arrieta marked her as the principal protagonist of the composition by her centrality, her distinction from the discourse followed by everyone else, and in the work’s title. She does not listen to the men, nor does she pay attention to the women or child, as if nostalgically imagining herself into a new female paradigm to escape and transcend the expected subservience. Several paintings such as Puesto de agualoja (Water Vending Stall, 1860) and Interior de una pulquería depict busy scenes of men eating and women serving, but always there is one woman who acknowledges the presence of the viewer, either obsequiously or pitifully. She seems to invite the spectator through complicity to critique the scene rather than simply take it for granted as a display of consecrated customs. The most disarming example of this exchange is Arrieta’s La borracha (The Drunken Woman, undated).28 Like the China poblana, this 26

Gugliotta (1989) 68–70; and Tuñón (1998) 65. Cabrera (1963) 70. 28 La Borracha is an oil on canvas, 95 × 77 cm., priv. col. See Castro Morales (1994), Pl. 157, p. 242. 27

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woman is depicted in an indeterminate enclosed blank space, accompanied by a young woman who simultaneously presents and attempts to remedy her nudity, and a boy whose pose is more ambiguous. The woman has been partaking of the pulque that she is only supposed to serve. Her torn dress, braided hair, wrinkled and flawed face, and obviously disheveled appearance with one breast exposed reveal her to be of the lowest classes. Still, she stands in a pose similar to that of the iconic China poblana. Here Arrieta is ironic: The accoutrements of her womanhood, the breast and the pulque, are offered mockingly to the viewer. Nevertheless, she beholds the observer directly, challenging the stereotype of females, food, and fertility. She, like the biblical Eve, has partaken of the forbidden fruit. Arrieta’s drunk woman confronts and challenges the viewer and, by extension, patriarchal society, mocking and even eclipsing her fertility and thus overthrowing the female role in the contemporary social structure of the day. She is a pelada, the female counterpart of Octavio Paz’s Mexican pelado, literally “the peeled, the revealed, the deflowered one,” who denies, flees, or demolishes the accepted mores in order to achieve the freedom within chaos.29 For her, “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose . . .”30 Arrieta’s images of females, food, and beverage offer a fascinating window onto the lives of the folk in the state of Puebla in midnineteenth-century Mexico. Influenced by European models of still life and domestic interiors combined with the pre-contact connotations of maize and pulque, Arrieta invented a complex construction of ideal femininity, fertility, and domesticity. His popular cuadros de costumbres confirmed the role of women as subservient nurturers of men, but also subtly probed this very convention. Unfortunately Arrieta’s motivations for these works are not known, but his portrayals of women and sustenance offer compelling food for thought through careful formal analysis.

29 Paz ([1950] 2000) 19–23, uses the term pachuco rather than pelado, but it is the term pelado that has maintained its archetypal hold on the Mexican folk imagination for more than a century, not pachuco. 30 Dalton (1971) 190–92, lyrics from the song “Me and Bobby McGee.”

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Bibliography Brown, J. (1998) Painting in Spain 1500–1700 (New Haven: 1998). Brundage, B. (1982) The Phoenix of the Western World: Quetzalcoatl and the Sky Religion (Norman, OK: 1982). —— (1983) The Fifth Sun: Aztec Gods, Aztec World (Austin: 1983). Cabrera, F. (1963) Agustín Arrieta, pintor costumbrista (Mexico City: 1963). Castro Morales, E. (1994) Homenaje nacional: José Agustín Arrieta (1803–1874) (Mexico City: 1994). Chassen-López, F. R. (1994) “‘Cheaper than Machines’: Women and Agriculture in Porfirian Oaxaca, 1880–1911,” in Women of the Mexican Countryside, 1850–1990, eds. H. Fowler-Salamini and M. K. Vaughan (Tucson: 1994). Coe, M. D., and R. Koontz (2002) Mexico from the Olmecs to the Aztecs (London: 2002). Dalton, D. (1971) Janis (New York: 1971). Fernández, J. (1983) El arte del siglo XIX en México (Mexico City: 1983). Franits, W. E. (1993) Paragons of Virtue: Women and Domesticity in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art (Cambridge: 1993). Galimberti Jarman, B., and R. Russell (2003) eds., The Oxford Spanish Dictionary (Oxford: 2003). Gugliotta, B. (1989) Women of Mexico: The Consecrated and the Commoners (Encino, CA: 1989). Janson, H. W., and A. F. Janson (2001) History of Art (Upper Saddle River, NJ: 2001). Jordan, W. B., and P. Cherry (1995) Spanish Still Life from Velázquez to Goya (London: 1995). Lewis, O. (1972 [1951]) Life in a Mexican Village: Tepoztlán Restudied (Urbana, IL: 1972 [1951]. Marroni de Velázquez, M. da G. (1994) “Changes in Rural Society and Domestic Labor in Atlixco, Puebla, 1940–1990,” in Women of the Mexican Countryside, 1850–1990, eds. H. Fowler-Salamini and M. K. Vaughan (Tucson: 1994). Navarro, M., and V. S. Korrol (1999) Women in Latin America and the Caribbean (Bloomington, IN: 1999). Nicholson, I. (1985) Mexican and Central American Mythology (New York: 1985). Ortiz Angulo, A. (1995) La pintura mexicana independiente de la Academia en el siglo XIX (Mexico City: 1995). Paz, O. (2000) El laberinto de la soledad (Mexico City: 2000 [1950]). Socolow, S. M. (2000) The Women of Colonial Latin America (Cambridge: 2000). Stein, J. (1966) ed., The Random House Dictionary of the English Language (New York: 1966). Stern, S. J. (1995) The Secret History of Gender: Women, Men, and Power in Late Colonial Mexico (Chapel Hill, NC: 1995). Taylor, W. B. (1979) Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages (Stanford: 1979). Tufts, E. (1985) Luis Meléndez (Columbia, MO: 1985). Tuñón, J. (1998) Mujeres en México: Recordando una historia (Mexico City: 1998). Van Lil, K. (1998): “Painting in the Netherlands, Germany, and England in the Seventeenth Century,” in Baroque, ed. Rolf Toman (Köln: 1998). Widdifield, S. G. (1996) The Embodiment of the National in Late Nineteenth-Century Mexican Painting (Tucson: 1996). Wind, B. (1987) Velázquez’s Bodegones (Fairfax, VA: 1987).

PART THREE

CONSOLIDATION: THE QUALIFYING AND TAMING OF THE NEW WORLD/FEMALE BODY WITH SIGNIFIEDS

CHAPTER NINE

CLOTHING WOMEN: THE FEMALE BODY IN PRE- AND POST-CONTACT AZTEC ART Lori Boornazian Diel

If, as Anne Hollander writes, “The more significant clothing is, the more meaning attaches to its absence,” then for both Spaniards and Nahuas, who went about in everyday life dressed, the lack of clothing was significant indeed; accordingly, occasions for nudity were charged with meaning. However, this meaning differed in the two cultures. Hollander continues: “Occasions for nakedness often have to do with sex, and so among those for whom sex was associated with shame, a sense of the shamefulness of nudity could arise.”1 Indeed, Christian Spaniards associated sex and its corollary nakedness with shame, but not so the Nahuas. These opposing views clearly came into conflict in sixteenth-century New Spain. For Spanish clergy, who tended to see things in terms of moral absolutes, sexuality was identified with sin and the devil himself.2 In a system in which abstinence was promoted, temptation had to be combated. And as the main force of temptation, women were particularly feared for what was believed to be their seductive natures. For Christian Spaniards, then, the sight of a nude woman was a shameful thing because it had the power to inspire lascivious thoughts and behavior. In short, the exposed female body leads to immorality, a short step from heresy. Thus, for Spaniards, clothing for women was not considered protection from the elements; instead, it was a way for women to cover and thereby protect themselves from the

1 Hollander (1978) 83–84. Some of the reports on the indigenous peoples from the 1580s, known as the Relaciones geográficas, mention that the natives of Central Mexico went about ‘desnudos,’ but this seems to be a projection. The early chroniclers often compared the clothed natives of Central Mexico to the naked peoples of the Caribbean; Alves (1996) 118; and Herren (1991) 174. 2 Tentler (1977) 165; and Burkhart (1989) 26, 100.

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sexual gaze of men.3 For this reason, images of the naked female body were rare in Spanish art of the Medieval and early Renaissance periods, especially when compared to the art of other European nations.4 An image of an unclothed woman acts on the perceptual level and provides the illusion of a real woman; therefore, it has the power to morally corrupt just as an actual nude woman would.5 Moreover, the naked female body is most closely associated with Eve in contrast to the clothed and virtuous Mary. As Mary Perry points out, the Spanish clergy’s promotion of Mary as the idealization of female purity and antithesis of the evil Eve was an attempt to deny female sexuality and promote the belief that it was sinful. In short, the naked female body was seen in negative terms because of its association with sin, sexual lust, and evil.6 In contrast, the Nahuas had a more ambivalent perspective. For them, sex was considered a gift from the gods, necessary so that life continue. Nevertheless, to keep balance and stop chaos, moderation was key.7 Thus, in this system, the exposed female body also communicated sexuality, but at the same time it carried a more ambivalent meaning, having both positive and negative associations. On the one hand, the exposed female body suggests the positive notions of motherhood and fertility, while on the other hand, it carries the negative connotations of fertility unfulfilled and even death and defeat. Advocating abstinence, the Spanish clergy were concerned with what they considered the sexual excesses of the Nahuas.8 Therefore, the issue of sexuality became a focus in the conversion process. As a symbol of sexuality in both cultures, the female body became an area of contestation in this process.9 In this article, I examine repre3

Alves (1996) 109. For more on the rarity of the naked female body in Spanish art, see Brown (1998, 179); Moffitt (1999) 158; and Prater (2002). 5 Due to the sexualized nature of the breast, I treat exposed breasts as instances of nudity throughout this paper. See Yalom (1997) 74 and (1986) 201. 6 Perry (1990) 41; Hollander (1978) 84; and Miles (1989) 81. 7 Quezada (1994); and Burkhart (1989) 150. 8 Burkhart (1989) 150. 9 Many scholars have written on the Spanish clergy’s concern with sexuality in colonial Mexico. For examples, see Arvey (1988); Burkhart (1989); Gruzinski (1989); Lavrin (1989); Herren (1991); Quezada (1994); Klein (1995); and Alves (1996). Also, Silverblatt (1998); Harrison (1994); and Graubart (2000) deal with the same issue in terms of Viceregal Peru. For more on issues of sexuality and the conquest of the Americas, see Trexler (1995). 4

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sentations of women and goddesses created by indigenous artists in the early colonial period, and I show that some Nahua artists either obscured nudity in their works or clothed women and goddesses who were traditionally seen uncovered. By comparing these representations to their pre-conquest counterparts and then placing them in their colonial contexts, I argue that a new Spanish view of the female body as a source of evil and temptation was picked up by some artists and melded into their pictorial writings. At stake here is a loss of the traditional symbolic significance of the exposed female body to the Nahuas, from an ambivalent meaning of both life-giving potential and the problems of that potential unfulfilled to the largely negative Christian meaning of sinfulness, barbarity, and evil. Thus, in both the Spanish and Nahua worlds, the female body was a potent symbol of transgression and potential power, but for the Spaniards this power had to be neutralized so that a successful Christian conversion could take place.

Sacrificial Women As the Mexica people, future leaders of the Aztec empire, migrated to the Valley of Mexico, forces from more established cities attacked them, taking their tribal leader(s) and his daughter(s) captive and sacrificing them. A sixteenth-century pictorial history called the Tira de Tepechpan (Fig. 9.1) shows these events in episodic fashion. In the middle, we see the outbreak of war. Reading to the left, warriors take a male and female captive, leading them by the hands. Footprints then guide the narrative sequence to the upper right and end at a representation of a man and woman, presumably the two who were earlier captured. The man is identified by a name glyph as Huitzilihuitl (Hummingbird Feather), tribal leader of the Mexica migrants, and the woman is his daughter Tozpanxóchitl (Banner Flower). A number of pictorial conventions communicate their impending sacrifice. For example, both wear heron feathers in their hair and black bands around their eyes, symbolic of sacrifice in the Aztec iconographic system. Moreover, Huitzilihuitl wears only a loincloth and Tozpanxóchitl wears only a skirt; the huipil, or “tunic,” she wore when taken captive has now been removed and her breasts are exposed.

Fig. 9.1 Capture and Sacrifice of Huitzilihuitl and his Daughter, Tira de Tepechpan (after Aubin 1848–1851).

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These same events are seen in the Codex Azcatitlán. In this manuscript, Huitzilihuitl is shown with two daughters, and warriors more forcefully grab the Mexica migrants by the hair, indicating their capture (Fig. 9.2). Whereas earlier in this manuscript Huitzilihuitl wore a full-length mantle, now he wears just a loincloth, and the captured daughters wear only skirts and no shirts. Again, their lack of clothing suggests defeat, as it did in the Tira. It is important to note, however, that the painter of the Azcatitlán poses the figures so that their backs are to the viewer, in an apparent attempt to shield the bare breasts of the women from our view. On the next page, the three captives are presented to the leader of Culhuacán (Curved Hill); however, this event is depicted in a confusing manner (Fig. 9.3). Costumed as a “Snake Woman” which elicits the name Cihuacóatl, the ruler is shown in profile and kneeling in front of a palace next to the curved hill place glyph of Culhuacán. The Culhua ruler faces the captives, but they appear to turn away from him because the painter shows them in a rather awkward dorsal pose. Striving for easy intelligibility, Aztec artists usually show figures from their most identifiable angles; hence the dorsal view is relatively rare in Aztec art.10 I believe the painter of the Azcatitlán specifically chose this view so that he would not have to draw the bare breasts of the women. In contrast, elsewhere in this manuscript the painter does not obscure male nudity, which suggests that his modesty was targeted specifically at women. In short, the painter of the Tira betrays no sense of reserve in showing the female captive’s exposed breasts, whereas the painter of the Azcatitlán presents a more modest representation. The Tira de Tepechpan and the Codex Azcatitlán were both created sometime during the second half of the sixteenth century.11 However, the artist of the Tira works closer to the pre-conquest style, while the painter of the Azcatitlán shows more European influence in his work. Stylistically, Aztec artists favor conceptual representations where the message takes precedence over naturalism. Donald Robertson identified four main

10

The dorsal view is seen in some representations of deities associated with the earth; however, these deities are easily identifiable because their typical attributes are included; see Klein (2000) 11. 11 Diel (2002) 81–82; and Graulich (1996) 16.

Fig. 9.2 Capture of Huitzilihuitl and his Daughters, Codex Azcatitlán. Photo courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.

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Fig. 9.3 Presentation of Huitzilihuitl and his Daughters, Codex Azcatitlán. Photo courtesy of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.

features of the Aztec painting style that work on this conceptual level.12 First, the human form is not visually unified; component parts, depicted from different points of view, create a whole. Second, line is used simply to frame areas of color; it is not expressive. Third, there is no attempt to show depth; therefore, no modeling or shading is used. And finally, space is undefined; figures are not placed in naturalistic settings. All of these features promote an art that is highly conventionalized, where information is conveyed in a clear and succinct manner. Accordingly, the primary artist of the Tira de Tepechpan uses a uniform frame line and presents figures in a rigid, twisted perspective, creating an image with a flat appearance. Moreover, the Tira was created in the rather minor city of Tepechpan; therefore, it is likely that its artist had little contact with Spaniards. In contrast, European artists prefer more perceptual works that appear to mimic the natural world. Stylistically, the Codex Azcatitlán reveals European influence; the figures are placed in more naturalistic poses and settings, and a broken frame line is used to show the contours

12

Robertson (1994) 15–23.

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of the human body and the naturalistic folds of clothing. Based on the style of his work, the painter of the Azcatitlán surely had more contact with Spaniards, which I believe led him to obscure female nudity in his work. Before the conquest, Aztec artists showed no restraint in depicting female nudity. For example, placed at the bottom of the main temple of Tenochtitlán, the colossal Coyolxauhqui Stone was clearly intended for public view, yet there is no sense of reserve in representing the goddess’ naked and dismembered body. Indeed, in the symbolic system of the Aztecs, her naked body serves a communicative function, signifying the goddess’ defeat and relating this defeat to female sexuality.13 In contrast, for Spaniards art is a mimetic exercise. An image of an unclothed woman acts on the perceptual level and provides the illusion of a real woman; therefore, it has the power to morally corrupt just as an actual nude woman would. Thus the shift we see when contrasting the representations in the Tira and Azcatitlán is most likely explained by Spanish Christian influence. The artist of the Azcatitlán presents the female captives with their backs to us so that we may not see nor be corrupted by the sight of their bare breasts. This shift parallels a change in artistic technique. With a more perceptual representation, the power of the female body to corrupt is intensified. Although he obscures their bare breasts from our view, the artist of the Azcatitlán does maintain the symbolic implications of the female sacrificial victims’ nudity in his work. Their exposed breasts then communicate on multiple levels, which is typical of Aztec art. On one level, they indicate defeat: If to be clothed indicates civilized society, then to be stripped of clothing is to be stripped of such status. On another level, their bare breasts suggest the maternal role of women, which in their case will remain unfulfilled and cause a break in the Mexica royal line. Moreover, the nudity of the Mexica women is typical of the sacrificial act in which victims were stripped of their clothing.14 On one level, lack of clothing eases the act of sacrifice, but on another level, it brings the victim to a more natural state, the better by which to approach death.15 However, in illustrations of sacrificial rituals in the Primeros memoriales and the Florentine Codex, the female victims are 13 14 15

Klein (1988) 241–242, and (1993) 42. Anonymous Conqueror (1963) 175; and Durán (1971) 92. Alves (1996) 111.

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now fully dressed. These manuscripts were created under the guidance of the famous Franciscan missionary, Fray Bernardino de Sahagún.16 The paintings in the Primeros memoriales, the earlier manuscript of the two that was compiled by Sahagún between 1558 and 1561, are for the most part stylistically similar to pre-conquest works; however, Ellen Baird does note some European influences in these illustrations, both in terms of style and iconography. Though subtle, these influences lead Baird to conclude that the artists responsible for this work were educated by Franciscan friars at the College of Santa Cruz in Tlatelolco.17 Painted at a later date, between 1575 and 1580, the images in the Florentine Codex are stylistically very much influenced by European perceptual techniques and iconography. Moreover, as Jeannette Peterson writes, many of the images in the Florentine Codex “were passed through a Euro-Christian filter.”18 Accordingly, in both works the female sacrificial victims maintain their clothing. For example, during the feast of Huey Tecuilhuitl, impersonators of the goddesses Xilonen and Cihuacóatl were sacrificed. In the associated representation in the Primeros memoriales, the red at their chests indicates that these impersonators have been killed by heart extraction, yet each is shown fully dressed.19 Similarly, in the Florentine Codex representation of events associated with the Tecuilhuitontli festival, the female sacrificial victim is fully dressed, forcing the priest to cut rather awkwardly through her huipil to get to her heart.20 If in the Spanish view the exposed female body indicates barbarity and even the devil, then these goddess impersonators, though sacrificial victims, are still presented in a more civilized light. Moreover, by clothing these victims, the artists ensure that the sight of the female body will not corrupt viewers of these illustrations. Indeed, throughout these same two manuscripts, a group of goddesses who are often shown with exposed breasts in their pre-conquest representations now also become clothed. 16 See León Portilla (2002) for an analysis of Sahagún’s life and his compilation of these manuscripts. 17 Baird (1988) 226. 18 Peterson (1988) 291–292. 19 Sahagún (1993) folio 251r. According to Sahagún (1950–82) 2, 99, the impersonator of Xilonen was decapitated and then her heart was excised. 20 Sahagún (1979) 1, folio 49r. Another example from the Florentine Codex (Sahagún (1979) 1, folio 18r) is rather ambiguous. According to the text, a woman was sacrificed during ceremonies in honor of the goddess Chalchihuitlicue. In the associated representation, however, the victim very clearly wears a skirt and is topless, yet no breasts are indicated.

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The Cihuateteo (Women Gods), who are alternatively known as Cihuapipiltin (Women Nobles), represent deified women who died in childbirth.21 On five specific days every year (in the 260-day Aztec calendar, the days 1 Deer, 1 Rain, 1 Monkey, 1 House, and 1 Eagle), these supernatural women descend to the earth and lurk at crossroads, waiting to snatch or possess children to make up for those they had originally lost. Thus, on these days, the Cihuateteo were considered dangerous, malevolent creatures associated with discord. The pre-conquest divinatory manuscript called the Codex Borgia illustrates each of the five Cihuateteo associated with the days on which they descend to the earth.22 Although each Cihuateteo varies in detailing, they all wear skirts but not shirts. Their breasts are clearly exposed, as are wrinkles at their abdomens, which signify that these are mature women who have given birth. A similar representation of these same goddesses appears in plates 77 to 79 of the Codex Vaticanus,23 also of a pre-conquest date, which suggests that this was a standardized depiction. Although the exact provenance of these two codices remains unclear, a group of five sculptural examples of Cihuateteo, all excavated in Mexico City in 1907, share iconographic similarities with their pictorial counterparts, which suggests that the Mexica conceptualized the Cihuateteo in much the same way as the artists of these pictorials (Fig. 9.4).24 Securing the identification of these stone sculptures as Cihuateteo is the fact that on each of their heads is inscribed one of the days on which the Cihuateteo descend to the earth; these dates match those in the pre-conquest codices.25 Also, each has the face of a death mask and sits in a kneeling posture with clawed hands raised.

21 Barnes (1997) 21, differentiates the Cihuateteo from the Cihuapipiltin and a group of apotheosized women called Mocihuaquetzqui (One Who Raises Herself Like a Woman) who had the additional role of ferrying the sun across the sky from zenith to its arrival in the underworld. 22 Codex Borgia (1993) Pls. 47–48. 23 Codex Vaticanus (1972) Pls. 77–79. 24 Four of these sculptures are now housed at the Museo Nacional de Antropología, and the fifth is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 25 The four at the Museo Nacional de Antropología have the dates 1 Deer, 1 Eagle, 1 Eagle, and 1 Monkey, and the fifth in New York has the date 1 House; for some unknown reason, the date 1 Rain is not included in this group; Umberger (1981) 78–79.

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Fig. 9.4 Cihuateteo (Pasztory 1998: plate 186).

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They wear skirts and belts but are otherwise topless, with their breasts exposed. Therefore, in both the pictorial and sculptural examples, the bare breasts must be a diagnostic trait of these supernatural women and most likely communicate the life-giving potential of womanhood, in this case womanhood gone wrong, as emphatically communicated by their skeletal faces. In contrast, images of the Cihuateteo in the Primeros memoriales and the Florentine Codex look neither like the pre-conquest stone idols nor the Borgia or Vaticanus pictorial representations.26 With their hair wrapped and braided in the traditional coiffure and wearing both a huipil and a skirt, these Cihuateteo simply look like noblewomen. Missing are their skeletal faces and exposed breasts, which based on their standardized depiction in the pre-conquest examples must be diagnostic traits. Because one of Sahagún’s goals here was to elucidate and record the accoutrements of the various deities depicted, it may not be surprising that these Cihuateteo are completely covered. Nevertheless, Book 4 of the Florentine Codex contains more narrative representations of the Cihuateteo along with their stone representatives, and they too are shown fully clothed.27 For instance, according to the text, on the day 1 Eagle the Cihuateteo descend from above to possess small children.28 The associated illustration shows a woman who descends upside down from the clouds above, while a young girl runs away (Fig. 9.5). This descending woman is clearly a Cihuateteo, though she shows no supernatural features nor exposed breasts. On this same day, priestly attendants covered the stone representations of the Cihuateteo and made offerings to propitiate the goddesses. These events are also illustrated; however, the stone idols are shown fully dressed and again look simply like noblewomen, not the monstrous stone creatures excavated from the capital city (Fig. 9.5).29 In fact, one wonders if the synonymous nature of the words Cihuateteo (Female Gods) and Cihuapipiltin 26 Primeros memoriales, Sahagún (1993) folio 266r; and the Florentine Codex, Sahagún (1979) 1, folio 11r. The Florentine Codex representation of the Cihuateteo was clearly based on the representation in the Primeros memoriales, although here the artist adds three smaller goddesses (perhaps to more fully capture the multiplicity of this supernatural category). 27 Klein (2000), 10, has noted this same clothing of these supernaturals in Sahagún’s manuscript. 28 Sahagún (1950–1982) 4, 107. 29 The Florentine Codex also illustrates the descent of two Cihuateteo on the day 1 Rain, but again the goddesses are shown fully dressed; Sahagún (1979) 1, folio 28v.

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Fig. 9.5 The Cihuateteo on the Day 1 Eagle, Florentine Codex (after Sahagún 1950–82 4: Figs. 78–82).

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(Female Nobles) provides these artists an excuse to show them as noblewomen rather than as a ‘demons,’ as would be communicated in a Spanish worldview by their exposed breasts.

Earth/Fertility Goddesses The Cihuateteo are one facet of a larger group of goddesses who share iconographic features relating them to motherhood, fertility, the earth, and death. H. B. Nicholson categorizes these goddesses as the Teteoinnan Complex, which he relates to maternal fertility.30 More recently, Cecelia Klein and Elizabeth Boone have argued that these goddesses can be subsumed within the tzitzimime category.31 Predominantly female, the tzitzimime play important roles in Aztec cosmogony and, like many Aztec supernaturals, have both positive and negative characteristics. Essentially, if they are appeased, they ensure that life continues; if they are not, they threaten to become devouring demons.32 The goddesses identified as Coatlicue (Serpent Skirt), Cihuacóatl (Woman Serpent), Itzpapalotl (Obsidian Butterfly), and Tlazoteotl (Filth Eater) are members of this deity complex, and one of the features these goddesses share in their pre-conquest representations are their exposed breasts, which relate their maternal aspect and signify life, juxtaposed with references to death, such as skulls and snakes. For example, the colossal Coatlicue sculpture, housed at the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City, shows the goddess wearing her signature skirt of serpents, yet she is otherwise topless. Her breasts are clearly indicated under her gruesome necklace of hands and hearts. In this sculpture, Boone sees the exposed breasts as a diagnostic trait, symbolic of a mature woman who has given birth.33 Likewise, the goddess Cihuacóatl appears on the pre-conquest Tizoc Stone and Moctezuma Stone.34 In both examples, the goddess wears a long skirt with a tied belt and a skull at the back, but she does not wear a 30

Nicholson (1971) 420–422. Klein (2000); and Boone (1999). 32 Klein (2000) 20. 33 Boone (1999) 190. 34 Wicke (1976) 217. For a full discussion of representations of goddesses in Aztec sculpture, see Magali Carrera’s (1979) dissertation study. For a discussion of goddesses within the Aztec religious pantheon, see Nicholson (1971) 420–422. 31

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shirt. In these examples, Cihuacóatl’s exposed breasts work on multiple levels. On one level, they identify her as a member of the Earth/Fertility cult, and on another level, they signify her defeat (in this case at the hands of the Mexica leaders). So diagnostic are the exposed breasts of these goddesses that Mary Parsons identifies a number of hollow figurines from the Teotihuacán Valley as members of this Earth/Fertility cult. These figurines represent women dressed in skirts and headdresses but without tops, thereby leaving their breasts exposed. Parsons specifically identifies a variant within this group as Xochiquetzal (Precious Flower), based on her distinctive skirt and exposed breasts, which may relate her role as patroness of the sexual arts.35 However, one of the Xochiquetzal figurines from Parsons’s sample does wear a shirt. This shirt has a high collar that is typical of Spanish clothing; therefore, Parsons suspects that this is a representation of Xochiquetzal created in the post-contact period.36 By clothing the goddess, her association with sexuality is lost. The same is true in representations of these same goddesses created at the behest of Spanish friars. Again, the goddesses become clothed. For example, in the Florentine Codex representation of Coatlicue giving birth to the Mexica patron deity Huitzilopochtli, the goddess wears her signature skirt of serpents, but she also wears a huipil, which effectively negates the symbolic implications of the exposed breasts seen in the pre-conquest sculpture.37 Moreover, in her Primeros memoriales representation, she is shown fully dressed, as are Cihuacóatl and Tlazoteotl in both of these manuscripts.38 The Codices Magliabechiano (folio 45r), Tudela (folio 27r), and Ixtlilxóchitl (folio 102r) also contain representations of Cihuacóatl, and these are

35

Parsons (1972); see esp. p. 83. See also McCafferty and McCafferty (1999)

103. 36

Parsons (1972) 111. In fact, in the pre-conquest divinatory codices (commonly known as the Borgia Group) and in the Mixtec pictorials, when goddesses or women are shown giving birth, they are often shown topless. Moreover, the Tlazoteotl sculpture owned by Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, D.C., shows the goddess completely naked and grimacing in pain or exertion as she gives birth. 38 Sahagún (1993) fols. 263v–264v; Sahagún (1979) 1, fols. 10v, 11v. In the Primeros memoriales example, the goddess Tlazoteotl is called Teteoinnan, which is another name by which she is known; Sullivan (1982) 7. 37

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so similar that they must have been copied from a common but now lost source.39 Made at the behest of Spanish friars, these three representations show a more sanitized view of the goddess’ bodies. In each, Cihuacóatl wears both a quechquemitl and a huipil. A high-status garment, the quechquemitl is rectangular in form but when worn resembles a triangle and does not provide much coverage. Typically, the quechquemitl is worn as the sole upper-body garment, as seen throughout the Borgia Group codices, and often the garment is worn such that the breasts are still exposed.40 Such a style is seen in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis representation of the goddess Itzpapalotl, another member of the Earth/Fertility cult, who wears a quechquemitl that still leaves a breast as well as wrinkles on her abdomen exposed. These pictorial elements communicate that she has given birth.41 As Patricia Anawalt and Stephanie Wood point out, the Spanish friars were troubled by the ‘immoral’ dress of the indigenous peoples and promoted the wearing of the huipil, which was considered more modest.42 Thus, by pairing the quechquemitl with the huipil, these colonial artists may attempt to more modestly clothe the goddess, while retaining the identifying attributes of the quechquemitl. Fray Diego Durán’s illustrations for his Book of the Gods and Rites also shows Cihuacóatl fully dressed. In one image she wears a huipil and skirt, and her only supernatural feature is her open and fanged mouth. In a more narrative representation of sacrifices made to the goddess, she (or more likely, her stone representative) sits in the summit of her temple, but she is again fully dressed and exhibits no supernatural features.43 Thus in these illustrations the symbolic implications of the goddess’ exposed breasts are now obscured. In fact, as Klein points out, many Spanish chroniclers focused on the lasciviousness of this goddess, perhaps in reaction to her pre-conquest representatives with exposed breasts, which the Spaniards would so

39

Boone (1983) 134. Anawalt (1981) 164. 41 The exposed breast here suggests that this manuscript, though made after the conquest, may have been copied from a pre-conquest source. In fact, another manuscript known as the Codex Ríos (1964) folio 31v, includes this same representation and is either a copy of the Telleriano-Remensis or its original source; however, the artist of the Ríos fails to show this goddess’s breast. 42 Anawalt (1981) 216; and Wood (2003) 52. 43 Durán (1994) pls. 20 and 21. 40

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associate.44 By clothing the goddess, however, these Nahua artists may deny her barbarity according to a Spanish worldview. The Codices Magliabechiano and Tudela also provide illustrations of the more generalized tzitzimitl. These depictions share features with the colossal Coatlicue statue. The Codex Magliabechiano (folio 76r) illustration shows a supernatural with monstrous clawed faces at the joints and wearing a necklace of hands and hearts. In this case the supernatural wears a skirt from which descends a snake, as is also seen on the Coatlicue sculpture. However, in the colonial representation the artist fails to indicate the bare breasts of the goddess. Also, in its cognate the Codex Tudela (folio 46r), the tzitzimitl is shown in a similar manner. This tzitzimitl wears a necklace of hands and a heart, and her chest is ripped open to reveal the inner rib cage, but above there is no indication of bared breasts. Noting this same lack, Klein has argued that the tzitzimime were slowly masculinized in the colonial period and eventually equated with the Christian devil. According to Klein, the lack of breasts should not be surprising as female skeletons would lack breasts.45 Nevertheless, in the Megliabechiano and Tudela examples, the inclusion of a skirt reveals that the painters of these representations considered the tzitzimitl as fundamentally female. However, the scribe of the Codex Megliabechiano identifies the creature in an alphabetic notation as a masculine deity. I would argue that this process of masculinization is enabled by the fact that the painters fail to include the breasts of the goddess, not because they considered the goddess masculine but because of a colonial disinclination to reveal her bare breasts.

Colonial Representations of Female Nudity Not all colonial Nahua painters avoided nudity in their work, and I suspect that when nudity does appear in colonial works, the intended meaning varies depending upon the artist’s contact with Spaniards. Those artists with little contact with Spaniards may maintain the more ambivalent meaning typical of pre-conquest art, whereas those in closer contact with Spaniards, and especially Spanish clergy, likely use female nudity to express more negative connotations. For example, 44 45

Klein (1988) 248. Klein (2000) 3.

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the latter is likely the case in an illustration that accompanies a discussion of the patlache, or “hermaphrodite,” in the Florentine Codex.46 According to the text, “The hermaphrodite is a detestable woman, a woman who has a penis. She has carnal relations with other women.”47 In the associated illustration, a figure wears a mantle in such a way that exposes her breasts, but she somewhat modestly covers what presumably is her penis with her hand. A speech scroll comes from her mouth, while she gestures towards a seated woman, indicating the overtures she must make to the other woman, as is recounted in the text. In this case, I suspect the exposed breasts relate the ‘detestable’ nature of such women, which symbolically is conveyed according to a Spanish worldview. In contrast, in other sections of this same manuscript, the now modestly covered Aztec goddesses are not presented in a ‘detestable’ manner; these goddesses are thereby elevated to a more civilized state. In fact, Margaret Arvey has shown that images of ‘licentious’ women in the Florentine Codex were based on European prints and thereby reveal a high degree of acculturation for these indigenous artists.48 She questions if the censorious attitudes expressed here accurately reflect Nahua views on women and sexual morality. This assertion may be supported by the fact that some of the European prints to which Arvey refers show women with exposed breasts, in contrast to the fully dressed Aztec prostitutes of the Florentine Codex. Perhaps the Nahua artists did not wish to show these women in a ‘demonic’ light in contrast to the patlache and more in keeping with their own traditional values. Another intriguing example of female nudity is found in Fray Diego Durán’s illustration that accompanied the tale of the battle between Tenochtitlán and Tlatelolco.49 According to Durán, knowing that he was losing the battle, the Tlatelolcan leader Moquihuix used a feint to distract the Tenochca armies:

46 Sahagún (1979) 3, folio 40v. Furthermore, illustrations in the Florentine Codex (Sahagún (1979) 3, fol. 105r) that accompany a discussion of medical ailments, specifically those associated with breast milk production, do reveal exposed breasts. Perhaps the medical nature of this chapter made such representations appropriate. Moreover, the artist of these illustrations works in a more traditional style that reveals less European influence. 47 Sahagún (1950–82) 10, 56. 48 Arvey (1988). 49 See Klein’s 1994 treatment of this episode for a more detailed analysis.

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a large number of women were gathered, stripped of their clothing, and formed into a squadron. They were made to attack the Tenochcas, who were fighting furiously. The women, naked, with their private parts revealed and their breasts uncovered, came upon them . . . The Tenochcas, dismayed by such crudity, were given orders by King Axayacatl not to harm any of the women but to take them prisoner.50

The accompanying illustration shows the naked Tlatelolcan women attacking the Mexica. Told from the Tenochca viewpoint, this story was meant to humiliate the Tlatelolcans, and I suspect that the inclusion of the exposed breasts of the women further associates these Tlatelolcan women with barbarity, in both a Spanish and Nahua worldview. In the Tlatelolcan version of these same events, however, the women are described as true soldiers fully dressed in war gear.51

The Pictorials in Their Colonial Context The conversion of the Nahuas fell to the mendicant orders, and a key tool in the conversion process was education. Indeed, the two went hand-in-hand, as the earliest teachers were also friars. Thus, many Nahuas, mostly of an elite status, were taught to read and write, speak Latin and Spanish, and most importantly to live according to proper Christian moral precepts, especially concerning sexuality.52 Indeed, many scholars have noted how important the issue of sexual morality was for the medieval church in Spain, which sought to curb licentious thoughts and behavior and blamed women for eliciting such thoughts in the minds of men.53 Trained in this Christian medieval theology, the friars who came to the New World could not help but be concerned with what they considered a rampant sexuality in New Spain, especially because polygamy was common among the elite indigenous population. Therefore, establishing the sacrament of marriage became a key focus

50

Durán (1993) 260. Klein (1994) 114. Interestingly, when Juan de Tovar later copied Durán’s illustrations, he clothed these women and put them in a different chapter altogether; Klein (1994) 143–144. 52 See Ricard (1966) 207–216, for a full discussion of the role of education and its relation to the missionary efforts in the New World. 53 Alves (1996) 109; and Perry (1990) 44. For more on this issue, see Tentler (1977) 134–232; and Lavrín (1989). 51

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of the church and its mission of conversion.54 Thus, the early friars spent much of their time teaching the new Christian converts the sanctity of marriage as well as the “degrees of carnal and spiritual relationship permitted.”55 To further control the morals of their new charges, the Church imposed the sacrament of confession, which also targeted the issue of sexuality.56 Furthermore, the Inquisition was established in New Spain shortly after the conquest and focused primarily on offenses against Christian morality committed by the newly converted indigenous populations.57 Indeed, the first trial of the Inquisition in New Spain occurred in 1522 and was held against a Nahua man accused of concubinage.58 Though the Inquisition was soon suspended for the indigenous inhabitants of New Spain, Nahuas were still punished for religious offenses, and throughout the colonial period, an office called the Tribunal of the Faith of Indians was dedicated to this very problem.59 That women were particularly feared and targeted for their seductive natures is suggested by the first bishop of Mexico, Juan de Zumárraga, who decreed that women not serve in his house, presumably because he did not want to risk temptation.60 Moreover, Sahagún explicitly warns young women to protect their bodies and not to take sweatbaths in front of men, and he tells young men not to stare at women.61 These admonitions further suggest that a belief in the power of women to seduce men was communicated to the indigenous peoples. Indeed, that the mere sight of a naked woman was considered sinful was suggested by Fray Andrés de Olmos in his sermon on lust; for him, lustful thoughts were just as sinful as lustful deeds.62 That the stakes were high is revealed by the Relación contra los alcaldes y regidores in the Codex Osuna.63 Here, indigenous officials were brought to court to face accusations that they had taken sweatbaths with women and that all were desnudos en cueros, or “stark naked.” The implication is that the sexes should not mingle in this 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

Ricard (1966) 110; and Lavrin (1989) 49. Greenleaf (1961) 47. Gruzinski (1989); and Harrison (1994). Peters (1988) 99; and Greenleaf (1961) 8. Greenleaf (1961) 8. Moreno de los Arcos (1991) 23. Torquemada (1986) 3, 450; and Maura (1997) 188. In Burkhart (1989) 136–137. In Baudot (1976) 42–44. Codex Osuna (1947) 14.

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fashion and that one would be punished for such infractions.64 In short, the concern with ‘temptations of the flesh’ as manifest in the body of woman was a constant challenge for Spanish clergymen in the Americas, one that they clearly projected onto the indigenous peoples.65

Conclusion Ultimately, as Louise Burkhart puts it, the friars “surrounded sexuality with such an aura of filth and wickedness that the overall message was one of condoning an ethic of abstinence rather than one of moderation.”66 The two messages then sent by the exposed female body in Spanish Christianity were barbarity and sin, messages indigenous artists did not want to send about their own culture. Therefore, as the above examples make clear, some Nahua artists, especially those artists working under the Spanish friars and those working closest to the capital city, picked up this new Christian morality and either obscured nudity in their work or used it to convey a new and negative Christian meaning, one that denies the more positive aspects of the female body relating to fertility and motherhood. Nevertheless, not all indigenous artists modified their representations of female nudity to conform to Christian values. Spanish conceptions of morality spread unevenly throughout the New World, just as Spanish material culture and customs did.67 Therefore, artists further removed from the Spanish world, such as the artist of the Tira de Tepechpan, do not exhibit such a clear Christian conservatism in their work. Moreover, when nudity does appear in colonial works, its significance may change based upon contact with Spaniards. For an artist with little contact with Spaniards, such as the artist of the Tira de Tepechpan, the naked female body signifies much as it did before the conquest: it communicates defeat and fertility unfulfilled.

64 In their defense, these indigenous officials responded that the naked women in question were their wives and that they took the sweatbaths for health reasons; Codex Osuna (1947) 35. 65 Maura (1997) 190. 66 Burkhart (1989) 159. 67 Cline (1993) 75. Sousa (1998) 438, makes a similar point regarding the spread of Christian attitudes towards sexuality, which she says spread more slowly to the provinces like that of the Mixteca.

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In contrast, when an artist exposed to Christian teachings includes the exposed female body in his work, the nudity is more likely associated with barbarity and shameful behavior, much like the Tlatelolcan women in the story told by Durán. The disinclination to show the female nude works on multiple levels, both as an indigenous reaction to Spanish standards of modesty and also as an act of mimicry, which Homi Bhabha has argued is a common strategy in struggles for power in colonial systems.68 In efforts to gain power, the colonized mimic their colonizers, a process that has been documented for material and stylistic appropriations, but not as much for moral ones. In essence, by mimicking the Spaniards, the indigenous hope to gain Spanish power for themselves, and by following Christian moral precepts, indigenous artists depict themselves in a more civilized light. Thus, Aztec goddesses are shown fully clothed, the ‘moral’ state for Spaniards. The change we witness in indigenous representations stems not only from an imposition but also an appropriation of Spanish cultural values by some indigenous artists who modify their representations to promote their own civilized status to Spanish eyes. If the exposed female body came to symbolize barbarity, then for Nahua artists trying to send the message that they too are civilized to a Spanish audience, it was essential that their women and goddesses be clothed.

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Lavrín, A. (1989) “Sexuality in Colonial Mexico: A Church Dilemma,” in Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, ed. A. Lavrín (Lincoln, NE: 1989) 47–95. León-Portilla, M. (2002) Bernardino de Sahagún: First Anthropologist, trans. M. J. Mixco (Norman, OK: 2002). Maura, J. F. (1997) Women in the Conquest of the Americas, trans. J. F. Deredita. (New York: 1997). McCafferty, S. D., and G. McCafferty (1999) “The Metamorphosis of Xochiquetzal: A Window on Womanhood in Pre- and Post-Conquest Mexico,” in Manifesting Power: Gender and the Interpretation of Power in Archaeology, ed. T. L. Sweely (London: 1999) 103–125. Miles, M. (1986) “The Virgin’s One Bare Breast: Nudity, Gender, and Religious Meaning in Tuscan Early Renaissance Culture,” in The Female Body in Western Culture: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. S. R. Suleiman (Cambridge, MA: 1986) 26–37. —— (1989) Carnal Knowledge: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West (Boston: 1989). Moffitt, J. F. (1999) The Arts in Spain (London: 1999). Moreno de los Arcos, R. (1991) “New Spain’s Inquisition for Indians from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century” in Cultural Encounters: The Impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World, eds. M. E. Perry and A. J. Cruz (Berkeley: 1991) 23–36. Nicholson, H.B. (1971) “Religion in Pre-Hispanic Central Mexico,” in Handbook of Middle American Indians, vol. 10, pt. 1, eds. G. F. Ekholm and I. Bernal (Austin: 1971) 395–496. Parsons, M. H. (1972) “Aztec Figurines from the Teotihuacán Valley, Mexico” (Ann Arbor: 1972), no. 45. Perry, M. E. (1990) Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville (Princeton: 1990). Peters, E. (1998) Inquisition (New York: 1988). Peterson, J. F. (1998) “The Florentine Codex Imagery and the Colonial Tlacuilo,” in The Work of Bernardino de Sahagún, eds. J. J. Klor de Alva, H. B. Nicholson, and E. Quiñones Keber (Austin: 1988) 273–93. Prater, A. (2002) Venus at the Mirror: Velázquez and the Art of Nude Painting (Munich: 2002). Quezada, N. (1994) “Amor, erotismo y deseo entre los mexicas y en el México colonial,” Antropológicas 10 (1994) 14–22. Ricard, R. (1966) The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico, trans. L. B. Simpson (Berkeley: 1966). Robertson, D. (1994) Mexican Manuscript Painting of the Early Colonial Period: The Metropolitan Schools (New Haven: 1994). Sahagún, B. de (1950–82) Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, 13 vols., trans. C. E. Dibble and A. J. O. Anderson (Santa Fe, NM: 1950–82). —— (1979) Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España (Mexico City: 1979). —— (1993) Primeros memoriales (Norman, OK: 1993). Silverblatt, I. (1998) “Family Values in Seventeenth-Century Peru,” in Native Traditions in the Postconquest World, eds. E. Hill Boone and T. Cummins (Washington, DC: 1998). Sousa, L. (1998) “Women in Native Societies and Cultures of Colonial Mexico” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1998). Steinberg, L. (1996) The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Painting and Modern Oblivion (Chicago: 1996). Sullivan, T. (1982) “Tlazoteotl-Ixcuina: The Great Spinner and Weaver,” in The Art and Iconography of Late Post-Classic Central Mexico, ed. E. Hill Boone (Washington, D.C.: 1982) 3–35. Tentler, T. N. (1997) Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton: 1977). Torquemada, J. de. (1986) Monarquía indiana, 3 vols. (Mexico City: 1986). Trexler, R. C. (1995) Sex and Conquest: Gendered Violence, Political Order, and the European Conquest of the Americas (Ithaca, NY: 1995).

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Umberger, E. “Aztec Sculptures, Hieroglyphs, and History” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1981). Wicke, C. (1976) “Once More around the Tizoc Stone: A Reconsideration,” Proceedings of the XLI International Congress of Americanists 2 (1976) 209–222. Wood, S. (2003) Transcending Conquest: Nahua Views of Spanish Colonial Mexico (Norman, OK: 2003). Yalom, M. (1997) A History of the Breast (New York: 1997).

CHAPTER TEN

SAVAGE BREAST/SALVAGED BREAST: ALLEGORY, COLONIZATION, AND WET-NURSING IN PERU, 1532–1825 Carolyn Dean

In a remarkable late eighteenth-century Peruvian painting, America is allegorized as a richly dressed, voluptuous female suckling two youths (Fig. 10.1). To judge by hair and skin color, the boys feeding at her breast are clearly Spanish, as are most of the cadre of children who surround her. There is also one child of African descent. In the foreground, several distressed indigenous American boys witness the scene hungrily. One of them even wipes a tear from his eye. Flanking the indigenous youths are two native couples. The Indian men draw attention—one by gesture, the other by gaze—to their sad, hungry offspring. This painting, like many images from the colonial period, suggests that the Americas are like a woman who willingly offers up her bounty to the colonizing Europeans. In this particular allegory, breast milk serves as the metaphor for indigenous land, labor, and natural resources, some of which are pictured in the lush and verdant background. Unlike most representations of allegorical America, however, this painting acknowledges those in the New World who don’t feed, who don’t grow wealthy and prosper: The Indians, America’s native offspring. This essay considers the exposed breast of the more typical savage allegorical America, and how both its visibility and availability represented the conquest of American land and people. Such considerations enable us to read the singular breastfeeding America of the painting described above as a call, couched in allegory, for Peruvian independence from Spain. Further, I will show how this America figure derives from the Virgo Lactans, the traditional European image of Mary breastfeeding Jesus, and how that derivation influences the reading of the allegory. Finally, the paper reflects on the predicament of real Indian women who were employed as wet nurses for Spanish infants in colonial Peru. While they are never pictured,

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Fig. 10.1 Anon., An Allegory of America Suckling Foreigners (called An Allegory of Spain and Her Treatment of Her South American Colonies). Ca. 1780, oil on canvas, 32” by 23 ½”, Cuzco, Peru. Priv. Col. Photo courtesy of the Frick Art Reference Library.

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archival documents identify them as the lowliest employees, often forced into servitude by husbands and guardians. Their breast milk was salvaged as the only ‘thing’ of value that these impoverished native women could sell. In the end, the allegorical American breast can be said to both represent and misrepresent the unrepresented indigenous American breast. In early modern European imagery, allegorical America is a woman who almost always displays her naked breasts. Often she is scantily clad, adorned with feathers and carrying a bow and arrow, signifying her savage state.1 She is usually surrounded by native New World flora and fauna: avocados, armadillos, alpacas, and the like. Often America wears feathers and is surrounded by parrots and other colorful tropical American birds that were associated with the steamy and wild jungles of the New World. In such imagery, allegorical America represents the Renaissance explorer’s view of the New World; she is, as Marilyn Yalom puts it, “virgin territory awaiting the penetration of a robust male.”2 In this type of allegorical representation of America, the male gaze is implicit, as is the suggestion that the female body is ripe not only for exploration but possession. Moreover, such allegorical pictures follow and further contemporaneous allegorical prose. The metaphorical relationship between the female body and the territories that were to be conquered and possessed was well rehearsed by the time European explorers reached the Americas.3 Christopher Columbus, for example, compared aspects of the new land he was discovering and claiming for Spain to a woman’s nipple (una teta de muger).4 In many images, such as the late sixteenth-century drawing by the Flemish artist Johannes Stradanus, entitled Discovery of America: Vespucci Landing in America, America appears to offer herself, and by extension her lands and resources, to the European explorer (Fig. 10.2).5 1 Miles (1989) 81. Miles argues that nakedness in the Christian West has traditionally been a negative indicator, the mark of powerlessness and passivity, and that female nakedness in particular has served as a symbol of sin, sexual lust, and dangerous evil. For analysis of allegorical America in imagery, see Le Corbellier (1961); and Honour (1975) 112–122. 2 Yalom (1997) 81. 3 Yalom (1997) 81; see also Montrose (1993). 4 Sale (1990) 176. 5 Johannus Stradanus was also known as Jan van der Straet or Giovanni Stradano. Prints based on the Stradanus drawing, engraved by Theodore and Philippe Galle, were widely distributed. The Folger Library, Washington, owns one of the Galle engravings (93Cso31.3). Also see the essay by Hernández-Duran in this volume, ch. 7.

Fig. 10.2 Johannus Stradanus. Discovery of America: Vespucci Landing in America. 16th c., pen and ink on paper. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art [Gift of the Estate of James Hazen Hyde, 1959 (1974.205)].

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In the image Amerigo Vespucci encounters America, her nearly naked body cradled in a hammock, apparently just rising from millennia of slumber. Several scholars including José Rabasa and Marie Timberlake have offered insightful readings of this image. Timberlake points out that America’s proffered hand appears to invite the sexual exploitation of her body and, by extension, the economic and political exploitation of the land and people pictured in the background.6 Since the term allegory literally means “about something else,” the nature and form of the allegory tell us more about the artist and spectators than the subject, for interpretation depends upon contextual knowledge. In the case of allegorical America, early modern European viewers were expected to know that continents, like all manner of lands, could be rendered as females in picture, verse, and prose. Further, like females they could be conquered, explored, and possessed (and perhaps even exist for this purpose). Like the fickle female of common stereotype, they could be compliant or resistant, attractive or repellent, amicable or hazardous, rich or poor. Additionally, without some expectation that the female body necessarily refers to male actions upon it, these images lose significance. The painting that prompted this discussion departs significantly from the typical allegorical figure of America. The body of the lady in our painting is well covered and richly adorned instead of being dressed in the scant loin coverings that conventionally betray both America’s availability and uncivilized character (that is, her need to be tamed). She dresses as European royalty might: She wears a crown and sits on a throne.7 In pose and appearance she commands respect rather than inviting domination. This painting, then, employs only certain accepted visual tropes for allegorical America. It also differs in significant ways. Early in the eighteenth century, many decades before this painting was created in the ‘New World,’ French literary scholar Abbé Dubos criticized allegorical imagery, which was considered when he wrote to be a noble and learned art form, precisely because interpretation depended entirely on the spectator knowing

6

Rabasa (1993) 23–48; and Timberlake (1999), esp. p. 589. Also note that America’s breasts are small and high, the European ideal. This is interesting because in European imagery of this and earlier periods wet nurses, like witches, were often depicted with pendulous breasts. See Yalom (1997) 75, who notes that in early modern European representations “Few women, except for wet nurses, peasants, and witches, are portrayed with very large or pendulous breasts.” 7

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what was in the artist’s mind. While Dubos recognized that widely known and accepted allegorical figures (such as, I would suggest, the nude America surrounded by New World flora and fauna) were intelligible to most viewers, he called those allegorical figures that varied from accepted models or were entirely of the artist’s invention “ciphers to which nobody has the key, not even those who search for it.”8 Dubos further observed that painters rarely succeed in what he called purely allegorical compositions, that is, imagery that contains no historical figures, such as our richly dressed and enthroned lactating America surrounded by imaginary people. He maintained that the purely allegorical composition was both obscure and opaque and thus doomed to confuse even the most intelligent of spectators.9 Confusion of the sort anticipated by Dubos has indeed characterized some interpretations of the Peruvian canvas. Because of its difference from allegorical norms, its unexpected presentation of America’s body, its meaning has been misconstrued in modern times. Owing to a misreading of the central allegorical figure as ‘Mother Spain,’ the painting currently bears the erroneous title An Allegory of Spain and Her Treatment of Her South American Colonies. Even though in 1952 the renowned art historian of colonial Latin America, Martin S. Soria, correctly re-identified the allegorical figure as that of America, the painting retains its mistaken tag.10 Soria’s argument relies heavily on the painting’s poetic caption that reads as follows in translation: Where has it been seen in the world That which we look at here: Her own sons lie groaning And she suckles the foreigners.11

If we identify the suckling youths as European (specifically, Spanish) and the abandoned, hungry babes of the foreground as Indian, then the identification of the figure as ‘Mother Spain’ makes no sense in

8 Dubos (1967) 55 [I, 193]: “Ils sont des chiffres d’ont personne n’a la clef, & même peu de gens la cherchent.” 9 Dubos (1967) 55–58 [I, 190–203]. 10 Soria (1952). Teresa Gisbert, the renowned Bolivian scholar of colonial Andean art, also identifies the enthroned figure as America; see Gisbert (1980) fig. 74. 11 The Spanish inscription, difficult to decipher, reads: Donde se ha visto en el Mundo Lo que aqui estamos mirando Los Hijos propios gimiendo Y ella nodriza a los forasteros.

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light of the inscription. The painting’s inscription, when read in combination with the image, acts like an anchor, a caption that attempts to fix the sense of the scene, allowing the spectator to interpret the figures in a way selected by the artist among many other possible interpretations. Without the lines of poetry, the picture floats free from any precise meaning, but without the ability to interpret the figures sharing the canvas with the allegorical America, the poem itself becomes opaque. Given the daunting task of intelligibility, we return to the canvas to consider how the Peruvian painter worked to ensure clarity of meaning. Although the artist discarded the notion of the familiar nude and savage America, he incorporated iconographic codes familiar to colonial Andean audiences that may well have helped anchor the meaning of his allegorical scene. The Indian couples who represent the indigenous populations of the Andes are clearly recognizable types that follow well-known colonial models. On the pictorial left are the Incas, recognizable by the royal headdress worn by the male member of the couple. The headdress features a crown and doubleheaded eagle, a symbol of the Hapsburg dynasty that was adopted by Inca nobility as a sign of its own royal heritage and was featured on their colonial-period coats of arms.12 The feathers added to the Inca’s crown identify the wearer as indigenous, as do the bow and quiver of arrows he carries. The Indian couple to the right are jungle-dwellers identified by the parrot in the man’s right hand and his circular crown of colorful feathers. In the colonial period, Indians of the heavily forested eastern slopes of the Andes were thought of as savage and wild in contrast to the indigenes of highlands and coastal regions: the former were often referred to as Indios de guerra (hostile Indians) as opposed to Indios amigos (friendly Indians), the latter term by which the Incas and other indigenous ethnic groups of the Peruvian coast and highlands were known. These two native couples, then, represent the indigenous peoples of the Andes, from the highly stratified Inca empire founded in the mountain highlands to the loosely organized, acephalous Indians of the tropical lowlands to the east. Although the clothing worn by both indigenous couples little resembles pre-Hispanic costume, the

12 Charles V, King of Spain at the time of the conquest of Peru, was a Hapsburg. For a discussion of the Inca headdress, see Dean (1999) 128–155.

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artist employed visual tropes well known to colonial-period audiences to identify the Indian couples whose offspring are denied sustenance. Once the identity of the foreground Indians is secured, the European dress and lighter skin of the suckling children can be used to identify them as the inscription’s foreigners who nurse at the expense of America’s indigenes. Only when armed with a combination of text and context—that is, the lines of poetry and some knowledge of the cultural milieu from which the imaginary Indians derive—can we interpret the otherwise opaque, ‘pure’ allegory. If interpretation is always a problem of pure allegory, as alleged by Dubos, we might well wonder why the Peruvian artist abandoned allegorical norms—those that according to Dubos had “acquired citizenship among human beings” (le droit de bourgeoisie parmi le genre humain).13 Indeed, it is clear that the artist’s decision responds to and furthers his political agenda. Whereas the allegorical Americas of earlier periods suggested through pose, demeanor, and attributes the necessary civilizing presence of Europe, in this painting America is already civilized and Europeans are explicitly characterized as profiteers. The post-infancy age of the still suckling Europeans emphasizes their inappropriate possession of America’s breasts. Consequently, this allegory critiques its forebears through conscious difference. Significantly, the Peruvian painting’s female America and her resources are still characterized as male property. In this case, however, it is ‘property’ that has yielded to the wrong master. The breast and its milk are pictorially characterized as properly belonging to the mother’s own offspring, those born in the Americas, who are here deprived of both health and wealth. The critical message inherent to this work, then, allows us to date the painting to the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, a period characterized in the Andes by rebellions against Spanish colonial authority. It speaks to Andean audiences yearning and fighting for independence from Spain, achieved in 1825. Congruently, stylistic characteristics prompt us to locate the geographic origins of the canvas in the southern Peruvian Andes, the locus of considerable rebellious sentiment and activity. Abandoning traditional (European) representations of America, the Peruvian artist looked to other models, other well-known images of women from which he could secure a sympathetic reception for his

13

Dubos (1967) 55 [I, 193].

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new allegorical America. He found such a model in the well-established iconography of the Virgo Lactans, Mary breastfeeding the Christ child. Images of the Virgin Mary breastfeeding, called La Virgen de la Leche in Spanish, were as popular in the colonies as they were throughout much of Europe at this time. Representations of the Virgo Lactans can be found in Christian art as early as the second century. The theme of the nursing Madonna reached its height of popularity in fourteenth-century Europe, especially in Tuscany.14 For a long time, such images were encouraged by the Church’s authorities. According to Saint Bernard (1090–1153), who himself had a vision of suckling from the Blessed Mother, “a holy image of God, being born, suckling, teaching, dying, resurrecting, or ascending” aids in an individual’s devotions by rendering these events accessible.15 Images of the nursing Mary spoke to her nurturing qualities and to the humanity of both her and Christ. Mary’s breast milk, in particular, was a tangible symbol of her love for her son. As Yalom has concluded, “The example of the baby Jesus suckling at his mother’s breast became a metaphor for the spiritual nurturance of all Christian souls.”16 Thus images of the suckling Christ were, for a period, encouraged by leading members of the Church. During the Counter Reformation, however, many Church authorities, troubled by the emphasis on Christ’s humanity and Mary’s physical body to the exclusion of their divinity, condemned what they called the ‘indecency’ of artwork that showed the Blessed Mother breastfeeding.17 In the Spanish colonies of Peru, as in Europe, however, there is little indication that official Church views were much heeded, and images of the Virgo Lactans remained popular. Artists in colonial Peru, both Hispanic and indigenous, quickly took up the theme of the Virgo Lactans.18 Colonial Peruvian imagery

14

Yalom (1997) 40–42. See also Holmes (1997); and Miles (1986). Butler (1927) 118. 16 Yalom (1997) 5, 45. Because Mary’s milk was conceptually like Christ’s blood and was considered capable of producing miracles, innumerable vials purported to contain Mary’s milk were placed as relics in churches where they were perceived to have healing properties. 17 Flynn (1989) 125; see also Holmes (1997) 178. 18 The most renowned indigenous artist of colonial Peru, Diego Quispe Tito, offered his own version of the lactating Virgin in his Visión de la Cruz (1632), which he may have copied from the Hispanic artist Gregorio Gamarra. Both artists worked in Cuzco, Peru, in the seventeenth century. 15

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replicates mainly Flemish and Iberian sources. The standard representation shows Mary richly dressed in period costume, often crowned, with Christ at her breast. In many colonial-era representations Mary dispenses milk not only to her son but also, through ecstatic visions, to selected saints such as Bernard, Dominic, and Peter Nolasco. Female saints, who were believed to have been granted the honor of lactation, also replicate well-established Virgo Lactans imagery. In one painting from colonial Peru, we see Saint Gertrudis breastfeeding Christ at the behest of the Virgin Mary who is seated in the clouds above (Fig. 10.3).19 As with Saint Gertrudis, the honor of breastfeeding the Christ child was also said to have been granted to Peru’s first canonized saint, Santa Rosa de Lima. In colonial iconography, as in European imagery of the same period, the breastfeeding saints are finely clothed, often in period fashion. Their breasts are barely visible. As Margaret Miles has argued in her study of the single exposed breast of the Virgin Mary in pre- and early modern European imagery, the lack of a visible body reveals the goodness of the lactating character.20 According to the visual characterizations discussed above, to be breastfed was to be cared for and loved.21 That the sweet saintly imagery borrowed by the painter of the Peruvian allegory conveys loving nurturance serves to further the sense of the Spanish exploitation of America conveyed in this canvas. America, like a saint, gives of herself willingly; yet the greedy Spanish children pawing at her breasts suffer by comparison to Christ and Saints who customarily suckle. We might reasonably conclude that the Peruvian artist borrowed the imagery of saintly lactation to encourage spectators to interpret his allegory as a condemnation of Spanish colonial rule. We could, perhaps, end our discussion here by declaring the artist a Peruvian

19 According to tradition, Saint Gertrudis was never actually granted the honor of breastfeeding the Christ child. Pál Kelemen suggests that the Peruvian artist confused the Sacred Heart with which Gertrudis is often seen for a breast. For Kelemen’s argument, see Fane (1996) 211. 20 Miles demonstrates how, in artwork of the early modern period, the Madonna’s veiled body is the ideal for women and concludes that “The Virgin’s lack of body reveals her goodness.” We are also reminded of the way Eve’s customary nudity in imagery conveys her carnality; Miles (1986) 193–208. See also Miles (1989) 139–141. 21 The Church itself was characterized as a succoring mother in writings of the period. Saint Catherine of Siena (1347–1380), for example, described God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Church, and Charity as being endowed with nurturing breasts; see Yalom (1997) 44.

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Fig. 10.3 Anon., (circle of Mauricio García), The Virgin of Mercy with Three Saints (Francis of Paola, Anthony of Padua, Gertrudis). Mid-18th c., oil on canvas, 37 ⅝” × 26 ⅝”, Cuzco, Peru. Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum [41.1275.181].

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patriot. However, his reference to America breastfeeding the Spanish colonizers suggests an additional avenue of investigation, one probably not foreseen by the artist, but present nonetheless in his canvas. Although he created an allegory to speak to something not directly represented, what is represented had a direct parallel in colonial Peru. I refer here to indigenous Peruvian wet nurses who did, in fact, suckle the children of Spanish colonizers. I shall argue that real Indian wet nurses bore the brunt of the colonial period’s discourse on saintly lactation borrowed by the allegory’s artist because it was their milk that sustained the families of colonizers. Although to breastfeed one higher in status was characterized as an honor, such as when female saints were permitted to feed Christ, the milk of indigenous wet nurses was, in fact, valued less than the labor of maids and peons. Perhaps this is not surprising for, as Miles has argued, although representations of the Virgin conveyed the value of the nourishing, maternal woman, “devotional texts and sermons usually emphasized the contrasts, rather than the similarities, between the Virgin and actual women.”22 In early modern European civilization women were much more frequently compared to Eve or to Eve’s New Testament complement Mary Magdalene. If lactating European women were seldom compared to the blessed Virgin Mary, how rarely would the comparison have been drawn between Mary and the dark-skinned native women of Europe’s colonies, especially since the latter had not been declared human until the Papal decree of 1537. I believe we can fairly characterize the indigenous Peruvian lactating breast as not just a symbol of Spanish conquest and exploitation but the very embodiment of it. Although the allegorical female of the painting discussed earlier is finely decked out in clothing of rich textiles, the reality of Indian women who served as wet nurses to Spaniards in the colonial Andes was much different. Not surprisingly, there are no images of them. Unlike European seventeenth-century painting that depicts wet nurses cuddling infants in their care, painters in the colonies did not think that secular wet nursing was a suitable subject. However, we can meet these faceless women through fragile yellowing documents in Peruvian archives.

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Miles (1989) 21.

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In the course of researching this topic nearly 550 contracts for wet nurses, commonly called amas, were examined. The contracts date from 1650 to 1720 and originated in Cuzco, Peru, former capital of the Inca empire, the largest pre-Hispanic polity in the Americas.23 Seven of the contracts referred to amas who were mestizas, that is, of mixed Spanish and Indian heritage, one was mulata (Spanish and black), one was an African slave, one was a Spaniard, and nine were of unidentified ancestry but probably not Indian to judge from their names. The remainder, well over five hundred and thus greater than ninety percent, were identified in the contracts as Indias. In addition to race, a typical contract identifies the wet nurse by name and describes her marital status: whether single (soltera), widow (viuda), or married (mujer de). The contract also usually identifies the wet nurse’s parish of residence or community of origin, the time she is to serve as a nurse (usually between twelve and twenty-four months), and the amount and manner of payment. Sometimes the sex of the baby is also indicated.24 The individual hiring the wet nurse is identified by name and race, the overwhelming number of employers being Spaniards. The ama Juana Sisa, for example, an Indian woman from the town of Pacaritambo who had never been married, was hired in the city of Cuzco on 21 April 1666 by the Spanish Gerónima de Almendras to breastfeed and care for a little girl for eighteen months.25 For this service she was given the following: twelve pesos; two items of clothing, one already made and the other to be agreed upon later; two skirts, one of wool called Quito cloth, the other of guanaco baize; sandals; sashes and pins to fasten the garments; and a half a loaf of bread a day and stew once a week. Úrsula Sisa, probably Juana’s older sister, guaranteed the service. If the contract were not completed, no payment would be made.

23 I have examined 548 contracts for wet nurses in the Archivo Regional de Cuzco. My thanks to a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts and faculty research grants from the University of California, Santa Cruz for making research travel to Peru possible. 24 Interestingly, wet nursing contracts from colonial Peru are very similar not only to those in Europe and the Mediterranean region from the same century, but also to those from many centuries before. For a transcription of a contract for a wet nurse from Roman Egypt in 13 BCE, see Fildes (1988) 6. 25 Archivo Regional de Cuzco, Escribano Juan Flores de Bastidas, legajo 103, ff. 9r–v (de Indios), 1666.

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The service of amas was often guaranteed by a parent, elder siblings, or other relatives. Not infrequently Indian chiefs called caciques authorized the contracts, especially when the wet nurse was a young unmarried indigenous woman without family and means of support. From a survey of the contracts we can conclude that the majority of colonial wet nurses were young adolescents of indigenous descent who had given birth outside wedlock. With no husband, they were considered burdens on their families as well as their native communities. Their families or sometimes the heads of those communities salvaged the only thing of value that these unwed mothers possessed: their breast milk. The husband was the guarantor of service for those few married women with spouses. He also had to promise to refrain from sexual intercourse for the period of nursing as it was commonly believed that semen could spoil the breast milk and harm the infant.26 The vast majority of wet nurses were women who, like Juana Sisa, had never been married. Just over ten percent were widows. Fewer than twenty-five percent were married women, and of those half had been abandoned by their husbands. Given these statistics we can conclude that women who worked as amas were among the poorest and most desperate members of colonial society. The vast majority had given birth to what were called hijos naturales, “illegitimate children.” The fate of their own offspring is unknown; what we do know is that in most places in Europe and in Europe’s colonies wet nurses were not allowed to care for their own children as well as the nursling they were hired to feed. In 1537 it was forbidden to employ an Indian wet nurse in the Spanish colonial area of Tucumán (now mostly in Argentina) unless the indigenous infant were dead.27 In 1609 the Spanish government prohibited Indian women with live babies from nursing Spanish infants throughout its colonies. Although this may

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Fildes (1988) 8; Yalom (1997) 70. Yalom states: Husbands [during the early modern period] often favored the use of a wet nurse, since it was believed that couples should refrain from sexual intercourse while the mother was nursing. It was widely thought that a mother’s milk was a form of vaginal blood, transformed from blood to milk as it passed from the womb to the breasts. The agitation of intercourse would have the consequences of corrupting the milk supply, curdling the milk, and might even kill off any fetuses that managed to be conceived. Also, following Yalom, “Nursing was not considered attractive when practiced by highborn ladies.” See also Grieco (1991) 18. 27 Fildes (1988) 128.

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have been done to protect Indian mothers from exploitation, in practice the legislation encouraged Indian women to abandon their own infants to foundling hospitals. It may even have resulted in infanticide, as happened among impoverished women in Europe when compelled to use their full breasts to earn a wage rather than sustain the life of an infant who would grow into a burdensome child.28 It is clear from their contracts that Peruvian wet nurses were the lowest wage earners in colonial society. Their fees were less than those of female maids and cooks and much less than the lowliest of jobs for men (peones), which usually paid at least twice as much. Typically amas earned less than a peso a month for the period of their employment as well as a change or two of clothing. Food consisted of daily bread and one weekly ration of meat, usually served in a stew. The Peruvian evidence supports Yalom’s observation that “when the body parts of an underprivileged class of women are purchased by members of a more affluent class, the chances for exploitation are very great indeed.”29 Although the indigenous ama was vital to the survival of Spanish infants and, therefore, her service was critical to colonial society, she herself was valued little. Her title ama, which means one who gives love, was clearly cared for very little in return. The identity and position of colonial wet nurses differs dramatically from many of their Spanish counterparts. In contemporary Spain wet nursing was often a desirable occupation and one that earned the nurse a decent wage. The wet nurse was a prominent and important figure in the towns of twelfth- and thirteenth-century Spain or at least in its Castilla region, where she earned a room with full board and had her salary fixed by law.30 While the wage scales varied from place to place, in every case a Spanish woman could earn much more as a wet nurse than in any other female occupation.31 In early modern Europe, as in earlier periods, care was given to hiring wet nurses with the looks and character desired for the child, as it was generally believed that children inherited the physical and mental characteristics of their milk source.32 Parents were advised to 28

Fildes (1988) 66, 192; and Grieco (1991) 36. Yalom (1997) 160. 30 Fildes (1998) 37–38. 31 Dillard (1984) 156–157, 164. This cannot be said of all of Europe as per Grieco (1991) 34. 32 Fildes (1988) 20; Grieco (1991) 27–29; and Yalom (1997) 43, 93. According to Fildes, from ancient Greece on, Europeans believed that “. . . wet nurses had to possess particular qualities of age, health, stature, behavior and morals.” 29

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choose a wet nurse very carefully in the hope of finding one who would not transmit undesirable qualities. There was particular concern in Spain that wet nurses be of the same ethnic group and cultural background as their nurslings. Jews and Muslims were forbidden to nurse Christian infants (and vice versa).33 However, in the Spanish colonies it was common for Spanish parents and guardians to hire Indians as wet nurses.34 In the colonies, where European women were few, the colonizers took what they could get and took it at little cost to themselves. Although the painted allegorical figure that prompted this discussion critiques colonization explicitly, she bears no resemblance to the overlooked and unrepresented indigenous women whose bodies bore the brunt of colonization. In this regard our allegorical America is not all that surprising, for Peruvian independence was not directly beneficial to the masses of indigenous commoners but specifically profited an elite sector of the native population who were heavily Hispanicized and economically and socially allied to the Peruvianborn Hispanics who funded and led the movement for independence. Allegorically speaking, the revolution was about who gets the milk, not about the milk-givers. As a postscript, I should note that La Virgen de la Leche is still one of the most popular icons on sale today in Cuzco, Peru. Contemporary artists commonly sell imitation colonial paintings to tourists in which Mary is depicted as a white, European-looking female dressed in early modern period costume. Some artists, however, are revising Mary and her suckling infant, wrapping them both in indigenous textiles, as has the sculptor of the long-necked Mary seen in Figure 10.4.35 In this image and many like it the modern sculptor follows a native Andean tradition, begun during the colonial period, of indigenizing Mary and Christ.36 Here the skin, hair, and eyes of Mary and Christ are darkened. In and through this ver-

33 Between 1179 and 1268 both papal and royal decrees forbade Christian women to serve as wet nurses to Jews on pain of excommunication; see Fildes (1988) 39–40. 34 Wealthy Spanish colonists who owned slaves also used wet nurses of African descent. The situation was similar in colonial America and the United States in which black ‘mammies’ nursed white babies. 35 The popular elongated neck belongs to the sculptural style developed by the Mendívil family of the parish of San Blas in Cuzco. It is now copied by numerous Cuzqueño artists who sell primarily to tourists. 36 Damian (1995) 55.

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Fig. 10.4 Anon., La Virgen de la Leche. Sculpture for sale in Cuzco, Peru, 2001. Photo by the author.

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sion of Mary are combined the widely celebrated blessed Virgin Mary and the anonymous and invisible amas who, with little compensation and no acknowledgment, fed the birth of modern Peru.

Bibliography Butler, E. C. (1927) Western Mysticism: The Teaching of SS. Augustine, Gregory and Bernard on Contemplation and the Contemplative Life, 2nd ed. (London: 1927). Damian, C. (1995) The Virgin of the Andes: Art and Ritual in Colonial Cuzco (Miami Beach: 1995). Dean, C. (1999) Inka Bodies and the Body of Christ: Corpus Christi in Colonial Cuzco, Peru (Durham, NC: 1999). Dillard, H. (1984) Daughters of the Reconquest: Women in Castilian Town Society, 1100–1300 (Cambridge: 1984). Dubos, Jean-Baptiste (Abbé). (1967) Réflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture, 7th ed. (Geneva: 1967). Fane, D., ed. (1996) Converging Cultures: Art and Identity in Spanish America (New York: 1996). Fildes, V. (1988) Wet Nursing from Antiquity to the Present (Oxford: 1988). Flynn, M. (1989) Sacred Charity: Confraternities and Social Welfare in Spain, 1400–1700 (Ithaca, NY: 1989). Gisbert, T. (1980) Iconografía y mitos indígenas en el arte (La Paz, Bolivia: 1980). Holmes, M. (1997) “Disrobing the Virgin: The Madonna Lactans in Fifteenth-Century Florentine Art,” in Picturing Women in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, eds. G. A. Johnson and S. F. Matthews Grieco (Cambridge: 1997) 167–195. Honour, H. (1975) “The Fourth Continent,” in The European Vision of America (Cleveland: 1975) 112–122. Le Corbeiller, C. (1961) “Miss America and Her Sisters: Personifications of the Four Parts of the World,” The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, N.s. 19 (April 1961) 209–223. Matthews Grieco, S. F. (1991) “Breastfeeding, Wet Nursing and Infant Mortality in Europe (1400–1800),” in Historical Perspectives on Breastfeeding (Florence: 1991) 15–62. Miles, M. R. (1989) Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West (Boston: 1989). —— (1986) “The Virgin with One Bare Breast: Female Nudity and Religious Meaning in Tuscan Early Renaissance Culture,” in The Female Body in Western Culture: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. S. R. Suleiman (Cambridge, MA: 1986) 193–208. Montrose, L. (1993) “The Work of Gender in the Discourse of Discovery,” in New World Encounters, ed. S. Greenbelt (Berkeley: 1993). Rabasa, J. (1993) Inventing America: Spanish Historiography and the Formation of Eurocentrism (Norman, OK: 1993). Sale, K. (1990) The Conquest of Paradise: Christopher Columbus and the Columbian Legacy (New York: 1990). Soria, M. S. (1952) Letter dated 5 November 1952 to Mortimer S. Brandt, art dealer, New York. From a photocopy of a carbon copy in the archives of the Frick Art Reference Library, New York. Timberlake, M. (2000) “The Painted Colonial Image: Jesuit and Andean Fabrication of History in Matrimonio de García de Loyola con Ñusta Beatriz,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 29 (2000) 563–598. Yalom, M. (1997) A History of the Breast (New York: 1997).

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EMBLEMS OF VIRTUE IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY NEW SPAIN Michael J. Schreffler

By the eighteenth century, the pictorial folding screen had become a conventional format for visual representation in the West.1 Such screens had a long history as bearers of visual imagery in Asia, but the appearance and circulation of the format in early modern Europe and the Americas is in large part a function of Spanish imperial expansion and trade.2 Indeed, enthusiasm for decorative screens (or biombos, as they were called in Spanish) was particularly strong in the viceroyalty of New Spain (roughly corresponding to the modern nation of Mexico), where screens produced in Asia arrived at Acapulco, the viceroyalty’s Pacific port, aboard the so-called ‘Manila Galleons.’3 The demand for pictorial biombos in New Spain was both satisfied and fueled by the importation of works from Asia, and by the midseventeenth century painters in the viceroyalty were producing their own pictorial screens on the model of the Asian imports. The iconography of those New Spanish biombos was often similar in genre to that of the Asian screens, including panoramic views of cities, notable historical episodes, and allegorical representations of the parts of the world.4 As objects whose formats and genres emerged in dialogue with the visual and material culture of Asia, but whose imagery and

1 I am grateful to Jacqueline Carrera, Muriel Rogers, Tracy Bryan, Frederick Ribble, and Barbara Johnston for their valuable contributions to this paper. I also thank Jeanne Scott and the Interlibrary Loan office of the James Branch Cabell Library of Virginia Commonwealth University for locating and obtaining materials for use in this paper that would have been difficult to consult in person. On the production of folding screens in Western Europe in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, see Hemming and Aldbrook (1999) 24–87. 2 On the format in Asia, see for example Grilli (1970). 3 The literature on the Manila Galleons and trade with Asia in early modernity is vast. Recent studies of the subject include Álvarez Martínez (1993); and Benítez (1992). 4 On the format in New Spain, see Castelló Yturbide and Martínez del Río de Redo (1970); and Curiel (1999).

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decoration generally drew from Western European sources, New Spanish biombos of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are artifacts of the ‘conflictive interactions’ and ‘appropriations and resistance’ that characterize the objects and processes that scholars of early modern Latin America have called ‘colonial discourse’ or, alternately, ‘colonial semiosis.’5 This discursive complexity that takes visible and material form in these pictorial biombos is seen, for example, in a small corpus of screens produced in eighteenth-century New Spain that are united in their appropriation of imagery from the Quinti Horatii flacci emblemata, an emblem book by Otto van Veen.6 In that early-seventeenth-century publication, the artist had selected quotations from the writings of the ancient Roman poet, Horace, and illustrated them with allegorical images. At least four New Spanish biombos feature Van Veen’s emblems together with the mottoes and short poems that accompanied them in the Theatro moral de toda la philosophia de los antiguos y modernos, a later Spanish edition of the emblem book published by Francisco Foppens in Brussels in 1669.7 Two of the screens that employ the texts and images found in that source are currently held in collections in Mexico, and two more are in collections in the United States of America.8 The circulation of Van Veen’s emblems through the Theatro moral in the visual culture of eighteenth-century New Spain is further suggested by the presence of a set of canvases depicting

5 On the use of prints as sources for the imagery of biombos produced in New Spain, see, for example, Joris de Zavala (1994); Sebastián (1994); and Navarrete Prieto (1999). My use of this terminology is derived from Mignolo (1995) 7. See also Hulme (1986) 2; and Seed (1991). 6 See Van Veen (1979) [1612]. For Santiago Sebastián’s identification of this emblem book as the source for the imagery of a New Spanish biombo, see Sebastian (1992) 151–157; and (1993). For an iconographic analysis of Van Veen’s emblems, see also Sebastián (1983). 7 Van Veen (1669). Henceforth in this essay it will be referred to in abbreviated form as the Theatro moral. 8 Of the two screens in Mexico, one is in the collection of the Museo Soumaya in Mexico City. On that screen, see Sebastián (1992) 151–157; (1993); (1995) 276–282; (1999). The other is mentioned in Martínez del Río (1999) 141–142, and is documented in Museo Nacional de Arte (1999) 416, as belonging to the collection of the Galería de Antigüedades la Cartuja. On that biombo, see also Castelló Yturbide and Martínez del Río (1970) 112–113. It is unclear whether or not that screen is the same one Sebastián referred to as belonging to the “Galerías La Granja” (1992) 153. Of the two screens in the United States, one is in the collection of the Dallas Museum of Art; see Venable (1997) 206. Another is in the collection of the Virginia Historical Society. On that screen see Schreffler (2002) 25–27.

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some of them in the collection of the Museo Nacional del Virreinato in Tepotzotlán, Mexico.9 The art historical literature on the biombos that appropriated Van Veen’s emblems has seen them as evidence for a wider phenomenon through which emblems and their moralizing messages were embraced in the eighteenth-century Hispanic World.10 In this paper, however, I would like to examine Van Veen’s emblems and their use on the biombos within a more specific historical and social context. Focusing primarily on a screen in the collection of the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond, Virginia, I will argue that as vehicles for the dissemination of carefully selected moralizing emblems, these pictorial biombos participated in a highly gendered discourse about ideal conduct and subjectivity that was prominent within a sector of society in eighteenth-century New Spain. In its accentuation of a spatial dimension of that discourse about ideal conduct, the screen, I suggest, demonstrates one of the many ways in which objects and images intervened in the promotion of ideology as well as in the production and maintenance of forms and norms of personhood in early modern Latin America.

Emblems of Virtue The pictorial folding screen that will be referred to in what follows as the “Richmond screen” consists of seven panels held in the collection of the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond, Virginia, U.S.A., and three that belong to a private collection. It is possible that the screen originally included other leaves that have not yet been located, but its composition comprising the ten extant panels would have been characteristic of New Spanish biombos in general, and would echo the ten-leaved construction of the two screens that appropriate Van Veen’s emblems in Mexican collections.11 The Richmond screen’s

9

See Pintura novohispana: Museo Nacional del Virreinato, Tepotzotlán (1994) 2, 196–197; Juegos de ingenio y agudeza: La pintura emblemática de la Nueva España (1994) 218–219. 10 See Sebastian (1992, 1993, 1995, and 1999); and Martínez del Río (1994). 11 An examination of the hinges on the Richmond screen suggests that the ten extant leaves complete the screen’s original state. The seven panels in the collection of the Historical Society currently exist as two hinged sections, one consisting of four leaves, and another consisting of three leaves. The end panels of the four-leaved segment show no physical evidence of their having been connected to other panels.

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ten panels are structurally, compositionally, and chromatically similar to one another (Figs. 11.1 and 11.2), each one being uniformly divided by red frames into three rectangular sections containing distinct classes of imagery. The registers at the bottom of each of the panels are the smallest of the three, depicting gilded swags of leaves and ribbons against a background painted to mimic the look of a blue-green marble. The larger, central registers are more varied, representing architectural niches whose contents alternate between small lamps on tall pedestals and long-necked vases that hold arrangements of colorful flowers. The uppermost registers, at the eye level of an adult viewer, resemble smaller niches housing Van Veen’s emblems simply framed in bronze-colored ovals. The emblems are identified by mottoes appearing in the banderoles above them, and they rest on stone supports inscribed with the poems that accompanied them in Foppens’ 1669 publication of the Theatro moral. With its emphasis on rectilinear shapes, its use of primary colors, and its mimicking of severe stone architectural features, the Richmond screen appeals to the conventions of Neoclassical design and, as such, contrasts with the three other extant New Spanish biombos that appropriate Van Veen’s emblems. Those screens employ design elements characteristic of the Rococo style, including shell-shaped medallions and reserves, pastel colors, more delicate and complexly arranged swags of flowers and ribbons, and gilt chinoiserie decoration.12 The radical stylistic difference between those three biombos and the Richmond screen suggests a probable chronological sequence for the works in which the screens in the Rococo style would antedate the more Neoclassical one in Richmond. The Richmond screen’s appeal to Neoclassical tastes further suggests that it may have been produced during or after the final decades of the eighteenth century, when the

In contrast, the three-leaved segment in that collection includes one end panel marked with holes that, presumably, would have attached to the hinges present on one of the end panels of the three-leaved segment in the private collection. As such, it is reasonable to hypothesize that the screen in its original state may have consisted of a four-leaved segment and a six-leaved segment. The section of the screen in the Virginia Historical Society Collection, Richmond, Virginia, is catalogued “1948.W.1108.” 12 The screen in the collection of the Museo Soumaya is reproduced in color in its entirety in Sebastián (1999) 195, 198–200; the screen described in Museo Nacional de Arte (1994), 416, as belonging to La Cartuja collection is reproduced in color in its entirety in Martínez del Río (1994) 141. Two panels from the screen in the collection of the Dallas Museum are reproduced in color in Venable (1997) 206.

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Fig. 11.1 Section with the emblems “Love Virtue for Itself ” (Ama la virtud por si misma) and “Virtue is Steadfast” (La virtud es immovible [sic]).

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Fig. 11.2 Section with the emblems “Virtue Consists in the Mean” (La virtud consiste en el medio) and “Virtue is the Target of Envy” (La virtud es el blanco de la emvidia [sic]).

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foundation of the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City established the primacy of the Neoclassical style in the viceroyalty.13 The Richmond screen distinguishes itself from its counterparts stylistically, but it also does so in terms of its content. Foppens’ Theatro moral, the publication that served as the pictorial and textual source for the screen, reproduces over one hundred of Van Veen’s emblems, but the designers and/or painters of the screen selected only one of those emblems for use on each of the biombo’s leaves.14 As such, those involved in the production of the Richmond screen selected a total of only ten emblems from the much larger corpus published in the Theatro moral. This act constitutes a kind of editing of Van Veen’s emblems, the criteria for which can be hypothesized based upon an examination of the emblems chosen. An inspection of a fourleaved section of the Richmond screen, for example, reveals that each of the emblems chosen deals with the subject of ‘Virtue’ (Fig. 11.2). One bears the motto “Love Virtue for Itself ” (Ama la virtud por si misma), its accompanying image reproducing the seventeenth emblem in the Theatro moral (Fig. 11.3). That emblem depicts a scene against the backdrop of classicizing architecture in which a bearded man, at the center of the image, is guided by a young, half-naked woman with four breasts toward a table displaying a bag of coins and three large silver urns. To the viewer’s left a peg-legged female figure dressed in red lunges toward the man and his companions, her right arm raised as she prepares to strike him with a whip. In the background, another scene depicts four figures arranged in two groups whose actions are not readily legible. The accompanying poem, painted so as to appear carved into the depicted stone support on which the emblem rests, similarly emphasizes the theme of ‘Virtue,’ and is clearly presented as a commentary on the scene. It reads: Virtue goes out in search of He who is good, for she herself is good, Seeking goodness to obtain. But the evil man, unfortunately, She leaves alone in sin.15 13 On the Academy as the arbiter of Neoclassicism in New Spain, see Toussaint (1948), 405–08, 433–53; Charlot (1962); and González-Polo (1992). 14 The screens in the collections of the Museo Soumaya, the Dallas Museum, and the Virginia Historical Society reproduce one of Van Veen’s emblems on each of their leaves. The screen described as belonging to La Cartuja collection reproduces two emblems per leaf. 15 This and all other translations in this paper are mine. Whenever possible, I

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Fig. 11.3 Detail: The emblem “Love Virtue for Itself ” (Ama la virtud por si misma).

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Like the emblems that appeared in other media and contexts in the early modern Hispanic world, the image and its accompanying text are complex and hermetic, demanding of their audience a sophisticated form of literacy that would allow for the interpretation of esoteric imagery as well as the ability to consider the emblem and poem in relation to one another.16 In the pages of the Theatro moral, however, the viewer’s comprehension of the ensemble of image and text is aided by the presence of an additional commentary, presumably written by Foppens himself, and titled “Explicación del emblema decimoseptimo” (Explanation of the Seventeenth Emblem). The text decodes the imagery and sheds light on its relationship to the poem: In this emblem we are presented with a group of men of all ranks and ages, who—incited by corrupted nature—seem to declare their greed to us through both their eyes and their hands. They are anxious to enter into the possession of the money and the vessels of gold and silver that have been placed before them to tempt them. And if some of them do not take those things, it is not because of their respect and love of Virtue, nor because of the risk of ignoring the rules of their office and of reason, but rather because of the fear of punishment and vengeance that threatens them. This vengeance is not that perfect and noble Nemesis that, according to Pausanias, the Ancients adored with the name of Divine Vengeance, but rather another more human, less perfect one, who limps (as she is painted for us) . . . In the other part of the emblem, we see a man who, enamored of Virtue, greets her, embraces her, and caresses her, dismissing those who come to him offering undeserved honors and prizes, and valuing good works more than fame. The painter, with particular cleverness, put him alone, and in the distance, so as to demonstrate to us how rare in the world are the virtuous, and how abundant the wicked.17 have attempted to retain the spelling and diacritical marks used in the Spanish sources. “La Virtud sale á buscar/ El que es bueno, por ser Buena,/ Pretendiendo la alcanzar:/ Pero el malo, por la pena/ Dexa, solo, de pecar.” 16 On emblems in the visual culture of the early modern Hispanic world, see Sebastián (1995). On emblems in the visual culture of New Spain, see the previously cited works by Sebastián as well as the essays by Buxó, Sebastián, and Cuadriello in Museo Nacional de Arte (1994) 30–113. 17 Van Veen (1669) 34: En este Emblema se nos presenta una tropa de Hombres de todos estados y edades, que instigados de la naturaleza corruputa, parece que con los ojos, y con las manos nos declaran su codicia; y no veen [sic] la hora de entrar en la posesion del dinero, y vasos de oro, y plata, que para tentarlos les han puesto delante: Y si algunos lo dexan de tomar, no es por el respecto [sic] y amor de la Virtud, no por el riesgo de obligarse à no cumplir con las reglas de su officio, y de la razon; sino por temor del castigo, y venganza que les amenaza. No es esta, aquella perfecta, y noble Nemesis, que (segun Pausanias,) adoravan los Antiguos,

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The motto above the image exhorts its viewer to ‘Love Virtue,’ but, as Foppens notes, the allegorical figure of Virtue is accorded secondary status in this emblem, appearing only in the background, where she is depicted with a spear and helmet that equate her iconographically with the mythological figure of Minerva.18 The emblem’s composition, however, focuses more intently upon Vengeance’s punishment of the greedy man and his cohorts, their avarice pictorially enabled by the four-breasted figure of ‘corrupted nature.’ The poem nevertheless brings Virtue back to the foreground, contrasting her with the evil man, personified by the bearded man in the emblem, whom she ‘leaves alone in sin.’ The allegorical figure of Virtue is compositionally de-emphasized in the seventeenth emblem from the Theatro moral and subsequently in the corresponding section of the Richmond screen, but she is given greater compositional prominence on some of the biombo’s other leaves. For example, the panel adjoining “Love Virtue for Itself ” bears the motto “Virtue is Steadfast” (La Virtud es Immovible [sic]) and depicts the figure of Virtue at the center of the composition surrounded by cherubs and several of her attributes (Fig. 11.4). Foppens, in his commentary on this, the first emblem in the Theatro moral, explains its imagery: Here the artist represents [Virtue] for us with rare beauty in her heavenly palace, constant, and motionless, trampling with her feet the figure of Fortune, and scorning the symbols of Honor, Dignity, and Material Riches, as unworthy of her magisterial generosity . . . Surrounding her are painted her most noble ideals, which are Piety or Religion, Justice, Prudence, Fortitude, Magnanimity, and Temperance. From these six principal Virtues spring all of the others, which are innumerable, just as from the seven capital sins spring an infinite number of other vices. The great beauty of the principal Virtues requires that they be loved and followed.19 con nombre de Divina Venganza, sino otra mas humana, y menos perfecta, que coxea, (como aqui se nos pinta,) por dos razones: ò porque tarda en llegar à tiempo; ò porque suele emplearse en el que menos la merece. Por otra parte, se mira un hombre, que enamorado de la Virtud; la Saluda, la abraza, y la acaricia; despidiendo à los que le vienen offreciendo honras, y premios no merecidos; y preciando en mas, sus buenas obras que la fama. El Pintor, (con particular industria,) le puso solo, y à lo lexos; para darnos à entender, quan raros son en el Mundo los virtuosos, y quan abundantes los malvados. 18 The tradition of depicting Virtue as an armed woman is recorded in Ripa (1976) [1611] 540. 19 Van Veen (1669) 2: A qui [sic] nos la representa el Artifice, (con raro primor) en su celestial Alcazar, constante, è immobile [sic], hollando con los pies à la Fortuna; y menospreciando las Honras, las Dignidades,

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Fig. 11.4 Detail: The emblem “Virtue is Steadfast” (La virtud es immovible [sic]).

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As in the previous image, Virtue is personified by a woman whose clothing and attributes associate her with Minerva. Here, however, she stands atop a woman who, according to Foppens, represents ‘Fortune,’ and who is linked compositionally with the laurel wreathes, crown, scepter, and other objects that litter the ground below her. Those objects, Foppens notes, represent a variety of ‘Material Riches.’ In contrast, the figure of Virtue is compositionally linked to the six cupids who surround her and who, according to the commentary, represent her ‘most noble ideals.’ The accompanying poem casts the distinction between Virtue and Vice in practical, rather than allegorical, terms: Virtue is an attribute By which Men are judged; And it is the greatest foolishness [For] he who is not virtuous, To boast of his quality.20

Adjoining the “Virtue is Steadfast” leaf on the Richmond screen is a third panel whose emblem also addresses the theme of Virtue. Bearing the motto “Virtue Consists in the Mean” (La virtud consiste en el medio), the emblem is the tenth in the Theatro Moral, where Foppens explains that the figure of Virtue appears in the middle of a circle, of which she occupies only the center. She is quite beautiful—steadfast and faithful as always, refusing to turn her face to either of her two sides. In her left hand she holds the abundance of nature, and in her right, the ruler and measure of apportionment. At her sides are two vices, who presume to match her, or resemble her. One of them is insatiable Avarice, with a dry, wrinkled, and yellow face, longing and dying for the accumulation of money and riches . . . The other is Wastefulness, who does as much as she can to seem beautiful to the sight of ignorant Youth, who call her “Magnanimity” ( just as they call Avarice “Parsimoniousness”). Magnanimity is praised for her generous spilling of riches, when hers is actually an imprudent profusion in which she enriches both the deserving and the undeserving, leaving one as little obligated as the other. This same thing is shown to us by

20

y las Riquezas Humanas, como indignas de su magestuosa generosidad . . . Al rededor [sic] della están pintadas sus mas nobles especies, que son la Piedad ò Religion, la Justicia, la Prudencia, la Fortaleza, la Magnanimidad, y la Templanza. Destas seis Virtudes como principales nazen todas las demas, que son innumerable[s], como de los siete vicios capital[e]s, nazen infinitos vicios. La grande hermosura de aquellas, obliga à que las amen y sigan. “La Virtud es propiedad/ Que a los Hombres califica;/ Y es muy grande necedad,/ El que a ella no se aplica,/ Presumir de calidad.”

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the misfortune of Icarus, who by not guarding the mean—the example of his father, Daedalus—he climbed recklessly to one extreme, from where he fell to another.21

The emblem reproduces many of the details of its model, including the Icarus scene, which appears in the sky behind the principal figures (Fig. 11.5). The painter of the Richmond panel, however, departs slightly from the source by placing the figure of Virtue atop a natural, grassy landscape rather than, as Foppens writes, ‘a circle,’ the geometric form upon which she stands in the emblem books. In addition, while the figure of Avarice, to the right of Virtue, is clearly presented as an elderly woman in the emblem books, her advanced age is not emphasized on the Richmond screen. In another departure from the source, she is shown accompanied by a woman who stands behind her. But despite these differences between the emblem as reproduced on the screen and its source, the poem that accompanies the image on the Richmond biombo is loyal to the text upon which it is based, and to a greater extent than on the previous panels, it reiterates the principles demonstrated in the emblem: We do not recognize the vices For the great similarity We see between them and Virtue: For Virtue always Withdraws from the extremes.22

In addition to these three panels, three more from the Richmond screen also deal with the subject of Virtue. The panel adjoining the leaf titled “Virtue Consists in the Mean” bears the motto “Virtue is the

21

22

Van Veen (1669) 20: En medio de un circulo, de que ocupa solamente el centro. Muestrase tan Hermosa, como siempre firme y constante, desdeñando de bolver [sic] el rostro à ninguno de los dos lados. En su mano siniestra tiene la abundancia de Bienes naturales, y en la diestra, la regla y medida de la distribucion. A sus dos lados estàn dos vicios, que presumen de igualarla, ò parecerla: el uno es la Avaricia con rostro Amarillo, arrugado y seco, suspirando y agonizando por acumular dineros y riquezas . . . El otro es la prodigalidad, que haze quanto puede, para parecer Hermosa à la vista de la ignorante Juventud, que la nombra Magnanimidad (como à la Avaricia Parcimonia;) esta se alaba de su generoso derramamiento de riquezas, siendo verdaderamente una indiscreta profusion, con la qual enriquece indifferentemente à los que lo merecen, y no merecen; dexando tan poco obligados à los unos, como à los otros. Esto mismo nos enseña la desgracia de Ycaro, que por no guardar el medio, à exemplo de su Padre Dedalo, subiò desatinado al un extremo, de donde baxò despeñado al otro. “Los vicios no conocemos/ Por la gran similitud/ Que con la Virtud les vemos:/ Pero siempre la Virtud/ Se aparta de sus estremos.”

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Fig. 11.5 Detail: The emblem “Virtue Consists in the Mean” (La virtud consiste en el medio).

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Target of Envy” (La virtud es el blanco de la emvidia [sic]) together with its accompanying emblem and poem, the seventy-ninth in the Theatro moral.23 The theme of Virtue is also present on two of the three leaves that belong to the private collection. One reproduces the sixth emblem in Foppens’ publication and the motto “Virtue is to Flee from Vice” (Virtud es huir del vicio), while another panel bears the seventy-fifth emblem in the Theatro moral, together with its motto “Virtuous Work Asks for its Repose” (El virtuoso trabaxo pide su reposo).

The Theatro Moral and the “Mirror of the Prince” The other panels on the Richmond screen bear similarly moralizing emblems, mottoes, and poems, but it is remarkable that six of its ten leaves deal explicitly with the theme of Virtue. This emphasis echoes that stated by Foppens himself, who, in his commentary to the Theatro moral, presents ‘Virtue’ as a guiding principal of the book.24 He begins his explanation of the emblem he presents first—“Virtue is Steadfast”— with an unequivocal statement on the theme, stating that “This is a book on Moral Doctrine, whose principal object is Virtue.”25 But to what end did the Theatro moral and the Richmond screen adorned with Van Veen’s emblems focus on Virtue as an element of ‘Moral Doctrine’? Foppens, in his introduction to the book, states that the Theatro Moral, like Van Veen’s Quinti Horatii flacci emblemata, was intended as a model for human conduct. He elaborates on the book’s intended effect on the volume’s first textual page, with its dedication to “Our Lady, the Queen Regent” (La Reyna Regente, Nuestra Señora). This was Mariana of Austria who in 1669 was serving as regent for 23 It is curious that this four-panel segment of the screen, which shows no physical evidence of having been connected to other leaves, reproduces these particular emblems in this particular order. Read from left to right, the panels reproduce the seventeenth, first, tenth, and seventy-ninth emblems in the Theatro Moral. Might this sequence bear some numerological significance? It is tempting, though perhaps improbable, to interpret the sequence as a date, the “seventeenth” emblem signifying the 1700s, and the others (ten plus one plus seventy-nine) signifying the number ninety, thus referencing the year 1790, a date that is not an unreasonable one for the screen’s production. I am not, however, aware of a tradition in which artists recorded dates in this manner. 24 The emphasis on Virtue in Van Veen’s emblems has also been noted by Sebastián (1992, 1993, and 1995). 25 Van Veen (1669) 2, “Siendo este Libro de Doctrina Moral, cuyo principal obgeto es la Virtud.”

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her son, the young king Charles II of Spain. In dedicating the book to her, he reveals his purpose in publishing Van Veen’s emblems in this format, writing that he hoped they would Serve as a plaything and amusement in the innocent infancy of the king, my Lord . . . And since the King is the mirror in which his vassals look at themselves, each one endeavoring to imitate his actions, there is no doubt that if this work is worthy of arriving in the sight of his Majesty, the entire Court will follow the same example, and will apply to itself the Moral doctrine, which is the study of Virtue. Virtue is the principal theme of the holy and Christian zeal of Your Majesty, whose Royal person the Heavens will guard for many happy years, for the good of the Monarchy, and as an everlasting example of prudence, piety, and justice.26

On the one hand, Foppens conceived of the Theatro moral as a ‘plaything,’ an ‘amusement.’ On the other, however, he suggests that the study of Van Veen’s emblems of Virtue served the larger, more serious purpose of providing an example for the behavior of ‘the entire Court,’ and ultimately of helping to ensure the ‘good of the Monarchy.’ Foppens’ use of metaphor in making his point (‘The king is the mirror . . .’) here draws upon the conceit of the ‘mirror of the prince,’ a philosophy as well as a literary genre in the early modern West in which the ‘mirror’ and its reflection were metonyms for the qualities required of a prince and, subsequently, for those qualities which were worthy of imitation by others.27 The texts accompanying the individual emblems in the 1669 volume facilitate their operation as models for ideal and imitable behavior through both their rhetoric and their content. Recall, for example, Foppens’ commentary on the seventeenth emblem in the Theatro moral—“Love Virtue for Itself.” In that explanation, as in nearly all of the others, the author uses the first-person plural, writing that,

26

Van Veen (1669) ii–v, emphasis mine: Para servir de juguete y divertimiento à la inocente infancia del Rey mi Señor . . . Y como el Rey es el espejo en que se miran los Vassallos, procurando imitar cada qual sus acciones: no ay duda que si esta obra mereze llegar á la vista de su Magestad, seguirá toda la Corte el mesmo exemplo, y se aplicará facilmente á la doctrina Moral, que es el estudio de la Virtud; siendo desto el principal motivo el santo y Christiano zelo de V. Magestad: cuya Real persona guarde el Cielo largos, y felizes años, para el bien de la Monarquia, y eterno exemplo de prudencia, piedad, y justicia. 27 On the currency of this concept in the early modern Hispanic world, see Emmens (1961); and Snyder (1985). The ‘mirror of the prince’ has also been identified as a trope in the visual culture of New Spain; see Museo Nacional de Arte (1994) 229–52.

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“In this emblem we are presented with a group of men” and, later in the passage, “as [the emblem] is painted for us.”28 Such rhetoric has the effect of producing an ‘imagined community’ of readers of the Theatro moral, a group united in their study of the emblems as well as, presumably, through their use of them as models for an ideal form of virtuous personhood.29 Moreover, the author’s commentary occasionally also elaborates on the ways in which the emblems relate to the lived experience of the book’s readers. Recall, for example, that his explanation of that same emblem ends with a remark about the appearance of the virtuous man in the background of the image: “The painter, with particular cleverness, put him alone, and in the distance, so as to demonstrate to us how rare in the world are the virtuous, and how abundant the wicked.” In light of this intended function of the emblems in the Theatro moral, it is reasonable to suggest that the Richmond screen, with its fidelity to both its source’s texts and images and its thematic emphasis on Virtue, may have been conceived of as operating in a way similar to the book—that is, as a demonstration made to some imagined audience of the components of ideal conduct and personhood.30 This economy of the screen is promoted through its thematic, iconographic, and rhetorical adherence to Foppens’ volume, but it is also suggested by its materiality and its format. As a series of leaves that are physically connected to one another, the screen approximates the format of the bound book that served as its source, thus encouraging its spectator to read it much in the same way that he or she might read the Theatro moral. The screen, however, is a much larger object than the book upon which it was based, for each of its ten leaves measures approximately 185 × 53 cm (73 × 21.25 in.). As such, each of the panels is roughly life-sized, thus establishing a dialogic relationship with the ideal viewer who stands before it. Augmenting this effect, the composition of each panel is generally anthropomorphic, the oval forms of the emblems appearing on the leaves’ upper registers, at the eye and head level of the viewing subject whose body is, in turn, suggested by the alternating vessels and columns of the central panels.31 28

Emphasis mine. My use of this term is taken from Anderson (1991), who has written on a similar operation of printed works in a later period. 30 As also suggested by Martínez del Río (1994). 31 On the human head as the “symbol of personal and collective honor,” see Gutierrez (1991) 211. 29

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In this way, the composition of the screen’s panels gives visual and material form to the dialogic, intersubjective phenomenon through which it, like Foppens’ Theatro moral, was designed to facilitate a form of ideal comportment operating through the principle of the ‘mirror of the prince.’ But while Foppens positioned his book within the social space of ‘the Court’ and ‘the Monarchy,’ the Richmond screen would have been seen by a smaller audience in a more compact social space. While many details of the screen’s provenance remain unclear, research on the use of painted folding screens in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New Spain suggests that such objects were luxury goods that circulated in the ambit of the Spanish and New Spanish elite.32 Indeed, in Mexico City, Madrid, and other capitals throughout Spain’s empire in early modernity, decorative screens like the Richmond biombo adorned rooms in the palaces of the aristocracy, and, as studies of inventories have shown, it was not unusual for high-ranking families to have numerous pictorial screens in their collections.33 Recent scholarship on subjectivity and codes of conduct among elites in eighteenth-century Latin America suggest that the Richmond screen’s thematic and pictorial emphasis on Virtue would have had a particular resonance within that sector of society, a condition that opens up new avenues for its interpretation. Scholars have shown that the concept of ‘Virtue’ was understood in early modern Latin America within a constellation of interrelated ideas about model forms of conduct and subjectivity organized around the principles of ‘Honor’ and ‘Shame.’34 Within that code of conduct Virtue would have been understood as one of a number of components of ‘Honor,’ a 32 The screen was acquired in the early-twentieth century by Alexander and Virginia Weddell, but the circumstances by which they acquired it are unknown. The Weddells collected numerous works of eighteenth-century art (including several biombos) during the period of their residence in Mexico City from 1924 to 28, and it may have been at that time that they acquired the screen. On the Weddells and their collecting in Mexico City, see Schreffler (2002). The Weddells also lived and collected in South America and Spain in the early twentieth century, and thus it is also possible that they acquired the work elsewhere in the Americas or in Europe. On the Spanish and New Spanish elite’s use of screens, see Castelló Yturbide and Martínez del Río (1970); also Curiel (1994, and 1999). 33 For example, archival documents (Archivo Histórico de Protocolos 1733) indicate that the Dukes of Albuquerque, the descendants of two New Spanish viceroys, were the owners of at least fifteen biombos in eighteenth-century Madrid. 34 On the analysis of the ‘honor/shame paradigm’ in Latin Americanist scholarship and a review of some of the pertinent literature, see Hutchinson (2003).

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complicated and, as Ann Twinam has noted, ‘negotiated’ concept encompassing a set of attributes including reputation and the respect of one’s peers, lineage, race, family history, religion, and sexual and marital conduct or misconduct.35 Among elites, the possession of ‘Honor’ was equated with the possession of status and could be lost as well as gained. As such, it was an attribute that was fundamental to the structuring and maintenance of social hierarchy among elites.36 This complex code of conduct focused on the possession (or lack) of honor, scholars have shown, was also a highly gendered one. A man’s possession of honor and therefore virtue related to a number of factors including his “willingness to fight [and] to use force to defend [his] reputation against those who would impugn it” as well as his “assertiveness, courage, authority, and domination of women.”37 In contrast, a woman’s possession or loss of honor were more closely linked to her sexual conduct and the “possession of shame, retained through discretion and sexual control.”38 Given the complexity of these discourses on honor and virtue in later colonial Latin America, how can we interpret the prevalence of the emblems of Virtue on the Richmond screen? A consideration of the architectural settings in which that biombo and the other screens that employ Van Veen’s moralizing emblems would have been displayed and viewed in the eighteenth century suggests some particularities of the ways in which they would have operated within this gendered discourse on ideal conduct among elites. Scholars have discerned two main domestic settings in which the use of decorative screens is documented: in the ‘salon del estrado,’ the formal room in which the reception and entertainment of guests took place, and in the bedroom.39 Such rooms were architectural spaces in elite residences, but they can also be conceptualized as what Henri

35 On ‘virtue’ and virtuous conduct as manifestations of honor, see Seed (1988) 62–64; Gutiérrez (1991) 208–15; and Lipsett-Rivera (1998) 195–96. On ‘honor’ in colonial Latin America, see Seed (1988) 61–74; Twinam (1989) 118–55; Gutierrez (1991) 176–80 et passim; the essays in Johnson and Lipsett-Rivera (1998); and Twinam (1999) 30–33 et passim. 36 Twinam (1989) 123. 37 The first quote in this sentence is from Spurling (1998) 45, and the second is from Seed (1988) 63. 38 Spurling (1998), 44. On honor among women in colonial Latin America, see also Seed (1988); and Twinam (1989, 1998, and 1999). 39 Castelló Yturbide and Martínez del Río (1970) 17–24; and Curiel (1999) 18–20.

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Lefebvre has called ‘social spaces’—spaces produced through representation, language, and practices that generate from within a network of social relations and distinguish them from other, differently conceived spaces.40 It is within this conception of domestic space as ‘social space’ that Gustavo Curiel recently described the salon del estrado as “feminine space par excellence.”41 As, in Curiel’s words, the place where “the lady of the house formally received important guests,” the salon del estrado was conceptualized within a code of etiquette that associated women with entertaining and domesticity and thus with certain kinds of domestic spaces. Just as the discourse on honor and shame in colonial Latin America provided the ideological backdrop within which a social hierarchy of elites was produced and maintained, so, too, the moralizing biombo, with its emphasis on the possession of Virtue, supplied a visual and material setting against which the establishment and strengthening of social ties in that sector of society would have occurred in the salon del estrado. In the social space of the bedroom, however, the biombos whose imagery drew from the Theatro moral may have taken on a slightly different tenor, confronting issues of sexual and marital conduct more directly. As Curiel writes, in the bedroom, the screen served “to isolate beds from the indiscreet gaze of servants and visitors.”42 The biombo’s subdivision of space and provision of privacy in the setting of a bedroom resonates with certain spatial dimensions of sexual conduct that were central to the discourse on honor and virtue.43 Indeed, within that discourse ‘honorable’ men were charged with protecting and controlling female sexuality both through the use of physical force and through the use of discretion in the revelation of sexual activities. Related to this conceptualization of an honorable man’s duties, the spatial seclusion of women was understood to be another way in which female honor and virtue could be maintained.44 In their production and subdivision of space as well as in their concomitant reference to notions of boundary, isolation, secrets, concealment, and defense, the moralizing biombo recast the honorable man’s control of female sexuality in the form of the folding screen and the spatial enclosure it produced. 40 41 42 43 44

Lefebvre (1991). See also Foucault (1986). Curiel (1999) 19. Curiel (1999) 19. On these components of female honor, see Twinam (1999) 64, 91. Gutierrez (1991) 213; and Seed (1988) 63.

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It is perhaps not coincidental with respect to this operation of the moralizing screen that the term “biombo” is said to derive from the Japanese “byo-bu,” which in turn can be translated as “protection from the wind.”45 In its reconfiguration in eighteenth-century New Spain, then, the format of the pictorial folding screen appears to have retained something of its association with acts of protection. But with its use of Van Veen’s moralizing emblems, the kind of protection the Richmond screen implies is not simply protection from the wind. It is instead a kind of protection and, in fact, enforcement of a form of female sexuality and subjectivity. Thus, in addition to marking certain kinds of domestic spaces with ideas of honor and virtue, the Richmond screen and its cognates can be seen as ‘interpellating’ mechanisms through which the form and function of the biombo itself intervene forcefully in an early modern patriarchal discourse on ideal forms of female conduct and subjectivity.46 The screen’s gendered conceptualization of Virtue is further promoted through its use of female allegorical figures that appear in the guise of Minerva as the demonstrators of virtuous behavior. The presence of these figures on the screen clearly relates to the use of established iconographic conventions in the emblems, but their status as longstanding visual traditions does not negate their strongly gendered and moralizing character. For example, in the emblem used on the panel bearing the motto “Virtue is Steadfast” (Fig. 11.4), Virtue, in the form of Minerva, is depicted as a strong and virtuous young woman who triumphs over the ‘fallen’ woman who is perhaps to be understood as having lost her virtue. Providing a very literal example of what Twinam has called the ‘tangibility’ of honor, the Richmond screen gives visible and material form to a discourse on sexual conduct and subjectivity among eighteenth-century elites in New Spain and elsewhere in Latin America.47 Just as its pictorial and textual source, the Theatro moral, was dedicated to Queen Mariana of Austria, who, in turn, was to use the book in the education of her son, the Richmond screen appears to have been designed to address an elite woman or women whose conduct it referenced iconographically, textually, and spatially. It is hoped that as 45 On this linguistic matter, see Castelló Yturbide and Martínez del Río de Redo (1970) 11. 46 On ‘interpellation’ as a model for subject formation, see Althusser (1971). 47 Twinam (1998) 73.

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more data surface on the provenance of this and the other screens that draw from the texts and images of the Theatro moral, it might become possible to read the biombos and their imagery in more direct relation to the specificities of the lives of those who would have served as its primary audience.

Bibliography Althusser, L. (1971) “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” in Lenin and Philosophy and other Essays, trans. B. Brewster (London: 1971) 127–86. Álvarez Martínez, F. (1993) Galeón de Acapulco (Madrid: 1993). Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: 1991). Archivo Histórico de Protocolos de Madrid (1733) Protocolo 15, 854, 1733. Benítez, F. (1992) El Galeón del Pacífico (Mexico City: 1992). Castelló Yturbide, T., and M. Martínez del Río de Redo (1970) Biombos mexicanos (Mexico City: 1970). Charlot, J. (1962) Mexican Art and the Academy of San Carlos (Austin: 1962). Curiel, G. (1994) “El ajuar doméstico del tornaviaje” in México en el mundo de las colecciones de arte (Mexico City: 1994) 157 ff. —— (1999) “Los biombos novohispanos: Escenografías de poder y transculturación en el ámbito doméstico,” in Viento detenido: Mitologías e historias en el arte del biombo (Mexico City: 1999). Emmens, J. A. (1961) “Les Ménines de Velázquez: Miroir de princes par Philippe IV” Nederlandische Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 1 (1961) 51–79. Foucault, M. (1986) “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics (Spring 1986) 22–27. González-Polo, I. (1992) “De cómo sucumbió el barroco en la arquitectura novohispana: El caso de Guerrero y Torres,” Cuadernos de arquitectura virreinal 12 (1992). Grilli, E. (1970) The Art of the Japanese Screen (New York: 1970). Gutiérrez, R. A. (1991) When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500–1846 (Stanford: 1991). Hemming, C., and M. Aldbrook (1982) The Decorative Folding Screen (New York: 1982). Hulme, P. (1986) Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492–1797 (London: 1986). Hutchinson, E. Q. (2003) “Add Gender and Stir?: Cooking Up Gendered Histories of Modern Latin America,” Latin American Research Review 38 (2003) 269–75. Johnson, L. A., and S. Lipsett-Rivera (1998) eds., The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame, and Violence in Colonial Latin America (Albuquerque: 1998). Joris de Zavala (1994) “Un paravent peint en Nouvelle-Espagne par Juan Correa d’après Charles Le Brun,” in Juan Correa, su vida y su obra, eds. E. Vargas Lugo and J. Guadalupe Victoria (Mexico City: 1994) 4: pt 2, 523–37. Juegos de ingenio y agudeza: La pintura emblemática de la Nueva España (1994) (Mexico City: 1994). Lefebvre, H. (1991) The Production of Space, trans. D. N. Smith (Cambridge: 1991). Lipsett-Rivera, S. (1998) “A Slap in the Face of Honor: Social Transgression and Women in Late-Colonial Mexico,” in The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame, and Violence in Colonial Latin America, eds. L. L. Johnson and S. Lipsett-Rivera (Albuquerque: 1998). Martínez del Río de Redo, M. (1994) “Los biombos en el ámbito doméstico: Sus programas moralizadores y didácticos,” in Juegos de ingenio y agudeza: La pintura emblemática de la Nueva España (Mexico City: 1994) 133–149.

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Mignolo, W. (1995) The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization (Ann Arbor: 1995). Navarrete Prieto, B. (1999) “El ideario volante: La estampa como medio de difusión y transmisión de formas en el barroco virreinal,” in Viento detenido: Mitologías e historias en el arte del biombo (Mexico City: 1999) 33–46. Pintura novohispana: Museo Nacional del Virreinato, Tepotzotlán (1994) vol. 2. (Tepotzotlán: 1994). Ripa, C. (1976) Iconologia, rpt, (New York: [1611] 1976). Schreffler, M. J. (2002) “New Spanish Art in the Weddell Collection in Richmond, Virginia, U.S.A.: A Preliminary Catalog,” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 23 (2002) 5–31. Sebastián, S. (1995) Emblemática e historia del arte (Madrid: 1995). —— (1992) Iconografía e iconología en el arte novohispano (Mexico City: 1992). —— (1993) “La emblemática moral de Vaenius en Iberoamérica,” Goya 234 (1993) 322–329. —— (1999) “La meditación barroca de la muerte,” in Viento detenido: Mitologías e historias en el arte del biombo (Mexico City: 1999) 195–206. —— (1994) “Los libros de emblemas: Uso y difusión en Iberoamérica,” in Juegos de ingenio y agudeza: La pintura emblemática de la Nueva España (Mexico City: 1994) 56–82. —— (1983) “Theatro moral de la vida humana, de Otto Vaenius. Lectura y significado de los emblemas,” Boletín del Museo Camón Aznar 14 (1983) 7–92. Seed, P. (1991) “Colonial and Postcolonial Discourse,” Latin American Research Review 26 (1991) 181–200. —— (1988) To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts Over Marriage Choice, 1574 –1821 (Stanford: 1988). Snyder, J. (1985) “Las Meninas and the Mirror of the Prince,” Critical Inquiry 11 (1985) 539–572. Spurling, G. (1988) “Honor, Sexuality, and the Colonial Church: The Sins of Dr. González, Cathedral Canon,” in The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame, and Violence in Colonial Latin America, eds. L. A. Johnson and S. Lipsett-Rivera (Albuquerque: 1998) 45–67. Toussaint, M. (1948) Arte colonial en México (Mexico City: 1948). Twinam, A. (1989) “Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America,” in Sexuality and Marriage in Colonial Latin America, ed. A. Lavrín (Lincoln, NE: 1989) 118–155. —— (1999) Public Lives, Private Secret: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America (Stanford: 1999). —— (1998) “The Negotiation of Honor: Elites, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Eighteenth-Century Spanish America,” in The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame, and Violence in Colonial Latin America, eds. L. A. Johnson and S. Lipsett-Rivera (Albuquerque: 1998) 68–102. Van Veen, O. (1979) Quinti Horatii flacci emblemata, rpt. (New York: [1612] 1979). —— (1669) Theatro moral de toda la philosophia de los antiguos y modernos . . . (Brussels: 1669). Venable, C. (1997) ed., Dallas Museum of Art: A Guide to the Collection (Dallas: 1997). Woodbury, J. (1982) Decorative Folding Screens: 400 Years in the Western World (New York: 1982).

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE FIGURE OF MARY AS THE CLOISTER IN MEXICAN MENDICANT ART Richard E. Phillips

Introduction The viceregal Mexican cloisters of the mendicant religious orders of friars—the Franciscan, Dominican, and Augustinian—along with practically all of the other cloisters constructed by Western Christendom, were originally intended and held to represent and embody the Church/Paradise. The generic cloister was to be understood in metaphor and in manifestation as an immaculate island of the supposedly true world of heaven in the midst of the ‘false’ world of this life.1 Congruently, medieval and early modern art and literature commonly identified Mary with paradise, as the earth in which God planted the tree of life of Christ’s cross, just as he had planted the tree of knowledge in the earthly Eden. It was maintained that Eve had been the agent of humanity’s perdition just as Mary, the second Eve called to undo the sins of the first, was the medium of its salvation.2 Certain medieval and Mexican colonial written sources specifically identify the cloister as a figure of Mary. Due to the repeated occurrence of mural-painted votive representations of the Virgin in the corpus of Mexican sixteenth-century claustral programs of mural painting, this essay investigates whether the Mexican cloisters’ intrinsic

1 Edgerton (2001) 213–19; Peterson (1993) 124–37; Phillips (1993), esp. Chap. 4, 348–431; Migne (1844–91) vol. 172, cols. 407D and 590, by Honorius of Autun c. 1080/90–1156, and vol. 176, cols. 1167–73, by Hugh of Fouilloy, who lived 1100/10–1172/73; Synan (1967); Flint (1972) 215–16; W. Wilkie (1967); Sigüenza (1907–09) 2, 551–52; Durandus [lived 1230–7 to 1296] (1494); Durandus (1906) 26–27; Kuttner (1967); Rieder (1908); Frühwald (1963); Lexikon der christliche Ikonographie (1968–76) s.v. “Baum,” “Baüme,” “Brunnen,” “Kreuz,” “Paradies,” “Paradiesflüsse,” “Quelle,” “Quellbrunnen;” Schapiro (1985) 20 and fig. 24; Rey (1955) 44 and fig. 8; Messerer (1964) 103–09; and Meyvaert (1986) 51. 2 Guldan (1966) 99–100 et passim.

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meaning as Church/Paradise was intentionally extended by the Marian images to include her as well. In Mexican mendicant cloisters, those scenes featuring the Virgin Mary that are not part of the sequences of corner processional stations normally appear above the exterior side of entrances into the cloisters, or on the claustral side of passageways leading from them into monastic dependencies. These isolated images, whose theme, placement, and connection with any particular monastic ambient do not follow any set pattern, are generally not associated with any others as part of a uniform or consistent sequence. It will be argued that their intent is to invoke the Virgin Mary as the model of inviolability of the particular dependency above which the image is placed, and by extension of monastic holiness. Just as God, following doctrine, entered Mary without ‘defiling’ her, leaving her virginity intact even after the birth of his son,3 so the given monastic space is perceived as protected from the entrance of the secular world’s pollution by entreating the Virgin via her image. A basic intent of these Marian mural paintings was to secure, or allude to, the protected, inviolate piece of the heavenly Paradise that is the monastery, symbolized by the cloister and its Eden garth, against the depraved physical world that it occupies but of which it is not a part. These isolated works can best be seen as the visual equivalents of prayers or invocations. They would have functioned to: (1) remind the friar or visitor to pray or arrange her/his thoughts upon entering a given monastic space so as to ensure its continued sanctity, leaving all preoccupations from the impure, secular world behind; (2) simply remonstrate to the entrant that the given space was meant to be inviolate; or (3) magically guarantee purity by their presence, whether or not they were beheld for meditation, given the traditionally miraculous concept of the power of images. On one level, it is important only that God and the Virgin be aware of the images done in their honor for the greater glory of both and to secure spatial protection from the Devil, whether or not transitory human bodies took notice of them. God, petitioned by these images, would presumably see to it that the monastery be protected from desecration.

3 For the controversies throughout the history of Christianity over the doctrine of Mary’s intact virginity before, during, and after the birth of her son Jesus, see Warner (1976) 43–45, 64–66; and Graef (1963) 80–96.

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Locative Purification: Cuauhtinchán and Epazoyucan On the cloister side of the ante-refectory entrance of the sixteenthcentury Franciscan monastery of Cuauhtinchán, Puebla, is a grisaille painting of The Annunciation (Fig. 12.1). It is an original mural painting from the 1580s or ’90s.4 For a mural painting it is quite small, measuring only about 80 × 75 cm., equivalent to the size of a large print in a book. Due to its diminutive size and its black, grey, and white color range, it is not difficult to visualize in context as an intentional counterpart to the prints that were commonly hung on, or attached to, walls to decorate them or signify them under a religious vocation during the early modern period. For example, a Venetian woodcut in the form of a complex retable with central main image of the Madonna and Child was tacked to a schoolroom wall in Forlí, Italy, in 1428.5 Similarly, the account book of the Franciscan monastery in the community of Milpa Alta just a few kilometers south of Mexico City records the purchase in 1603 of 23 woodcuts to decorate the refectory and the cell where the Provincial was going to stay. The woodcuts’ stated purpose was to enhance the monastery’s appearance for the Provincial’s tour of inspection.6 Because 1603 is only one generation after the end of the ‘golden age’ of Mendicant activities in the central Mexican heartland7 and the painting of the little Annunciation at Cuauhtinchán, we can be sure that the Milpa Alta account records a practice that was normal in, and inherited from, the sixteenth century. Such knowledge enhances our perception that

4 For the flanking polychrome figures of the jaguar and the eagle as fraudulent additions in the 1940s, see Phillips (1993) 623–27. For the dating of the construction and original campaign of decoration of the Franciscan monastery of Cuauhtinchán, Puebla to the 1580s or ’90s, see Mendieta in García Icazbalceta (1892) 91; Ciudad Real (1976) 87; Kubler (1948) 456; McAndrew and Toussaint (1942) 311–25; and Castro Morales (1960) 12 and 16. 5 Mayor (1971), nos. 10 and 87–91. 6 “. . . mas veynte y tres estampas para el refectorio y la celda de n[uest]ro P[adr]e prouy[nci]al . . . 5 p[es]os 6.” “Memoria del Conuento de la Milpa . . . 1602–06.” Fondo Franciscano, vol. 143, fol. 131. My thanks to Dr. Eduardo Matos Moctezuma, then Chief of the National Museum of Anthropology, and to the then Director of the Biblioteca Eusebio Dávalos Hurtado del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City, Sra. Estela González, for permitting me to use the Fondo Franciscano and other bound viceregal collections of documents there. 7 For the ‘golden age’ of the Mendicant friars in the sixteenth-century central Mexican heartland and the decline in their power there after the indigenous pandemic of 1576, see Poole (1987); Schwaller (1987); Cummins (1979); and Ricard (1933).

Fig. 12.1 The Annunciation. 1570s or ’80s, mural painting, first floor, cloister of the Franciscan monastery of Cuauhtinchán, Puebla. Photo by the author.

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the Cuauhtinchán Annunciation alluded to and invoked the sacred marking of precincts through the hanging of prints. The function of The Annunciation grisaille at Cuauhtinchán is to ensure the purity of the space entered—the ante-refectory—and the decorousness of the friar’s or guest’s thoughts as he mentally prepares himself to sit down at the refectory table. The image is to help him avoid the natural tendency of indulging in the meal as sensual gratification. Its motivation is comparable to that for the fresco of the Man of Sorrows painted by Fra Angelico a century-and-a-half earlier over the equivalent claustral side of the entrance into the anterefectory of his new Observantine Dominican house of San Marco, Florence. The spatial and decorative definition of the ante-refectory at San Marco are physical evidence of the Mendicant Observantine reaction against monastic laxity. It seeks to enforce decorum and gravity through the heightened liturgical specificity of ambients in churches and conventual blocks and through a new kind of monastic mural painting championed by Angelico, confrontational and firstperson in narrative rather than discursive and third-person.8 And the sixteenth-century Mexican Mendicant friars were largely followers of the Observantine reforms that mostly began in Italy but were subsequently implemented in Spain beginning in the late fifteenth century.9 This reading of the Cuauhtinchán Annunciation is supported by the meanings inherent to images of the Virgin over claustral passages at contemporary Augustinian Epazoyucan and Franciscan Huejotzingo. They also invoke the body and spirit of the Virgin as guarantors of purity. The tympanum of the portal into the stairwell of the first floor of the Epazoyucan cloister displays a large mural of The Death and Coronation of the Virgin (Fig. 12.2). It was painted about 1563, when the general chapter meeting of the entire Mexican Augustinian province was held in the Epazoyucan monastery.10 This image is 8 Paatz (1952–55) vol. 3, 21–23 and 33; Maggi (1983) 403–23; and Hood (1995) passim. 9 Garcá Oro (1971) 18, 25–26, 39,145–148, 164, 176, 181–201, 231–32, 312; Legarza (1962) 16–124; De Castro (1975) 184–85; and Kubler (1948) 5–7. 10 Grijalva (1624) fol. 98; Colección Conway (1563) no. 34; Colección de documentos inéditos . . . (1864–84) vol. 4, 521; and Phillips (1993) 552–60. I am grateful to the then Director and Secretary of the Biblioteca Cervantina of the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores, Monterrey, Mexico, Lic. Ricardo Elizondo and Sra. María Esther Rivera, respectively, for allowing and assisting me to use the manuscripts of the Colección Conway. All of the originally grisaille murals of the first floor of the Epazoyucan cloister, including The Death and Coronation of the Virgin, were later

Fig. 12.2 The Death and Coronation of the Virgin. Ca. 1563, mural painting, first floor, cloister of the Augustinian monastery of Epazoyucan, Hidalgo. Photo by the author.

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closely related stylistically, but not thematically nor liturgically, to the neighboring uniform suite of processional corner niches painted at the same time in the cloister with scenes of the Passion for Corpus Christi and other processions. It is many times larger than they are and, unlike them, its compositional center is a good deal above the viewer’s eye level. Of the pictures studied in this essay, this is the only one that is not static or horizontal but vertical in its compositional movement. It is the only one that is a composite of two scenes that are not separated by any boundary. The two parts engender a before-and-after dynamic that is especially appropriate to the ascendant function of the stairwell that the image announces. The Virgin’s earthly corporeal existence comes to an end in the lower representation, showing the fleeting nature and falseness of this life even for a figure so exaltedly holy as Mary. The skull of death and the legend in Latin, OMNIA EQVAT, “it equalizes all,” make sure that we do not miss this point. The Epazoyucan rendition goes against the trend that characterized the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century development of death of the Virgin scenes in western European art. Such versions commonly showed her not dead but on the verge of death, holding a sacramental candle.11 At Epazoyucan we return anachronistically in part to this theme’s original Byzantine origins, for Mary is portrayed already dead, as if to emphasize the contrast between the two realms, the earthly and secular that ends in death, and the holy, which is held to promise eternal life. This reinforces the transcendent implications of the friars’ ascension from the first floor of the cloister to the second, which houses the cells of the individual friars. The Epazoyucan Death of the Virgin eschews another established Byzantine convention for this scene, however: It does not show the adult Christ, next to the kneeling and grieving Apostles, standing over his mother’s deathbed and receiving her soul in the form of a swaddled infant. Instead, the Byzantine child figure of Mary’s soul at Epazoyucan is transposed to the Coronation scene above, which strikes one as an intelligent and knowing means of achieving a fluid transition between retouched in color paints in a somewhat crude manner. Moyssén (1965) 24, plausibly asserts that this occurred around 1901, when the monastery’s church was repaired and painted. 11 Réau (1955–59) 2, 2, 605–07.

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the two iconographic traditions of Orthodoxy and Catholicism that meld in this image.12 The purity that she maintained in this life merits her coronation by the Trinity of Father, Son, and dove of the Holy Spirit at the apex. One principal intent of this work was to have the generic friar, upon going upstairs to his cell, meditate on the relationship between his impending physical climb and the Virgin’s own spiritual ascent toward apotheosis. Or this motivation behind the work is more accurately described as having the secular visitor think that the upwardbound friars were expected to be thinking this, inspiring the viewer’s edification and respect for the friars. In Latin the death of the Virgin is called Transitus Beatae Virginis Mariae (Tránsito de la Virgen in Spanish),13 which is the text of the highly damaged title under her deathbed in the painting. The Latin transitus means “a going over” or “passage.”14 The painting guarantees purity upon passage from one functional and ceremonial space to a different one by invoking the immaculate Virgin’s progress from physical death to eternal life in two separate but linked images. By so doing, it symbolically removes the cells of the upper cloister to the unassailable heights of heaven, cloaked in the Virgin’s eternal purity. The cell is the mendicant friar’s counterpart to the monk’s wilderness retreat or hermitage, where the friar privately steels himself for battle with the demon in the exterior world through preaching and social mobilization.15 Proving the true intent of the Epazoyucan Death of the Virgin, we have corroborating evidence from the nearby Augustinian monastery at Acolman, where the provincial chapter meeting was held in 1560 before reconvening at Epazoyucan in 1563. The formal influence of the masonry, carving, and painting of the Acolman house was profound throughout the northern Augustinian sphere in Mexico for the two decades following its church portal’s elaborately inscribed date of 1560, including at nearby Epazoyucan.16 Of the comprehensive

12 The banderole directly beneath The Coronation of the Virgin at Epazoyucan reads in Latin “VENI DE LIBANO SPONSA MEA VENI CORONABERIS CANT>4”. This is the abridged text of the first two lines of Songs 4, 8, “Come from Libanus, my spouse . . . Thou shalt be crowned from the top of Amana . . .” 13 Réau (1955–59) 2, 2, 604. 14 Lewis (1891) [1985]. 15 This is the conclusion to which one must come about the essential construct of the mendicant cell after reading Braunfels (1972) 135–37. 16 Montes de Oca, (1975) 21; and Grijalva (1624) fols. 94v, 98.

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program of psalmodic citations equating the Acolman cenobium with the House of God, it is no coincidence that the one from Psalm 90, 1–6, painted on the south corridor of the second floor of the second cloister, along its suite of eight cells, has the most private, reclusive, removed, and celestial connotations of the whole cycle. It reads, in part: QVI HABITAT IN ADIVTORIO ALTISSIMI IN PROTECTIONE DEI 3ELI [i.e. coeli] CONMORABITUR DICET DOMINVS SUSCEPTOR MEVS ES TV ET REFVGIVM MEVM . . .17

This passage is translated: He that dwelleth in the aid of the most High, shall abide under the protection of the God of Jacob. He shall say to the Lord: Thou art my protector, and my refuge . . .18

Sequential Purification: Huejotzingo and Chimalhuacán Chalco Unlike the isolated Marian images of Cuauhtinchán and Epazoyucan, whose primary function is to enjoin the purity of individual dependencies—the refectory and the second, cell floor of the conventual block, respectively—the sequence of two images in the Franciscan monastery of Huejotzingo is clearly meant to secure the inviolability of its complete cloister, that is, to place the whole monastery under the Virgin’s protection. The mural paintings of The Annunciation and The Immaculate Conception of the Litanies with Sts. Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus (Fig. 12.3) were painted there about 1558 as part of a comprehensive mural program.19 The two works are dissimilar in format and material imagery, however, so they are not meant to be seen in tandem as closely linked members of a series.

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The letters underlined are no longer legible in situ or are completely effaced. The Holy Bible (1899) Psalm 90, 1–2. 19 For 1558 as the likely year for the mural painting campaign of the Huejotzingo conventual block, see Prem (1974) 39–50 and 498–99; Castro Morales (1980) 11–16; McAndrew (1969) 316–22 and 336; García Icazbalceta (1892) 70–91; Angulo Iñíguez, et al. (1945–56) 2, 355; García Granados and MacGregor (1934) 256; Salazar Monroy (1945) 3; Mendieta (1971) 542 and 654; Paso y Troncoso (1905–42) 8, 261, note; and Oroz, et al. (1947) 166, note 181. The iconographic complexity of this mural of The Immaculate Conception of the Litanies with Sts. Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, and the reasons for the depictions of Aquinas and Scotus in it, cannot be treated in this essay due to their secondary importance to its theme, but are covered extensively in Phillips (1993) 459–61, endnote 21. 18

Fig. 12.3 The Immaculate Conception of the Litanies with Saints Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. Ca. 1558, mural painting, first floor, cloister of the Franciscan monastery of Huejotzingo, Puebla, Photo by the author.

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The Annunciation is painted over the door between the first and second chambers of the inner portería.20 Native Americans had to go through these ambients to use the confessionals that were built into the thickness of the church wall here. The friars heard the confessions from the church side.21 As with other sixteenth-century Mexican Mendicant monasteries at Actopan, Tlaquiltenango, or Zinacantepec whose inner porterías often had masonry or plaster benches along the walls to accommodate the natives who had business with the friars, and whose mural paintings are directed toward a native audience, this Huejotzingo inner portería constituted an extension of the community space of the outer portería. Consequently, The Annunciation here is intended to be seen by the natives and other visitors seeking access to the cloister immediately beyond it as a reminder and protector of that courtyard’s essential inviolability.22 The Annunciation is theoretically identical with the moment of Christ’s incarnation, which means that it also represents the moment of the consummation of paradise, the founding of the Church, the planting of the new Eden in the Virgin to undo the loss of the earthly Eden through Eve. The Annunciation mural, then, refers to the monastery as paradise, the church militant linked not to this false world but to

20 There is no good English equivalent for the Spanish word portería, which refers to the configuration or structures, distinct from the church portal, built as the front entrance into the friar’s residence. See McAndrew (1969) 164–65. This study assigns the term “conventual block” to the complete friars’ residence including the cloister but excluding the church. It also takes the traditional term portería for the monastic portico or entrance into the conventual block and divides it into ‘outer’ portería, referring to the initial reception space of the monastery that is open to the outside on one side, and ‘inner’ portería, consisting of one or more separate chambers accessed from the outer portería that are not open on any side to the exterior and which constitute entry points of limited size to ensure control of access. 21 This statement contradicts Kubler (1948) 253, who asserts that “The father confessor entered the confessional from the convent side, to meet the penitent who approached from the nave.” This paper contends that when confessionals were set in the wall between the church and the portería, the friar confessor entered from the church side, while the penitent entered from the portería side. The portería in sixteenth-century Mexico was a community space for the native townspeople. When, on the other hand, the confessional was built into the wall between church and cloister, rather than church and portería, then Kubler’s assertion is correct, given that access to the cloister would have been less common for the native, reduced to certain special ritual occasions, than access to the church. 22 For proofs that the native Mexican peoples were the principal intended audience and ritual users of the sixteenth-century claustral mural paintings, see Phillips (1999) 227–50. I am grateful to Dr. Ángel J. García Zambrano for translating this essay. See also Phillips (1993) 140–404.

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the church triumphant of heaven.23 ‘Paradise’ is not an apt term for the nondescript little second chamber of the Huejotzingo inner portería over whose entrance side the painting is located, so the image must instead irradiate toward a larger context beyond its limited immediate theatre. That would be the cloister directly beyond, whose access is carefully controlled by the small chamber. After a thorough search, not a single instance was found in western art of the Archangel Michael’s depiction in an Annunciation scene. His presence in this mural opposite the archangel Gabriel, who is biblically intrinsic to the Annunciation, is further indication of a monastery-wide significance for this image: Michael is the patron saint of the entire Franciscan foundation and indeed the town of Huejotzingo. As such the Huejotzingo Annunciation is comparable in its impact as spatial conditioner to its counterpart painted on the western spandrels of the cloister arcade of the Dominican establishment at Chimalhuacán Chalco about 1553.24 The Chimalhuacán Annunciation is the culmination of a four-corner mural cycle that begins on the opposite southeast angle with The Fall of Man, and is premeditatedly situated so as to be the first claustral image contemplated by the visitor entering on the southwest from the portería. In this way it identifies the traditional paradise imagery of the cloister and its central open-air planted garth with the achievement of the new Eden planted in the earth of the Virgin. Any argument that the coincidence of entrance and Annunciation at Chimalhuacán is casual cannot be accepted. The unknown friar who invented this complex mural program on the economy of salvation could conceivably have opted to begin the cycle with The Fall of Man where The Annunciation is, or at any other point. This would have removed The Annunciation from its preeminent position opposite the conventual entrance. But he did not. He chose the only configuration of the four images composing the cycle distributed among the four corners of the cloister arcade that culminates in The Annunciation before

23 Rupert of Deutz (1974) 4, 85–87; Van Engen (1983) 291; Guldan (1966) 99–100 et passim; Livius (1893) 51; St. Bonaventure (1888–89) 2, 427; Román (1575) 1, fol. 75; Lorenzana (1769) 185–86; García Icazbalceta (1947) 1, 34 and 115–116 and 3, 9; Durandus (1906) 1, 11; and Durandus (1494) fol. 1v. 24 Santiago (1540–87) fols. 31v–54v; Dávila Padilla (1625) 472 and 477; and Kubler (1948) 525–26. I am grateful to the then Directors of the Fondo de Microfilm of the Biblioteca Eusebio Dávalos Hurtado del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City, Víctor E. Urruchúa Hernández and J. J. González Monroy for allowing and assisting me to consult Santiago (1540–87).

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the southwest entrance, clearly proclaiming the cloister to the visitor as the paradise achieved through and guaranteed by Mary. The Annunciation at Huejotzingo, like that at Chimalhuacán Chalco, indicates that the cloister, identified with Mary, is paradise. It attempts to ensure that, like the Virgin, the monastery can be entered yet not polluted. A further attempt at Huejotzingo to cloak the monastery in the Virgin’s sinlessness is provided by the The Immaculate Conception of the Litanies with Sts. Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus on the cloister side of the entrance into the chapter room’s vestibule (hereafter simply titled The Conception). There is a deliberate relationship between The Annunciation and The Conception in the Huejotzingo conventual block, in that both are on a direct line in the same path that leads to entry of the cloister, then east along the north cloister walk abutting the church, then its exit past the chapter room on the way to the church. The viewer who traverses this whole route starting from the outer portería will ultimately see both images that proclaim and enjoin the purity of the cloister. Immediately beyond The Conception one sees to the right on the south the painting over the entrance to the chapter room, guarded at the center by the military Archangel Michael, patron saint of the Huejotzingo monastery, flanked by the other two non-apocryphal archangels, Raphael and Gabriel. Together the three archangels form the protective militia of the gates of heaven, a symbolism inherent to them around church entrances since at least Carolingian times.25 They define the chapter room immediately beyond them as heaven and mark the chapter room door, consequently, as the vulnerable point of transition to paradise that they protect from earthly profanation. This painting demonstrates through parallelism that a principal function of images over entrances at Huejotzingo, such as The Conception immediately adjacent at the ingress to the chapter room vestibule, is to protect paradise from desecration by improper secular considerations. The function of The Conception at Huejotzingo is not only, nor even primarily, to consecrate entry to the chapter room. The latter has its own archangel painting to assure that. It is clear that, like all of the paintings discussed so far in this essay, it refers not only to the space about to be entered, but reflects its meaning back onto the space from

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Mâle (1972) 298–300; Réau (1955–59) 2, 1, 41–52; and Heitz (1963) 221.

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which it is viewed, in this case the cloister. How can the chapter room be paradise if the purity of the preceding cloister, which is the quintessential figure of the Paradise of monasticism since early Christianity, and upon which the chapter room depends for its own sacrosanctity, is not secured? How could this evocation of the controversial doctrine of the Virgin’s eternal purity as an idea in the mind of God before the creation of the universe, as the perfect vessel for the realization of God’s will on earth, not have been interpreted by the initiated viewer with regard to the commonly known, age-old symbolism of the cloister as undefiled paradise?26 The Huejotzingo Conception is depicted as a retable in triptych form. Thus it is completely different in format, size, and material symbolism from the rest of its fellow claustral paintings. As with The Death and Coronation of the Virgin at Epazoyucan, then, it is isolated from the mural decoration devoted to the definition of the corner niches’ processional theatre due to its larger size, its theme dissociated from Christ’s Passion, and its position above a doorway, raised above the spectator’s viewing level of that theatre. The Epazoyucan mural is framed by a laurel wreath of victory extended by nude men that is analogous to the triumphal arches of greenery framing the adjacent corner niche stational retables. To the contrary, the Huejotzingo Conception is not related via material symbolism to the ephemeral processional festival connotations alluded to at the nearby stations. Instead it evokes a permanent, votive, dedicatory panel, a triptych with a solid wooden frame. In the twenty-first century we have become accustomed to viewing triptychs out of context on museum walls, and might find nothing remarkable in the way the mural-painted Conception is displayed at Huejotzingo. In the museum we are normally judging a triptych purely by what we see in it. However, to the early modern mind a polyptych or any other retable was only part of an ensemble that had to include or imply an altar.27 Upon seeing one, ideally the spectator immediately thought of its altar, just as retable and altar were joined in the adjacent claustral corner niches at Huejotzingo, Epazoyucan, and elsewhere in viceregal Mexico. Where is the altar that would correspond to the Huejotzingo Conception? Was an ephemeral altar placed 26

Réau (1955–59) 2, 2, 75–76; and Warner (1976) 247. Limentani Virdis and Pietrogiovanna (2002) 12–15; Berg-Sobré (1989) 3–10, 27, 47, 71, 77, 84, 110, 134–39, 167, 173–78, 181–86, 311; Snyder (2005) 283; and Hartt and Wilkins (2003) 45. 27

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before it or in the doorway opening directly below it at different festive intervals? That is possible, for there is a wealth of information on such temporary altar tableaux in early modern Europe and in Mexico for religious processions, including inside cloisters.28 The early modern retable was read by the viewer as reflecting meaning or sacredness onto that which stood in front of it. Thus the Huejotzingo triptych of The Conception could not have been understood only as a signifier for the space beyond its portal, the chapter room vestibule. Retables placed the altars before them under the vocation of the depicted saint or sacred event that sublimated a saint. Does this mean by extension that the Huejotzingo cloister was deliberately consecrated like an altar to the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, as numerous churches, chapels, and cathedrals of the Hispanic world have been? No firm conclusion can be made on this matter, but the possibility is strengthened by the fact that there is incontrovertible proof that at least one other Franciscan cloister in viceregal central Mexico was dedicated specifically to that vocation. If the Huejotzingo cloister had indeed been so designated, it would not have been alone in colonial New Spain. A contract of 1701 mandates construction of the principal cloister of the Franciscan Province’s mother house in Mexico City.29 The sermon on the occasion of the cloister’s dedication was printed in 1702. It states repeatedly, including an emphatic reference in the title, that the courtyard is consecrated to the “Concepcion Purissima” [sic], the immaculate conception of Mary, as its specific vocation. The sermon’s author, Fr. Manuel de Arguello O.F.M., equated Mary’s womb inhabited by God with the generic cloister as a figure for monasticism. He preached: . . . on the one hand it is called the womb and on the other, cloister: “Blessed is the womb that bore thee,” wrote St. Luke, which the Church transcribed “Claustrum Mariae bajulat.” Mary’s core could be nothing else but God’s cloister! Of necessity, my Dominican and Franciscan brethren [gathered for the claustral dedication celebration], Mary’s cloister had to be ours!30

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Las Casas (1967) 328–29; Sigüenza (1907–09) 425; Jiménez de Cisneros (1965) 1, 208 and 2, 800–03; Liber Processionarius . . . Cisterciensis (1569) fols. 18v–19r; Mitchell (1986) 58; Heers (1971) 25–26, 70–71; Jacquot and Konigson (1973) 57, 434; Bridgman (1973) 239–40; and Lleó Cañal (1975) 48–49. 29 Castro Morales (1979) 21. 30 Arguello (1702) frontispiece and further specific statements that the cloister is

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Arguello cited the fourth line, first verse of the Matins hymn of the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary (LOBVM ), which reads “Claustrum Mariae bajulat.”31 Fr. Matheo Guerra’s preliminary ‘opinion’ or dedication, published in the same document with Arguello’s sermon, provided an even more thorough equation that shows that traditional Hispanic religious thought regarded the generic cloister as a figure of Mary. God created Mary as a cloister for himself, the church identifies it [through the LOBVM ] and says that it is Mary’s cloister: Claustrum Mariae bajulat . . . God wanted to make himself human, and to do this he elected the spotless womb of Our Lady. He wanted to be the fruit of her spotless womb, and, since there can be no fruit without earth, he asked Mary for earth, and Mary gave him her earth. He desired to en-cloister himself in the form of a man [the Christ child], and asked Mary for her spotless womb to make in it, and of it, a closed cloister . . .32

Arguello and Guerra identified Mary, as manifest in her own immaculate conception, with the figure of the ideal as well as the real cloister a century-and-a-half after the principal decorative campaign at Huejotzingo, but they drew upon a metaphor known long before it. Their exegesis can consequently be applied with confidence to the interpretation of the problem of the identification of the Mexican sixteenth-century cloisters with the figure of Mary. The LOBVM, dedicated to the immaculate conception on pages 1, 5, and 7. The original text translated by this author reads on page 9: . . . en vna parte se llama vientre, y en otra parte se llama Claustro: “Beatus venter, qui te portauit,’ escribiò S. Lucas, y trasladò la Iglesia: Claustrum Mariae baiulat. Entrañas de Maria [sic], no podian [sic] ser sino Claustro de Dios! Claustro de Maria de necessidad [sic] hermanos mayors y menores avia [mod.: había] de ser nuestro! 31 “Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary: Matins, Nocturne I,” Appendix A of Purtle (1982) 179. 32 Guerra (1702), preface to Arguello (1702) on unnumbered pages 10–13 prior to the numbered pages of Arguello’s sermon; this author’s translation. The original Spanish printed text of the citation on unnumbered pages 10–11 is: Hizo Dios á [sic] Maria [sic] para Claustro suyo, ponele [sic]el nombre la Iglesia, y dice que es Claustro de Maria: Claustrum Mariae baiulat . . . quizo [sic] Dios humanarse, y para humanarse [sic] eligió el purissimo [sic] vientre de Maria señora, quiso ser fruto de su vie[n]tre purissimo, y como para ser fruto, se necessita [sic] de tierra, pidió la tierra a Maria, y Maria le dio su tierra, quiso enclaustrarse como hombre, y pidió a Maria que le diesse su purissimo vientre para hazer [sic] en el, y del [mod. de él] vn Claustro cerrado . . . The extraordinarily vivid verb humanarse “to make oneself human,” is no longer accepted as a Spanish word, while the verb enclaustrarse still is. Galimberti Jarman and Russell (2003).

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upon whose line ‘Claustrum Mariae bajulat’ they seize, was in existence at least by the eleventh century and instituted formally in church ceremonial by Pope Urban II in 1095. In the twelfth century the monks Philip of Harvengt and Radulfus Ardens also identified Mary with the cloister.33 There is plenty of precedent then, at least in the literature of the ideal cloister, for the possibility that the Huejotzingo court was consecrated to Mary as a physical metaphor comparing her enclosed purity and inviolate virginity to those of the friars and their institute.

Processional Purification: Acolman The question of the possible consecration of the Huejotzingo cloister to Mary must be considered in the light of the contemporary decorative campaign for the first cloister of the Augustinian monastery of Acolman. This is the only surviving Mexican Mendicant sixteenthcentury claustral mural campaign featuring a complete Marian sequence of images, rather than the isolated ‘signposts’ that this essay has so far treated. It is a processional cycle for the corners (Fig. 12.4).34 Mary as agent of Jesus’ incarnation is the primary protagonist of the processional theatre of the Acolman first cloister. This is the only known claustral cycle of corner images in Mexico to feature scenes not directly associated with Christ’s Passion. The reason for this must be Acolman’s singularity as the only surviving sixteenthcentury monastery in Mexico, with the exception of Franciscan Xochimilco, to have two true cloisters, not just courtyards, both composed of garth, piers or columns, and four covered walks.35 A few others, such as Huejotzingo and Yuriria, have a second, small open courtyard to accompany the principal cloister within the conventual block, but none except Acolman and Xochimilco has a second courtyard with covered, arcaded walks meant to function materially to provide access to major dependencies nor ceremonially as a hub of monastic life. 33 Arroyal (1784) n. p.; Migne (1844–91) vol. 155, col. 1423 and vol. 203, col. 215; J. Wilkie, (1967); and Gründel (1976) 8–11. 34 Edgerton (2001) 108 and 210. 35 Ciudad Real (1976) 1, 109, recorded the two cloisters of the Franciscan monastery of Xochimilco, which still survive, in his visit of 1585. Six friars inhabited them. They were completely finished save for the corridors of the cells.

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Fig. 12.4 Schematic iconographical diagram of the first cloister of the Augustinian monastery of Acolman, State of Mexico, built after 1539, mural painted ca. 1560. Drawing courtesy of Prof. Reynaldo Santiago.

Kubler, in his brilliant morphological study of the Mexican monasteries, established that the first cloister at Acolman belongs to the earliest group of such structures, built in the 1530s and ’40s of rubble or lime with little or no carved articulation. Piers of simple section were the rule and the column was not employed.36 At Acolman a second cloister was added just to the east of the older one around 1560, of much grander dimensions, of two stories planned as such 36 Kubler (1948) 346–48. The Acolman first cloister always had only one floor until a second was added in the 1950s by the Mexican Dirección de Monumentos Históricos of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. Following Gurría Lacroix (1968) 36, in the 1950s a loggia with wooden roof was added over each of its four sides. Simple piers of square section were built over each first floor pier, in effect creating a second floor for the first cloister. Toussaint (1948) 30, has a photograph of the humble cloister from above, showing the four slanting roofs of its four walks with no superstructure above those roofs. There is no reason to believe that the Acolman first cloister ever had a second level. The Augustinians also had single-storey cloisters built in Mexico at Yecapixtla about 1541 and at Charo ca. 1580–1602, and these subsist as such today.

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from the outset, with columns and arches of masterful stereotomy and beautiful sculptural details. In short, the Acolman second court is everything that the first quadrangle is not. The architectural and carving style of this second hub are closely related in style to the grand Plateresque portal of the church, which features the emphatic inscription dated 1560, so long that it requires two placards. In that same year the provincial chapter meeting for the complete Augustinian province of Mexico was held at Acolman.37 The most powerful and prestigious Augustinians in Mexico, those with the power to vote, would not have met outside the familiar confines of the mother house in Mexico City unless their accommodations at Acolman were decorous and if there were too not much building detritus over which they could stumble. The separation in time between the construction of the two cloisters is not reflected in a similar lacunae between their decoration. Close study of the mural paintings and their painted frames in the corners of the old cloister and the corners of the new cloister reveals that all of them are closely related stylistically and belong to the same decorative campaign, perhaps by the hand of the same master.38 The availability of two true cloisters to decorate at Acolman about 1560 resulted in the painting of three processional cycles: the corners of the outside walls of both floors of the much finer second cloister received Passional sequences, while the much humbler, smaller, single-storey old cloister received a Marian suite in its outside corners (Figs. 12.4 and 12.5).39 All of the other surviving corner processional cycles in Mexican sixteenth-century cloisters consist of images allusive to Christ’s Passion; once the space for that minimum liturgical requirement had been secured at Acolman in the new cloister, it was possible to dedicate the old to a celebration of Mary as the human intermediary of the incarnation. This rare diversification of theme proves that the Marian cycle of the first cloister could not have been conceived or executed separately from the required Christocentric sequence of the second. The mural program of the first cloister consists of an Evangelist paired with one of the four Latin Doctors of the Church for the 37

Grijalva (1624) fol. 94v. Phillips (1993) 358–59. 39 The mural cycle of the lower second cloister was destroyed, but small fragments of it remain. Gurría Lacroix (1968) 6–12; and Phillips (1993) 522–24. 38

Fig. 12.5 The Annunciation Witnessed by Sts. Augustine and John of Sahagún. Highly damaged mural painted ca. 1560, first cloister, Augustinian monastery of Acolman, State of Mexico. Photo by the author.

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eight cloister-walk-directed faces of the four corner piers, a figure of an Augustinian friar saint on each of the faces of the eight simple intermediate piers, and a cycle of six Marian processional images in the corners (Fig. 12.4). Each of the Marian scenes save The Adoration of the Magi has two kneeling saints in profile depicted at the lower corners. These saints are generally identical with many of those depicted on the piers. The reuse of most of the pier saints as ‘witnesses’ of the holy events demonstrates, in conjunction with the stylistic and material evidence on site, that the pier and processional paintings were conceived together as one unit of meaning. The four processional images on the west side of the first cloister are The Annunciation Witnessed by Saints Augustine and John of Sahagún (Fig. 12.5), The Visitation Witnessed by Saints Ambrose and Jerome, The Adoration of the Child Witnessed by Two Female Saints,40 and The Adoration of the Magi. There is no way on a single clockwise or counterclockwise line, as liturgically prescribed for processions, to pass each Marian image of the west end in a manner consonant with the traditional chronology of these Christian events (see Fig. 12.4). The temporal sequence in the Bible is: (1) Annunciation, (2) Visitation, (3) Adoration of the Child, and (4) Adoration of the Magi. A procession that has presumably exited the church and gone through the passage between cloisters at the northeast corner will, on its normal counterclockwise path, pass event number 4 first, then proceed along 1, 2, and 3. The clockwise order of 3, 2, 1, 4 is improbable in terms of narrative coherence. Perhaps the anomalous temporal order of the Marian images here resulted from a desire to ‘bracket’ the two dominant west-end representations with Adoration scenes that exalt the fruit of Mary’s acceptance of the will of God. The two other surviving paintings of the cycle on the east side are in very poor condition, with large sections erased (Fig. 12.4). It has not been possible to identify their subject matter with certainty.

40 For the iconographic tradition of images of The Adoration of the Child, see Réau (1955–59) 2, 2, 220–26. In the course of field work it was verified that two profile figures, one in each lower corner of the painting as typical of this cycle, ‘witness’ the event. Only their heads and upper torsos are visible, but they are clearly marked as female in dress and hair arrangement. They have haloes to indicate sainthood but lack nuns’ veils or habits. They could not be representations of St. Augustine’s female relatives or of Augustinian nun saints, for other Mexican viceregal Augustinian mural cycles of saints in cloisters depict these latter two female categories dressed in the black Augustinian habit.

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However, there are plausible indications that their content was fundamentally Marian and incarnational, matching that of the four paintings of the west side. The basic structure of the two eastern images is clear enough that we can at least be sure that they do not represent scenes from the childhood of Jesus such as The Flight into Egypt or The Disputation of the Elders in the Temple, events that could have logically followed upon those depicted on the west side. The cloister, whether officially through consecration or simply through signification, is therefore not dedicated to Jesus’ childhood but to Mary as the agent of his incarnation. Mary’s centrality in this cloister is underlined by the fact that three of the four Doctors of the Church—Augustine in The Annunciation and Jerome and Ambrose in The Visitation—appear in the two scenes in which Christ is to be felt as present in his mother’s womb but in which he is not physically visible, leaving Mary as the prime protagonist on the viewer’s sensory level. The four Doctors of the Church carry more weight in this cycle than the friar saints. This is due to their physical and symbolic location on the stronger corner piers in conjunction with the Evangelists as the metaphorical ‘cornerstones’— not merely ‘columns’—of the church, and because one of the four was Augustine, the purported founder of the Order of Hermits that had this monastery built and decorated.41 Augustine, the preeminent saint on the piers as far as the viewing friar would be concerned, whose lead as ‘founder’ he would be obliged to follow, is placed within The Annunciation (Fig. 12.5), which as the first event in the chain of the narrative serves as the processional ‘title page,’ the point of departure for the rest of the Marian cycle. Accordingly, The Annunciation is also first at Acolman in experiential terms, for it is the image that a procession that had exited the church and gone through the passage from the second cloister to the first would see first, framed in the segmental barrel vault, all the way down the north cloister walk to the west (Fig. 12.4). This signals that the basic meaning of the first cloister’s corner mural cycle is incarnational, since Augustine ‘conjures up’ the moment when God becomes flesh through Mary in the sequence’s ‘title page.’ As a model for the viewing friar—and through the guiding friar officiant, the Indian neophytes on procession42—St. John of Sahagún 41 42

Forshaw (1967); and Réau (1955–59) 3, 1, 388–89. Phillips (1999) 227–50, and (1993) 140–404.

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is set opposite Augustine at the right lower corner of the painting, further emphasizing its primacy by making it an all-Augustinian affair embracing the ‘father’ of the Order and one of its most illustrious friars. By contrast, The Visitation is the only picture of the cycle whose two witnesses, Jerome and Ambrose, are both Doctors. This is enough to reiterate Mary as the protagonist of the processional images, although these Doctors ‘testify’ to an event of secondary importance to the believer compared with the fundamental moment of the incarnation. This can be verified simply by comparing the number of extant early modern representations of the Annunciation to those of the Visitation, or the volume of ancient and medieval writing on the former versus the latter.43 As with Franciscan Huejotzingo and Dominican Chimalhuacán Chalco, when The Annunciation is the first image associated with a cloister, it identifies it with the paradigm of the new, definitive, heavenly paradise of eternal life: As the earth, Mary, in which God, according to doctrine, planted the new dispensation, his son. The identification of that paradise with Mary would have been logical, intended, and inescapable. The focus, origin, and visual anchor of the system of signification of the first Acolman cloister is Christ immanent in the central stone cross of the garth (see the center of Fig. 12.4). Nevertheless, a number of ancient metaphors, thoroughly embedded in Christian lore, would have led the believing onlooker to view the earth in the garth, from which symbolically grew the cross as tree of life, as Mary. As Guerra wrote in 1702, Mary is the earth, Christ is the fruit. If we follow this rescension, God is not earth—he can only clothe himself in the material guise that Mary as physical agent, as earth, can provide. For Mary as earth the Friars Hermit of Acolman had only to look to the writings of their purported founder Augustine, such as De Genesi Lib. 2, where he presents her as the earth watered by the

43 Livius (1893) passim. The four key moments of Christian, and therefore cosmic, history are the incarnation—identical with the Annunciation—the Passion of Christ, his resurrection and ascension, according to Rupert of Deutz (1974), 91. St. John of Sahagún, who lived 1430–79, was a Spaniard from Salamanca who belonged to what was in 1560 the modern era of the bona fide Order of Hermits of St. Augustine. He was not officially canonized as a saint until 1691, following Réau (1955–59) 3, 2, 733. He was the logical choice for this program as the most famous Hispanic Augustinian saint with whom the friars could identify, for Villanova, i.e. Santo Tomás de Villanueva, did not supplant him in that category until the seventeenth century.

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Holy Spirit. Or they could study Ambrose, Augustine’s teacher, who marveled how from paradise the first Adam was cast forth into the desert . . . the Second Adam [Christ] returned to Paradise . . . From virgin earth Adam, Christ from the Virgin.44

Mary’s earth, following medieval exegetes, took the spiritual form of the ‘enclosed garden’ of Songs 4, 12. This invited parallels with the cloistered garth. Rupert of Deutz, whose Commentary on the Song of Songs, composed in the year or so after 1125, represented a watershed in the growth of the cult of Mary by being “. . . the first consistently Marian interpretation of that love song ever to appear in Latin Christendom,” explained that Mary’s womb is a garden in that it is fertile, enclosed in that it is uncorrupted. Rupert took the traditional Christian figure of paradise—the fountain, the garden, the four rivers—and laid over it a Marian veneer, much as would have been done by an informed spectator of the Acolman first cloister program. He envisioned her as the new Eve—who undoes the harm done by the first woman—in whom God plants the new celestial paradise as he had once planted on Earth the terrestrial Eden. As Eve once invited Adam to taste the fruit of perdition, so Mary later invited God into her closed garden, that is, the womb, to taste the fruit of salvation. She is the blessed earth with the tree of life in the middle, whence flow the four rivers of the Gospels.45 This metaphor continued into early modern times, for Ulrich of Lilienfeld wrote: Paradise is the body of the blessed Maiden . . . in the middle of the garden, that is, in the womb of the blessed Maiden, the Lord God planted the tree of life . . . Therefore the fruit of this tree, namely the blood shed in the Passion, means everlasting life and salvation.46

Similarly, the earliest named Spanish poet, the secular cleric Gonzalo de Berceo, in the mid-thirteenth century describes Mary as the paradise garden with tree of life, with the four rivers of the Evangelists emanating from her: She is even specifically called the ‘editor’ of the Gospels.47 44

Livius (1893) 51 and 64. Van Engen (1983) 291; and Rupert of Deutz (1974) 85–87. 46 This is my translation of Guldan’s citation, 99–100. According to Guldan (1966) 177, Ulrich, abbot of Lilienfeld, wrote this in the period 1351–58. 47 Berceo (1985) 11, 24, 37–45, 69–78. 45

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The figure of Mary as enclosed garden-paradise was not just literary but also found frequently in the visual arts. Here a couple of salient examples must suffice. In a Rijksmuseum painting from the first half of the fifteenth century of The Virgin and Child between Four Virgins, Mary holds the Child on her lap and is seated in the middle of a raised platform. It is separated from the rest of the depicted space by a railing and stands in a completely enclosed courtyard before a wall with shut gate in the central middle ground, beyond which is a landscape. A distinctly cloister-like effect is produced. The closed gate, sequestration, and premeditated contrast of inside/outside are clearly meant to signify Mary as the enclosed garden of the Song of Songs. To emphasize her virginity through the iconographic principle of parallelism, she is closely surrounded on her garth platform by four female virgin saints (left without obvious identifying attributes).48 They are the adjectives that qualify her Noun. Braunfels rightly compared this picture’s hierarchism of space to that of the Uffizi painting of about 1485–88 by Giovanni Bellini whose title is unknown but which was most aptly characterized by Robertson as A Meditation on the Incarnation.49 In it we see a garthlike space with tile floor segregated by a marble railing from the grassy knoll on which it stands. The hill in turn is separated from the background landscape by an intervening lagoon. As in the Netherlandish arrangement there are sacred personages standing inside the primary space of the ‘garth’ and others—in this instance Peter and Paul, the guardians of the church/paradise50—outside of it, in the secondary space of the knoll. The fundamental identity of the garth-like space of Mary as the agent of incarnation in the Rijksmuseum work is maintained in Bellini’s. Mary is the queen enthroned, dominant over her son (who sits on a pillow while contemplating an apple) in height and posture. Her throne’s two upper steps are of normal rectilinear form, but Bellini made the two lower steps semicircular to avoid an abrupt transition and thus allow it to flow into the central figure of the cosmic cross

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Braunfels (1956) 4 and Abb. 3; and Edgerton (2001) 208–09. Braunfels (1956) 9; and Robertson (1968) 101. 50 As the principal apostle to the Jews and apostle to the Gentiles, respectively, Peter and Paul represent the two columns that uphold the Catholic church and by extension they embody the fabric of the church. Jameson (1895) 1: 179–80; Clement (1971) 250; Mâle (1984) 384; and Vetter (1965) 124–25. 49

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in the square that is her son’s theatre. All of the protagonists within the central claustral figure—the Child and the three baby souls who seek the apples of salvation in the tree of life brought by the new Adam and the new Eve—are on the horizontal arm of the pavement cross that departs from the exact midpoint of the throne’s circular steps. Mary sits outside of her son’s cruciform theatre, but its construction and its protagonists necessarily flow from her. The Acolman first cloister’s signification was realized along the same basic tenets as those expressed by Bellini. Mary’s ultimate abstract identity is as source or progenitor, whether in the guise of earth, enclosed garden, or fountain. She was linked with the central fountain of the Jeronymite monastery of Guadalupe’s principal cloister at Puebla, Extremadura, Spain by a long laudatory inscription carved into the basin. This is to be expected because the monastery largely owed its position as one of the two or three most important houses of any religious order in early modern Spain to its possession of the miraculous image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The basin, dated 1405, was destroyed during the years of anticlerical reaction, but chroniclers had previously recorded the inscriptions.51 By marking the central fountain as a metaphor for Mary, the Jeronymites effectively placed the whole principal cloister—Eden, symbolically and actually watered by it—under her tutelage. Indeed, the whole house was hers. Its principal cloister thus constitutes an important antecedent to the Marian interpretation of the Huejotzingo and first Acolman cloisters.

Conclusion A specific consecration of the cloisters of Cuauhtinchán and Epazoyucan to the Virgin Mary cannot be proved nor refuted on the basis of the surviving Marian mural paintings of those two foundations, which parallel the Virgin’s capacity to be entered yet not defiled only with the passages that they protect. There is clear evidence that the Virgin’s advocacy was extended much more broadly at Chimalhuacán Chalco, Huejotzingo, and Acolman due to the identification of The Annunciation, the moment when the new paradise was sup-

51

Juaristi (1944) 130–33.

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posedly realized through the perfect vessel of Mary, with the three cloisters as the first image or signpost viewed upon their entry. Only at Acolman was this identity linked directly with the processional liturgy, since only its Annunciation was part of the decorative ensemble of the stations. The impact of the Huejotzingo Annunciation was amplified by the corresponding mural triptych of The Conception that, like it, was indissolubly linked in meaning to the cloister with which it was connected. Unlike the Cuauhtinchán, Chimalhuacán, and Huejotzingo Annunciations and the Epazoyucan Death and Coronation of the Virgin, the Huejotzingo Conception and the Acolman Annunciation are sacramental retables that inevitably imprint a predominantly Marian reading on the traditional symbolism of the complete cloister, not just dependencies of it. At Acolman such a reading is further reinforced by the decision to set aside the first cloister as the Virgin’s processional theatre in premeditated contradistinction with the normal Christocentric and Passional ambient of the second. The Huejotzingo and Acolman first cloisters may have been ritually consecrated to the Virgin as the Franciscan main cloister of Mexico City indeed was in 1702, but this unproven point is not nearly as important as the fact that the equation Mary—inviolability—cloister was an essential and integral aspect of their signification.

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Heers, J. (1971) Fêtes, jeux et joutes dans les sociétés d’Occident à la fin du moyen-âge (Montreal: 1971). Heitz, C. (1963) Recherches sur les rapports entre architecture et liturgie à l’époque carolingienne (Paris: 1963). The Holy Bible (1899) The Holy Bible. Douay Rheims Version (Baltimore: 1899). Hood, W. (1995) Fra Angelico: San Marco, Florence (New York: 1995). Jacquot, J., and E. Konigson (1973) eds., Les Fêtes de la Renaissance. (Paris: 1973). Jameson, A. (1895) Sacred and Legendary Art, ed. E. Hurll (Boston: 1895). Jiménez de Cisneros, G. (1965) Obras completas, ed. C. de Baraut (Montserrat, Spain: 1965). Juaristi, V. (1944) Las fuentes de España (Madrid: 1944). Kubler, G. (1948) Mexican Architecture of the Sixteenth Century (New Haven: 1948). Kuttner, S. (1967) “Duranti, William, the Elder,” New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: 1967). Las Casas, B. de (1967) Apologética historia sumaria, ed. E. O’Gorman (Mexico City: 1967). Legarza, F. (1962) “Orígenes de la descalcez franciscana,” Archivo Ibero-Americano 85 (1962) 15–131. Lewis, C. (1985) An Elementary Latin Dictionary (Oxford: [1891] 1985). Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie (Rome: 1968–76). Liber Processionarius . . . Cisterciensis . . . (Salamanca: 1569). Limentani Virdis, C., and M. Pietrogiovanna (2002) Great Altarpieces: Gothic and Renaissance (New York: 2002). Livius, T. (1893) The Blessed Virgin in the Fathers of the First Six Centuries (London: 1893). Lleó Cañal, V. (1975) Arte y espectáculo: La fiesta del Corpus Christi en la Sevilla de los siglos XVI y XVII (Sevilla: 1975). Lorenzana, F. (1769) Concilios provinciales primero, y segundo, celebrados en la . . . ciudad de Mexico . . . en . . . 1555, y 1565 (Mexico City: 1769). McAndrew, J. (1969) The Open-Air Churches of Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Cambridge, MA: 1969). McAndrew, J., and M. Toussaint (1942) “Tecali, Zacatlán, and the Renacimiento Purista in Mexico,” Art Bulletin 24, (1942) 311–25. Maggi, L. (1983) “Le tipologie architettoniche dei conventi dell’ ‘Osservanza’ nel Cremasco e nel Cremonese,” in Il francescanismo in Lombardia (Milan: 1983) 403–23. Mâle, É. (1972) L’Art religieux de la fin du XVI e siècle, du XVII e siècle, et du XVIII e siècle (Paris: 1972). Mayor, A.H. (1971) Prints and People (Princeton: 1971). Mendieta, G. (1971) Historia eclesiástica indiana (Mexico City: 1971). Messerer, W. (1964) Romanische plastik in Frankreich (Cologne: 1964). Meyvaert, P. (1986) “The Medieval Monastic Garden,” in Medieval Gardens (Washington, D.C.: 1986). Migne, J.-P. (1844–91) ed., Patrologiae Cursus Completus sive Bibliotheca Universalis . . . Omnium SS. Patrum, Doctorum, Scriptorumque Ecclasiasticorum . . . Series Latina (Paris: 1844–91). Mitchell, B. (1986) The Majesty of the State: Triumphal Progresses of Foreign Sovereigns in Renaissance Italy (1494–1600) (Florence: 1986). Montes de Oca, J. (1975) San Agustín Acolman. Estado de México. (Mexico City: [1929] 1975). Moyssén, X. (1965) “Pinturas murales en Epazoyucan,” Boletín del Instituto de Antropología e Historia 22 (1965) 20–27. Oroz, P., et al. (1947) Relación de . . . la Provincia del Santo Evangelio . . . de la Nueva España, ed. F. Chauvet (Mexico City: 1947). Paso y Troncoso, F. del, ed. (1905–42) Epistolario de Nueva España 1505–1818 (Mexico City: 1905–42). Paatz, W. (1952–55) Die Kirchen von Florenz (Frankfurt: 1952–55).

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Peterson, J. (1993) The Paradise Garden Murals of Malinalco (Austin: 1993). Phillips, R. (1993) “Processions through Paradise: A Liturgical and Social Interpretation of the Ritual Function and Symbolic Signification of the Cloister in the SixteenthCentury Monasteries of Central Mexico” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1993). —— (1999) “La participación de los indígenas en las procesiones por los claustros del siglo XVI en México,” transl. and ed. A. García Zambrano, Relaciones 20, no. 78 (1999) 227–50. Poole, S. (1987) Pedro Moya de Contreras: Catholic Reform and Royal Power in New Spain, 1571–1591 (Berkeley: 1987). Prem, H. (1974) Matrícula de Huexotzinco (Graz, Austria: 1974). Purtle, C. (1982) The Marian Paintings of Jan Van Eyck (Princeton: 1982). Réau, L. (1955–59) Iconographie de l’art chrétien (Paris: 1955–59). Rey, R. (1955) L’Art des Cloîtres romans: Étude iconographique (Toulouse: 1955) Ricard, R. (1933) La “Conquête spirituelle” du Mexique (Paris: 1933). Rieder, K. (1908) Der sogennante St. Georgener Prediger (Berlin: 1908). Robertson, G. (1968) Giovanni Bellini (Oxford: 1968). Román, H. (1575) Repvblicas del mvndo, divididas en xxvii. libros (Medina del Campo, Spain: 1575). Rupert of Deutz (1974) Commentaria in Canticvm Canticorvm (Turnhout, Belgium: 1974). Salazar Monroy, M. (1945) Motivos ornamentales al fresco del convento franciscano de Huejotzingo (Puebla, Mexico: 1945). Santiago (1540–87) “Actas provinciales de la provincia de Santiago de México, 1540–87.” A microfilm of Ms. 142 from the Hubert Howe Bancroft Collection of the University of California, Berkeley, consulted in the Fondo de Microfilm of the Biblioteca Eusebio Dávalos Hurtado del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City, Fondo Miscelánea, roll 89. Schapiro, M. (1985) The Sculpture of Moissac (London: 1985). Schwaller, J (1987) The Church and Clergy in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Albuquerque: 1987). Sigüenza, J. de (1907–09) Historia de la Orden de San Jerónimo (Madrid: [1605] 1907–09). Snyder, J. (2005) Northern Renaissance Art, eds. L. Silver and H. Luttikhuizen (Upper Saddle River, NJ: 2005). Synan, E.A. (1967) “Honorius of Autun,” New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: 1967). Toussaint, M. (1948) Acolman (Mexico City: 1948). Van Engen, J. (1983) Rupert of Deutz (Berkeley: 1983). Vetter, E. (1965) “Das Frankfurter Paradiesgärtlein,” Heidelberger Jahrbücher 9, (1965) 102–46. Warner, M. (1976) Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York: 1976). Wilkie, J. (1967) “Philip of Harvengt,” New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: 1967). Wilkie, W. (1967) “Hugh of Fouilloy,” New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: 1967).

PART IV

FULFILLMENT: THE EXTENSION AND EXPRESSION OF THE FEMALE BODY IN THE NEW WORLD

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CONVENTS, ART, AND CREOLE IDENTITY IN LATE VICEREGAL NEW SPAIN Elizabeth Perry

The nuns of the convents of New Spain were patrons and practitioners of a variety of art forms, including music, drama, architecture, painting, sculpture, and embroidery. This paper focuses on a cluster of innovative visual practices developed in and around the colonial convents by Mexico’s creole elite. These innovations began in the first half of the seventeenth century with the development of the escudo de monja (nun’s shield) hagiographic badge (Figs. 13.1 and 13.2).1 The escudo de monja was invented as a collaboration between the convents and a reform-minded episcopate. They were official commissions of the convents, or gifts to them, and remained convent property after the deaths of the nuns who wore them. In the eighteenth century, with the convents in decline and the creole elite struggling to deal with the reforms of the Bourbon monarchy, a second new genre of art, the monja coronada (crowned nun) portrait tradition was invented by the families of the nuns (Fig. 13.3). Monja coronada paintings put the image of the Mexican nuns and their distinctive costumes and ritual practices on permanent and near life-size display in the palatial homes of the creole elite. This new visual culture associated with the convents contributed to a local resistance to Spanish authority and to creole self-fashioning as a noble, courtly, and divinely elected people. The first escudos de monjas appeared in the Mexican convents in the 1630s in response to restrictions of dress imposed upon the convents by the Spanish Archbishop of Mexico, Francisco Manso y Zuñiga (1587–1655). Manso y Zuñiga had arrived in Mexico in 1629 as a post-Tridentine bishop with a mandate for reform. The restructuring

1 This article is based on my dissertation, “Escudos de monjas/Shields of Nuns: The Creole Convent and Images of Mexican Identity in Miniature,” Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 1999. I would like to warmly thank my dissertation advisors, Dr. Jeffrey Muller and Dr. Marcus Burke.

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Fig. 13.1 Unknown Mexican artist, Virgin and Child with Saints. 17th c., Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Dr. Robert H. Lamborn Collection.

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Fig. 13.2 Unknown Mexican artist, Coronation of the Virgin with Saints. Ca. 1770–90, Denver Art Museum, Collection of Jan and Frederick R. Mayer.

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Fig. 13.3 Andrés López, Sister Pudenciana. 1782, Olana State Historic Site, New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation.

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of the religious orders, and of convents in particular, had been ordered by the Council of Trent at its third session (1562–1563), masterminded by St. Charles Borromeo (1538–1584), the nephew of Pius IV. Although lay and religious women played a large part in the reform movement, the Council of Trent had especially charged the bishops with this obligation, and Borromeo himself would go on to famously reform the convents of Milan.2 These celebrated convent reforms would have been current in the mind of Archbishop Manso y Zuñiga as he composed his own rule for Mexican nuns in the seventeenth century, especially in light of Borromeo’s recent canonization in 1610. The oldest, wealthiest, and most luxurious convents in New Spain were those of the Conceptionist Order, and the most visible sign of their reform would be a change in the appearance of the nuns themselves. Since the establishment of their Order at the end of the fifteenth century, Conceptionist nuns had been required to wear two images of their patron, the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception. One image was worn over the heart in the form of a venera—a detachable piece of devotional jewelry, usually made of precious material such as enameled gold. The second image was worn as an embroidered patch on the shoulder of the nun’s cloak. The devotional image worn on the heart and sleeve was a courtly tradition begun in late medieval Europe and brought to Mexico from Spain. Members of other military, chivalric, and religious orders in New Spain wore similar combinations of insignia on the chest and the cape. However, only the veneras of the convents would change in form, becoming the new and unique form of devotional art known as the escudo de monja. In his 1635 rules for the Conceptionist nuns of New Spain, Manso y Zuñiga did not attempt to impose radical reform on the Mexican convents, as was taking place at the time in the discalced convents of Spain. He sought only to impose partial reform, especially in the symbolic realm of dress. The bishop reminded the Mexican nuns of their vows of enclosure, chastity, obedience, and poverty (the interpretation of which was most troubling to all). He then directly addressed the issue of the Marian badges, stating that the nuns were now required:

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elizabeth perry [to] wear on their cape and scapular an image of Our Lady, surrounded by the rays of the sun and wearing a crown of stars on the head, in a setting that is plain and decorous, which is not to be of gold, stone, or enamel.3

The original (Spanish) rules of the order had not specified anything about the material of the images. It was precisely at this time, in the 1630s, that the Mexican Conceptionist nuns began to wear small paintings on copper or parchment set into frames of indigenous tortoise shell in the place of their traditional veneras of enameled gold. The new form of the badges fulfilled all the requirements of the bishop’s rule: they were images of the Virgin that were not made with ‘gold, stone, or enamel.’ The shift in materials was a direct response to the restrictions imposed on the convents by the bishop, but it was a response on the part of the convents that obeyed the letter of the rule more than its spirit. The tortoise shell-framed paintings were as much luxury objects as the veneras had ever been. The convents made an ingenious choice in substituting tortoise shell for the gold of their badges. Tortoise shell was considered a luxury good in Europe because it had to be imported from the tropics. But in Mexico it was a plentiful material with a native tradition of skilled workmanship. From the sixteenth century, it seems to have been favored for ecclesiastical objects: Its lightness made it a useful material for large processional crosses and croziers. Tortoise shell also held special female associations: it was used by elite Mexican women for the large combs that held their mantillas, and for their chiqueadors (beauty patches).4 Not being gold, tortoise shell met the bishop’s conditions, yet it was still a material with a certain cachet of preciousness, femininity, and religious importance. Escudo with Madonna and Child Surrounded by Saints (ca. 1630–50), in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is an early example of the new genre (Fig. 13.1). The badge is attributed to a member of the prominent Lagarto family of illuminators—either Andrés Lagarto (1589–1666) or Luis de la Vega Lagarto (1586–after 1631)—

3 Emphasis added. “Traigan en el manto y escapulario una imagen de nuestra Señora, cercada de los rayos del sol, y corona de Estrellas en la cabeza, con guarnicion llana, y decente, que no sea de oro, piedras, ni esmalte;” Manso y Zuñiga (1635) 5. 4 Armella de Aspe (1979) 10.

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who were active in the city of Puebla in the early seventeenth century. The painting is executed in gouache and gold leaf on parchment, the technique of manuscript illumination. It depicts a seated crowned Virgin and Child surrounded by a glory of cherubs, some holding symbols of her Immaculate Conception, and flanked by Saints John the Baptist and Catherine of Alexandria. The composition is encircled with a representation of the Franciscan cord and a decorative border of cherubs’ heads on a blue background. The border design, which includes some motifs associated with metalwork (such as sgraffito marks), may have originated in attempts to imitate the appearance of the original Conceptionist veneras made of enameled gold.5 The entire escudo, framed in tortoise shell and glass, measures fifteen centimeters in diameter.6 Such new badges must have been considered a successful solution to the problem of precious materials and womanly vanity, at least initially, because the bishops permitted more escudos to be made and the practice was allowed to spread. If the bishops had not been pleased with the escudos, they certainly had the authority to stop their production and use. An escudo attributed to Andrés Lagarto and now in the treasury of the Cathedral of León was a gift of a bishop newly returned from Mexico, a gesture suggestive of episcopal pride in the new genre.7 The new type of badge—the small painting framed in tortoise shell—was adopted by Conceptionist convents in other parts of Latin America and eventually retransmitted back to Spain.8 However, although elements of the genre, or even an early version of what would become the escudo de monja, migrated to other parts of the Spanish Empire, the elaborate and distinctive escudo de monja

5 The blue ground used on some of the early borders—especially in the early illuminated escudos—was a motif seen in both miniature painting and enameled metalwork. Miniature painters used finely ground precious materials to achieve sparkling effects like those of inlaid stone and enamel traditional in jewelry work. An example of such a blue ground used in metalwork borders is the rim of lapis lazuli around a ca. 1540 portrait medallion of Charles V; Evans [1970] 83, 96, and pl. 65. 6 The Conceptionists were associated with the Franciscan Order, although they had their own rule. 7 Tovar de Teresa (1988) 176–177. 8 The abbess of the Conceptionist Convent in Lima, Peru, Sister María A. Sorazu, shared with me photographs of eighteenth-century portraits of abbesses depicted wearing small escudos. The 1728 rules of a discalced Conceptionist convent in Cádiz recommended that the nuns wear images made of base metal or framed in tortoise shell in the place of the traditional veneras; Regla y Constituciones . . . (1728) 6.

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developed only in Mexico. By the end of the seventeenth century, the Mexican badges were significantly larger and visually more complex than any other genre of devotional jewelery in the early modern west. Although they were worn on the body and functioned as badges of devotion and group identity, escudos de monjas were at least as closely allied to small cabinet pictures—a genre that includes painted and embroidered images—as to jewelry, including the veneras from which they evolved. The painted escudos were small in scale for paintings, yet complex in composition and execution. They belonged to the European tradition of small-scale painting, which was part of the mainstream of seventeenth-century art. Although some early painted escudos, such as the example in Philadelphia, were executed in gouache on parchment, the technique of ‘true’ miniature painting as practiced by Flemish and English artists, virtually all other painted escudos were executed in oil paint on a metal base, usually a sheet of copper (some escudos were embroidered).9 This was the traditional medium for small-scale painting in Spain, as in much of Italy. Unlike ‘true’ miniatures, which were executed by specialists in the technique of illumination (gouache on parchment), oil ‘miniatures’ were made by the same painters who made full-scale paintings (in other words, by the most widely known painters).10 Following in this Spanish tradition of working in both ‘large and small,’ the most renowned artists of New Spain painted the large oil miniatures that were known as escudos de monjas. For this reason, the use of the escudo de monja should be seen not only as a religious practice of the creole elite but also as a public display by this group of the finest and most advanced painting in New Spain.11 9 For a discussion of the term ‘miniature’ painting as it was used in the seventeenth century, see Colding (1953). 10 For example, Francisco Pacheco estimated that of the approximately 150 portrait paintings that he had made, more than half were ‘small ones;’ cited in Stratton, The Golden Age in Miniature (1988) 22. 11 The absence of documentation recording payment for the escudos in the records of either the convents or the artists suggests that at least some of the escudos may have been offered to the convents as acts of devotion rather than having been commercial objects sold to the convents. Dr. Ruiz Gomar kindly confirmed this lack of documentation in a 1996 conversation at IIE, UNAM, and I thank him for his collaboration. The very fact that names of artists can often be attached to the escudos (or were sometimes already attached, i.e., signed, by their makers) also distinguishes the escudos from other forms of religious jewelry, which were usually left unsigned and can only rarely be attributed to a named artisian or even to a particular country. See Lightbown (1992) 42–43.

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In contrast to the earlier veneras brought from Spain, which depicted only the image of the Virgin, the Mexican escudos de monjas customarily represented an elaborate sacra conversazione of angels, saints, and other holy figures. The theme of the Virgin’s coronation by the Trinity was incorporated into the design, as well as the elaborate decorative border of flowers and winged cherubs’ heads. Although simple versions of the sacra conversazione theme can sometimes be seen on other types of devotional jewelry, the complexity of the scenes represented on the escudos de monjas (especially the large number of figures) can be paralleled only by larger devotional works, including retablos (altarpieces), the genre of painting with the highest status in New Spain. The ornamental border designs of flowers and cherubs’ heads that adorned both painted and embroidered escudos for two centuries also carried associations with larger devotional paintings. The designs recall the garlands of flowers painted around devotional images of the Virgin or saints in imitation of real flower offerings.12 The incorporation of these elaborate new elements into the Mexican medallions was a development that can only be characterized as an act of considerable artistic ambition for the new genre. However, this desire to create complex images with many figures and decorative elements necessarily conflicted with the concurrent need for the images to operate as legible badges. The slight increase in the size of the escudo de monja in the period immediately following the invention of the genre may have been an attempt to help resolve this difficulty. It can be argued the this modest increase in size—about one to two inches larger than the earliest examples— resulted in a medallion that was as large as was feasible for an image worn on the body. The light material of the tortoise shell frames was also a key factor allowing this development: metal or wooden frames would have made such large paintings too heavy to have been comfortably worn by the nuns. The increase in size may have been small; but in scale with the human body, the change was enough to make the escudos de monjas appear strangely marvelous and unlike any other form of devotional jewelry. The change also allowed the artists painting the escudos more space in which to represent an increasingly complex pantheon of devotional figures. The legibility required of a badge was also preserved in the newly complex escudos de monjas through a rigid standardization of the 12

For a study of this genre, see Freedberg (1981).

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composition. The predictability of the composition helped the visually complex badges to be more easily read from a distance (as the escudos usually would have been seen by the public—on the bodies of the nuns, from a distance, during a performance of the liturgy or other ceremony). The standardization of the composition and border design, as well as the distinctive framing material, also helped to define the escudo as a distinctive genre of object.13 Beyond their status as the tour de force of a new Mexican genre, the escudos de monjas represented great cultural authority through their iconography, which centered on the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception. Closely associated with Habsburg royal patronage, the holy image of the Inmaculada was painted by the entire litany of ‘golden-age’ Spanish painters: Ribera, Velázquez, Zurbarán, Murillo, etc. The miraculous appearance of the Inmaculada—the Guadalupana— on the tilmatli (cloak, also tilma) of a converted Mexican was promoted by creoles as extraordinary evidence of their divine favor. Even the pope was said to have exclaimed of this Mexican Virgin: Nomi tanto omi nationi; “God has done such for no other nation.”14 This Inmaculada was asserted to be an acheiropoitic image (one made without human hands). Because of its divine origin, the Mexican Guadalupe was the supreme and ultimate Inmaculada. Her cult influenced the meaning of every image of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception in New Spain, including that of the escudos de monjas. Through the cult of the divine image of Guadalupe, Mexico could claim a special and miraculous inmaculada that trumped the Spanish one. Their makers, patrons, and audience would all have been very conscious of the fact that, when worn on the body, the escudos de monjas represented a completely new genre of devotional art and religious practice. As a new genre, the escudo de monja became a Mexican artistic tradition that could compete with Spanish tradition. Poignant proof of the special esteem accorded the escudos is the very fact that, unlike other elements of the nuns’ costume and accessories such as the silver crowns worn at convent rituals, a great many escudos de monjas—including early examples—were preserved by 13 Tortoise shell appears to have become reserved for the new genre—it was virtually never used to frame other types of devotional jewelry or portrait miniatures. 14 These words were attributed to Pope Benedict XIV upon seeing the image of the Guadalupana for the first time (through a painted copy). This proto-nationalistic motto was added to painted and printed copies of the Guadaulpana in the eighteenth century; see Lafaye (1976) 88.

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the convents rather than being merely buried with the nuns.15 Clearly, these were esteemed works of art as well as sacred and devotional objects. There is evidence that before the end of the seventeenth century the Church hierarchy had concerns about the suitability of the convents’ new art form. In 1673, following a pastoral visitation to the Convento de San Jeronimo in Mexico City, Archbishop Payo de Ribera castigated the nuns for the excess of their dress, and issued pronouncements concerning the prohibition of colored ribbons, lace that was worn on cloths around the head “under the pretext of illness,” lace worn on sleeves, colored underskirts, or other vanities. Furthermore, the bishop reprimanded the nuns to “take care in your escudos that you should wear you do not exceed in preciousness or curiosity the holy poverty that you profess.”16 Indeed, the escudos de monjas no longer seemed the product of a reform; the curiously oversized shields were, rather, the epitome of worldly preciousness and pride. A late-eighteenth-century escudo in the Mayer Collection at the Denver Art Museum is particularly beautiful and elaborate (Fig. 13.2). At least twenty-two figures of saints and angels are artfully arranged in an eight-and-a-half-inch tortoise shell frame. In its style and complexity it is similar to escudos made by, or attributed to, José de Paéz (1720–ca. 1790). Paéz was a prolific artist who often worked for the Mexican convents. At least eleven escudos de monjas, including a large Jeronymite escudo in the collection of the Hispanic Society of America in New York, are attributed to this artist. The escudo represents the coronation of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception by the Trinity, surrounded by three tiers of saints and the Sacred

15 In contrast, almost all of the nuns’ crowns, which were made of silver, and also therefore at least ‘semi-precious’ objects, were buried with the nuns. Archeological excavations at the convents of San Jerónimo have shown that some of the nuns were buried wearing escudos de monjas; Carrasco Vargas (1990). However, as a photograph of the burials at the Conceptionist Convento de la Encarnación shows, the nuns were not all buried wearing their escudos; Perdigón Castañeda (1994) 19. Numerous early escudos made by important painters survive, showing that these objects were valued by the convents and deliberately saved from burial (and some escudos exist that were elaborately framed in monstrance-like stands). Evidence from the monja coronada paintings and some elaborately framed escudos also suggests that by the eighteenth century older escudos were being recycled by the convents for the next generation. 16 Cited in Carmen Reyna (1990) 27.

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Hearts of Jesus and Mary. The upper tier of saints depicts, from left to right, St. Joachim, St. John the Baptist, Michael the Archangel, Raphael the Archangel, the Guardian Angel with a human soul, and St. Anne. The middle tier depicts Saints Luis Gonzaga, John of Nepomuk, Barbara, Joseph with the Child Jesus, Rosalia of Palmero, and John of God. The bottom tier depicts Saints Gertrude the Great, Ignatius Loyola, Francis of Assisi, Stanislaus Kostka with the Child Jesus, Theresa of Avila, and Anthony of Padua taking the Christ child from the arms of Joseph in the tier above. The composition is surrounded by the border of roses, blue ribbons, and cherubs’ heads on a gold ground distinctive of the escudo de monja genre, and is set into a tortoiseshell and glass frame. What appears to modern eyes as a bewildering crowd of unidentifiable figures was, in the eyes of its original audience, a clearly recognizable and ordered representation of the spiritual identity of the convent. The iconography seen on the escudo de monja was a complex sacra conversazione of angels, saints, and other holy figures, especially monastics, who had supported and advanced the cult of the Virgin. This sacred history of devotion to the Virgin was held by the creole elite to have been only now coming into its final fulfillment in Mexico (in part through the actions of the nuns themselves). The escudos de monjas represent the Virgin in a variety of incarnations: As the Inmaculada, the winged Virgin of the Apocalypse, the Guadalupana, and the Virgin Annunciate. All of these images of Mary must be understood as carrying apocalyptic meaning in the context of the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which was promoted by the creole elite as evidence of the culminating role New Spain was destined to play in human salvation. The representations on the escudos de monjas were intended primarily as signs (badges) of institutional identity meant to be read, rather than solely as objects made for the private devotional meditations of the nuns (although they probably also functioned in that way). The rules of the Conceptionist Order specifically stated that the purpose of the image worn by the nuns was to function before the eyes of others as a visual reminder of the nuns’ practice of the imitation of the Virgin. The Virgin was said to be literally ‘impressed in the heart’ of her devotee. The Marian image was symbolically ‘tied’ to the bodies of elite creole women through their escudos de monjas, and through the pageantry and performance of convent ritual. These rituals—the specialized ceremonies of profession and death

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as well as the nuns’ daily recitation of the Hours of the Virgin, the Litany of Loretto, and the Franciscan Crown Rosary—all centered on a metaphor of coronation.17 Therefore, the representation of the Coronation of the Virgin as Queen of Heaven on the escudo de monja was both a visual prayer glorifying the Virgin and a powerful means of associating the creole nuns with this ultimate, and royal, feminine spiritual authority. The pronounced Jesuit iconography of many late colonial escudos, including this example, also appears to have had political as well as religious meaning for the creole convents. In 1767 Charles III expelled the Society of Jesus from Mexico, an act that provoked great outrage among the creole elite. The convents are noted as having been particularly zealous in their defense of their former confessors and mentors. Because written statements concerning the expulsion were forbidden by royal decree, visual statements, such as paintings, were an important method of local protest. Several large allegorical paintings glorifying the Jesuits were made in New Spain in the period immediately following the expulsion and were probably related to the convents.18 The Jesuit-pervaded iconography of many escudos de monjas after 1767, including this escudo with its depictions of Ignatius Loyola, Luis Gonzaga, and Stanislaus Koska, among others, can be seen as creole acts of solidarity with the Jesuit Order that were made in direct defiance of the Spanish Crown. New Spain was still in turmoil over the expulsion of the Jesuits when the Bourbon monarchy began to actively support radical convent reform under Bishop Francisco Fabián y Fuero (1765–1773) of Puebla and Archbishop Francisco Antonio de Lorenzana y Butrón (1766–1772) of Mexico.19 Besides dress, issues of reform included the large number of niñas or “protégées” (often the nuns’ sisters and nieces) living in the convents, the excessive number of servants, the unlimited admission of secular women into the convents as beatas, and the excessive personal expenses of the nuns. The ultimate goal of the bishops was to force the convents to accept a communal lifestyle— with all expenses and income pooled on a common basis, full communal possession of goods, and the abandonment of private cells and 17 See my dissertation for an extensive discussion of the relationship between the escudos and convent ritual and literature. 18 Mateo Gómez (1989) 377–386. 19 Lavrín (1965).

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servants. The convents would use all avenues of redress and resistance to the common life, such as numerous petitions to the Council of the Indies, to the Audiencia, directly to the Crown, and even to Rome. The nuns of the convent of Santa Inés in Puebla went so far as to petition the viceroy to remove their bishop from office.20 In all their suits, the convents’ position was basically the same: Their standard of living was an established tradition and they were under no legal obligation to live a reformed lifestyle. The dress of the nuns represented the outward sign of their compliance with episcopal pressure, and for that reason carried symbolic meaning for both sides of the debate.21 That the escudo de monja became an element of that politically charged struggle is apparent in the diffusion of the practice of wearing escudos among the unreformed convents of New Spain. In the seventeenth century, the use of the escudo had been confined to the Conceptionist Order and to three convents that had been founded by the Conceptionists in the sixteenth century. Therefore, the initial use of the escudo de monja in Mexico represented an informal kind of ‘family’ practice on the part of certain convents that were related— to the Conceptionist Order and to each other—by their foundations. Yet the practice was also from the start firmly linked to the wider reform issue: While Conceptionist nuns also founded the first Carmelite convent in New Spain (the order reformed by Saint Teresa of Avila) escudos de monjas were never worn by the Carmelites. And when Bishop Manuel Fernández de Santa Cruz (1637–1699) founded the reformed Augustinian convent of Santa Mónica in Puebla, the reformed Augustinian nuns also shunned the escudo (even though their unreformed sisters in Mexico had adopted the practice). At some point in the eighteenth century, the Dominican convents of Santa Catalina de Siena in Mexico City and in Puebla began, for the first time, to wear escudos de monjas. This convent was unreformed and active in the protests against the reforms. None of the other more austere Dominican convents adopted the escudo de monja. By the end of 20

Ibid., 193. The vehemence of that criticism and the importance of costuming as a symbolic construct are made clear in a 1735 letter to the Abbess of the Convento de Santa Clara in Querétaro. In the letter, the Franciscan Provincial threatened the nuns of Santa Clara with excommunication for even speaking—for or against—the forbidden practice of decorative pleating of the nuns’ scapulars. The letter is cited in Gonzalbo Aizpurú (1987) 241. 21

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the eighteenth century—the time of the most intense struggles over reform—virtually all of the unreformed convents of the metropolitan center of New Spain (Mexico City and Puebla) were wearing the escudo de monja, regardless of traditional practices or foundations. Significantly, none of Mexico City’s reformed convents of any order ever adopted the escudo de monja. The escudos de monjas had become both a product of imposed religious reform and an ingenious subversion of that reform. Ironically, despite declining enrollments in the convents, both the nuns and their escudos de monjas became more, not less, visible in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century creole society. Perhaps largely due to changed demographics, the number of creole women entering the Mexican convents as professed nuns decreased measurably in the eighteenth century, and sharply in the nineteenth century.22 Elite creole families no longer needed to have three, or even four, of their daughters ‘take estate’ in the convents, in part because advantageous marriages were easier to arrange in the late colonial period (there was now no acute shortage of ‘white’ elite males). However, the profession of a daughter still carried important social and religious status, and remained a major and predictable social event for nearly every elite creole family. It is in the context of this struggle for native autonomy centered on the convents of Mexico that the monja coronada genre of portraiture emerged. The monja coronada portrait depicted an image of the young nun at the time of her religious profession, which was commissioned by her family for display in the home. Like the escudo de monja, this was a new tradition, and it seems only to have occurred in Mexico beginning about 1727.23 What is interesting to note is that the number of creole women entering the Mexican convents as professed nuns decreased measurably in the eighteenth century due to changing social conditions, yet the image of the nun became more important. The nun became more, not less, visible in eighteenth- and early nineteenthcentury creole society. The monja coronada portrait genre appeared in the creole home precisely as the meaning of the religious profession pictured was being bitterly contested. This contestation existed 22

Lavrín (1986) 175. The most important recent studies of the monjas coronadas paintings are the doctoral dissertation of Montero Alarcón (2002), and the exhibition catalog Monjas coronadas . . . (2004). 23

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within the context of larger political conflicts stemming from creole desire for political and social equity and self-determination in their relationship with Spain. If the number of actual nuns had shrunk, their symbolic meaning in creole culture had only increased. Like the escudo de monja, the monja coronada tradition developed out of Spanish practice, specifically a form of portraiture based on a metaphor of divine coronation. The nun’s betrothal to Christ and symbolic coronation was a central metaphor of convent culture in the late medieval and early modern period.24 Crowns were used in convent funerary rituals as well as ceremonies of profession throughout Europe (they were also used in marriage ceremonies). Convents sometimes commissioned a death portrait of particularly important or holy nuns and the nuns were often depicted wearing crowns.25 Decked in flowers, wearing the crown of her mystical betrothal, and surrounded by burning candles, the body of the crowned nun is shown as she appeared at her funerary ceremonies. These deathbed portraits of crowned nuns were the oldest type of monja coronada portraiture, and were a practice brought to Mexico from Spain. They exist throughout Latin America.26 In contrast to this practice, the new Mexican monja coronada genre was an image of the young nun at the time of her religious profession, commissioned by her family for display in the home. Monja coronada paintings quickly developed as a standardized image: The young woman in her costume was shown alone against a simple background and holding special ritual accessories, such as Christ child figurines. The accessories—the statues, stylized floral palms, lit candles, and elaborate crowns, as well as the inscriptions on the paintings— all signaled the transformation of these creole women into the spiritual brides of Christ. After completing the year of the novitiate, the young woman was allowed to leave the convent for a period of three to five days before the ceremony of her final vows, and it was most likely during her brief final visit to the family home that her portrait was completed. When the young woman disappeared into the cloister, her image remained to comfort her family and commemorate her sacrifice and piety; it also celebrated the status of the family. The practices surrounding the admission of a creole woman into 24 25 26

For this aspect of convent culture, see Vanderbroeck (1994). Ibid., 114; and Catálogo IV Centenario . . . (1990) 82. See Jaramillo de Zuleta (1992) for examples from Colombia.

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a Mexican convent were an opportunity for a display of creole wealth, nobility, and spiritual authority. The professed nun provided her family with prestige, religious assistance, and a network of social and business contacts. Her dowry and celebration of profession were costly, but admission to a convent was still less expensive and easier for the creole family to arrange than an advantageous marriage. Moreover, these events were opportunities for the display of conspicuous consumption of wealth that was deemed necessary for a creole family to maintain elite-class status. The limpieza de sangre (purity of blood) requirement of the convents not only served to exclude women of Native American, African, or mixed lineages from the convents, it also served to document publicly the (supposedly) ‘pure’ Spanish descent of the creole families of the women accepted for convent admission. This was a touchy issue for the creole elite, as the purity of creole blood was treated as quite suspect by Spanish elites. Their doubts were reasonable, because many creole families were indeed not of ‘pure’ Spanish descent, but acceptance into a convent ‘proved’ otherwise.27 The monja coronada portrait served as a superb document of this status for the entire family. The nun not only represented the presence of racial purity and of the sacred in the lineage of her family but she was also evidence of its wealth and status. Profession required considerable expense; both the dowry and the extravagant public celebration of religious profession were costly. High officials from local and regional government, the nobility, and even the viceroy were in attendance at the religious profession of a daughter of a prominent family. Engraved invitations were sent for the ceremony, which was preceded by a mass with a special sermon given by an invited speaker. The sermon, which often used the woman’s new religious name as its theme, was published by the family and given as a keepsake of the occasion. On the way to the church for the ceremony the girl was processed through the streets of the city in an open carriage, displaying her ceremonial finery as she bid farewell to the world.28 All of these ephemeral practices were made into a permanent display through the monja coronada paintings. 27

See Israel (1975) 93. Fanny Calderón de la Barca (1804–1882), the wife of the Spanish ambassador to Mexico, wrote an informative and entertaining account of a nineteenth-century religious profession held at the Conceptionist convent La Encarnación; Calderón de la Barca (1966) 264–267. 28

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Convent rituals offered the creole elite an opportunity to display a distinctively Mexican expression of Spanish cultural tradition. The floral crowns worn by the nuns of New Spain at their ceremonies of profession and death were, like the escudos de monjas, an elaboration and Mexicanization of Spanish traditions: The crowns worn by nuns in colonial Mexico were much larger and more ornate than those worn in Europe.29 It is probable that native Mexica traditions contributed to the creation of the elaborate floral crown tradition of colonial Mexico. Flowers were used in some similar ways (as headdresses) in pre-Hispanic religious ceremonies; these practices are documented in the codices. The basic crown was made of silver, and was ornamented with a fantastic array of objects: Beads, sequins, wax figurines of the baby Jesus, the Virgin, or other saints, and above all with flowers—artificial and most likely fresh as well. The flowers worn in the crowns of the nuns may have symbolized particular religious meanings for their audience; flowers often signified religious virtues in the devotional literature of the period.30 Finally, the crown’s associations with royalty and nobility should not be forgotten, as they were surely part of the intended meaning of the total assemblage. In addition to accessories like the crown, there were many features of the costumes seen in the monjas coronadas that were inimitably Mexican. Most of the nuns are depicted wearing stoles, an article of religious dress worn by bishops, priests, and deacons. The practice of nuns wearing stoles appears provocative in light of the convents’ struggle for autonomy against the bishops of Mexico. The Mexican nun’s headdress included an unusual curved form called the panocha.31 This extra bit of ornamental fabric hung over the nun’s forehead and often displayed large pendant pearls. The pleated scapular decorating the front of the habit was a labor-intensive detail of dress criticized (to no avail) as an affectation of fashion by the Church authorities attempting to reform these creole institutions.32 And finally, on top of the nun’s pleated scapular frequently appeared the over-

29 The Mexican crowns were several times larger than crowns used in Europe, such as a Franciscan crown from Hasselt published in Vanderbroeck (1994) 114. 30 In her article on monjas coronadas, García Barragán (1992) draws some specific meanings for the floral iconography from devotional literature and emblem books. 31 Armella de Aspe and Tovar de Teresa (1993) 85. 32 See note 21.

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sized and singular Marian medallion of the unreformed convents: The escudo de monja. A 1782 portrait of Sor Pudenciana Josefa Manuela del Corazón de María as a monja coronada depicts such an elaborately costumed young creole woman (Fig. 13.3). Sor Pudenciana is represented as turning slightly and faintly smiling as she engages the viewer’s eye. Her young and somewhat melancholy face contrasts markedly with her elegant and formal attire: A long habit, cape, scapular, and stole. The smooth blandness of the paint in the fabric and background of the painting is broken by islands of ornate detail: The face beneath its floral crown and pearl-lined panocha, the draped rosary and embroidered stole, the floral wand with an image of the Virgin of the Apocalypse held lightly in the left hand, the clothed Christ child figure held up to view in the other, and the large escudo de monja worn on the chest. Above her embroidered headdress decorated with pearls, she wears a crown of silver ornamented with artificial flowers and a dove in flight, symbol of the Holy Spirit. The painter was as careful to record every detail of the young woman’s elaborate costume, which was embroidered with silk, sequins, and pearls, and her accessories—the crown, wand, figurine, and escudo de monja—as to capture the likeness of her pretty face. The inscription on the portrait of Sor Pudenciana has been partially destroyed to fit into the present frame; it appears to read: Portrait of Madre Sister Pudenciana Josefa Manuela of the Sacred Heart of Mary, legitimate daughter of Don D. Bernardo Ramírez Cantrillana and of Doña María Josefa Ambrosia Tamariz. She was born the 19th day of May of 1757 and took the habit of a religious [professed as a novice] in the Encarnación Convent of this court of Mexico, the day 16 of August of 1781, and made her solemn profession [as a nun of the choir and] black veil [a nun of the highest status] Sunday the 25 of August of 1782.

The emphasis on the numerology of dates is typical of monja coronada inscriptions. Statements such as that a particular nun’s profession was made at “seventeen years, one month, and eleven days of age” are common. This formula came from traditions of hagiographic literature, and in using it the young woman was likened to a holy person or saint. This precise documentation—in word and image—of the cultural display made by the monja coronada is an indication of the extraordinary importance religious profession in a Mexican convent held for the creole family as a display of wealth, status, and identity.

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Like all cultural symbols, the escudos de monjas and monjas coronadas worked on a variety of levels of meanings: religious, social, artistic, and political. The escudo came to function as a symbol of the convents’ resistance to Spanish reform of a convent lifestyle that was conceptualized as both a traditional Mexican right and an important site of creole culture. It placed the elite-class women of these colonial convents under the patronage of the Virgin of an apocalypse that was characterized by the creoles as specifically Mexican in nature, and its pantheon of saintly beings identified the nuns themselves as part of that sacred history. The transformation of Spanish culture was most vividly represented in the picturesque monja coronada portraits that captured the ephemeral display of creole spectacle. The religiosity and courtly splendor of the Mexican people were represented through the development of new genres of art, such as the escudo de monja and the monja coronada, that were strange and marvelous in their visual excess. All these elements of cultural display were Spanish in origin, and yet completely unlike anything seen in Spain; they were the creation of a distinctly creole sacred identity.

Bibliography Amerlinck de Corsi, M. C., and M. Ramos Medina (1995) Conventos de monjas (Mexico City: 1995). Armella de Aspe, V. (1979) El Carey en Mexico (Mexico City: 1979). ——, and G. Tovar de Teresa (1993) Escudos de monjas novohispanas (Mexico City: 1993). Baernstein, P. R. (1993) “The Counter-Reformation Convent: The Angelics of San Paolo in Milan, 1535–1635” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1993). Calderón de la Barca, F. (1966) Life in Mexico: The Letters of Fanny Calderón de la Barca, eds. H. T. Fisher and M. Hall Fisher (New York: 1966). Carrasco Vargas, R. (1990) Arqueología y arquitectura en el Ex-Convento de San Jerónimo (Mexico City: 1990). Catálogo IV Centenario de la Real Fundación del Convento de Santa Isabel de Madrid (1990) (Madrid: 1990). Colding, T. H. (1953) Aspects of Miniature Painting: Its Origins and Development (Copenhagen: 1953). Egan, M. J. (1994) “Escudos de Monjas: Religious Miniatures of New Spain,” Latin American Art 5, no. 4 (1994) 43–46. —— (1993) Relicarios: Devotional Miniatures from the Americas (Santa Fe: 1993). Evans, J. [1970] A History of Jewelry, 1100–1870, 2nd ed. (Boston: [1970]). Freedberg, D. (1981) “The Origins and Rise of the Flemish Madonnas in Flower Garlands: Decoration and Devotion,” Müncher Jahrbuch der Bildenden Kunst 32 (1981) 115–50. García Barragán, E. (1992) “Mística y esplendor barrocos en Méjico colonial: Retratos de monjas coronadas,” Boletín de Museo e Instituto “Camón Aznar” [Spain] 48–49 (1992) 61–82.

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Gonzalbo Aizpirú, P. (1987) Las mujeres en la Nueva España. Educación y vida cotidiana (Mexico City: 1987). Israel, J. (1975) Race, Class, and Politics in Colonial Mexico, 1610–1670 (Oxford: 1975.) Jaramillo de Zuleta, P. (1992) En olor de santidad. Aspectos del convento colonial 1680–1830 (Santa Fe de Bogotá, Colombia: 1992). Lafaye, J. (1976) Quetzalcóatl and Guadalupe: The Formation of Mexican National Consciousness, 1531–1813, trans. B. Keen (Chicago: 1976). Lavrín, A. (1965) “Ecclesiastical Reform of Nunneries in New Spain in the Eighteenth Century,” The Americas 22 (1965) 182–203. —— (1986) “Female Religious,” in Cities and Society in Colonial Latin America, eds. L. S. Hoberman and S. M. Sorolow (Albuquerque: 1986). —— (1972) “Values and Meaning of Monastic Life for Nuns of Colonial Mexico,” Catholic Historical Review 58 (1972) 367–87. Lightbown, R. W. (1992) Mediaeval European Jewelry (London: 1992). Manso y Zúñiga, F. (1635) Reglas y ordenaciones de las Religiosas de la Limpia e Inmaculada Concepcion de la Virgen (Mexico City: 1635). Mateo Gómez, I. (1989) “Dos alegorías mejicanas de exaltación de la Compañía de Jesús tras la expulsión de la orden por Carlos III,” in El arte en tiempo de Carlos III (Madrid: 1989) 377–386. Monjas coronadas, Artes de México (1960). —— (Mexico City: 1978). —— Monjas coronadas: Vida conventual femenina en Hispanoamérica, ex cat. (Mexico: 2004). Montero Alarcón, A. L. (2002) “Monjas coronadas en América Latina: Profesión y muerte en los conventos femeninos del siglo XVIII” (Ph.D. diss., UNAM, 2002). —— (2004) “Pinturas de monjas coronadas en Hispanoamérica,” in Monjas coronadas: Vida conventual femenina en Hispanoamérica (Mexico City: 2004) Muriel, J. (1946) Conventos de monjas en Nueva España (Mexico City: 1995). —— (1982) Cultura feminina novohispana (Mexico City: 1994). Muriel de la Torre, J., and M. Romero de Terreros (1952) Retratos de monjas en Nueva España (Mexico City: 1952). Nyerges, E. (1978) “Un retrato mexicano de monja en el Museo de Bellas Arts de Budapest,” in Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts 56 (1978) 103–111. Perdigón Castañeda, J. (1994) “Identificación y evaluación de metales arqueológicos: Coronas de monjas siglo XIX del Ex-Convento de la Encarnación” (M.A. Thesis, Escuela Nacional de Conservación, Restauración y Museografía, Mexico City, 1994). Perry, E. Q. (1999) “Escudos de Monjas/Shields of Nuns: The Creole Convent and Images of Mexican Identity in Miniature” (Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 1999). Pintura Novohispana. Museo Nacional del Virreinato (1992–1996) 3 vols. (Tepotzotlán Mexico City: 1992–1996). Regula y constituciones de las religiosas del orden de la Purissima Concepcion de Nuestra Senora, en su convento de Santa Maria de la ciudad de Cadiz (1728) (Cádiz Spain: 1728). Reyna, M. del C. (1990) El Convento de San Jerónimo: Vida conventual y finanzas (Mexico City: 1990). Ruiz Gomar, R. (1978) “Catálogo de retratos de monjas,” in Monjas coronadas (Mexico City: 1978). Stratton, S. (1988) The Golden Age in Miniature (New York: 1988). Tovar de Teresa, G. (1998) “Mystic Brides: Nun’s Shields from Colonial Mexico,” FMR 93 (1998) 27–54. —— (1988) Un rescate de la fantasía: El arte de los Lagartos, iluminadores novohispanos de los siglos XVI y XVII (Mexico City: 1988). Vanderbroeck, P. (1994) Le jardin clos de l’âme: L’imaginaire des religieuses dans les PaysBas du Sud depuis le 13e siècle (Brussels: 1994).

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE SWEEPING OF THE WAY: RETHINKING THE MEXICAN OCHPANIZTLI FESTIVAL Catherine R. DiCesare

In the aftermath of Spanish colonization of central Mexico in the sixteenth century, a remarkable corpus of illustrated manuscripts was created under the auspices of Christian missionaries. These chronicles classified and categorized virtually every aspect of pre-Columbian native life. Worried that native Mexicans were still practicing forbidden rituals under the guise of Christian pageantry, missionary-chroniclers paid special attention to the spectacular pre-Hispanic monthly rituals to the native gods. The friars, therefore, sought to create a body of knowledge by which to better understand and thus more effectively extirpate any lingering native ‘idolatry.’ These manuscripts are understood best, however, as a collaborative effort, since Mexican Indians participated actively in the project, supplying the friars with their memories, oral traditions, histories, and written records. What is more, the manuscripts’ pages are replete with images drawn by native Mexican artists, the very people whose defunct governments, outlawed deities, and proscribed rites they describe. These sources represent the colonial nexus of different traditions about constructs called ‘books’ and ‘writing,’ and reframe the ritual past in ways significant to both colonists and indigenous Mexicans.1 1

This essay is part of my forthcoming book, Picturing Ochpaniztli in Colonial Mexican Codices, printed here by permission of the University Press of Colorado, Boulder. It is an outgrowth of my dissertation, whose final draft was generously supported by a Graduate Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. An early version of this essay was presented at the Conference of the Society of Sixteenth Century Studies in San Antonio, Texas in October 2002. Travel to that conference was funded by a Professional Development Program Grant from the College of Liberal Arts at Colorado State University, Fort Collins. Drs. Flora Clancy and Holly Barnet-Sánchez at the University of New Mexico, and Drs. Charlene Villaseñor Black and Dr. Cecilia Klein at the University of California at Los Angeles have all given valuable advice, helping me to clarify my argument. I must also thank Richard Wright, Mario DiCesare, Roze Hentschell, and Barbara Sebek, who read drafts of this essay and offered numerous useful suggestions.

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This essay investigates these chronicles’ representations of a preColumbian festival known as Ochpaniztli, “the sweeping of the roads.” This celebration corresponded with one of the series of twenty-day festival periods dubbed veintenas that, together with the final five unnamed days, comprise the Mexican pre-Hispanic ritual year of 365 days. The Ochpaniztli festival was dedicated to Tlazolteotl, the “deity of filth” or “divine filth,” a goddess of human sexuality patronized by diviners, midwives, adulterers, and child-bearers. The friars also recorded references to her as Toci, “Our Grandmother,” and Teteoinnan, “Mother of the Gods.” Despite this variety of appellations, representations of her consistently involve one and the same goddess.2 Tlazolteotl was intimately linked with physical and moral ‘filth’ and led humans to transgress acceptable social and sexual boundaries. She functioned for both aboriginal informants and Christian friars as a symbol of debauchery and an instigator of licentious behavior which could result in serious consequences for the malefactor and the community at large. At the same time, she was the patroness of numerous cleansing spaces and activities, and could relieve the ill effects of the transgressions that she inspired. These were not separate contradictory functions for the goddess, however: Engaging directly with ‘filth’ or immorality of all kinds, in the indigenous conception, could help to overcome it.3 Early colonial Ochpaniztli illustrations usually portray as their major or even sole focus the paraphernalia-laden figure of Tlazolteotl, whose attributes usually include a cotton headdress, blackened mouth, broom, and shield (Figs. 14.1–14.4). For the viceregal viewer, she manifests the multiple roles that Mexican indigenous women played as agents of transformation and purification, both in the domestic sphere as spinners, weavers, cleaners, and child-bearers, and in the public arena as physicians and midwives. Indeed, Thelma Sullivan characterized the goddess Tlazolteotl as the very personification of “the transformative nature of Woman.”4 In this essay I highlight the myriad ways in which ritual purification was integrated into the Ochpaniztli festival in order to effect trans2 According to Sullivan, (1982) 7, the goddess’ name comes from tlazolli, “filth” or “garbage,” and teotl, “deity.” See also Burkhart (1989) 92. “Divine Filth” is the translation provided by Klein (1993b) 21. I am indebted to Drs. Klein and Villaseñor Black, personal communications, July 2002, for the idea that the names Tlazolteotl, Toci, and Teteoinnan all refer to the same entity. 3 Klein, personal communication, July 2002. 4 Sullivan (1982) 15.

Fig. 14.1 Ochpaniztli, fol. 21r, Codex Tudela. Reproduction by permission of the Museo de América de Madrid.

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Fig. 14.2 Ochpaniztli. Reprinted from Elizabeth Hill Boone, The Codex Magliabechiano and the Lost Prototype of the Magliabechiano Group (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), fol. 39r, by permission of the University of California Press.

formations at a number of different levels: Domestic, public, moral, and corporeal. Tlazolteotl was especially linked with profound fears about the physical illnesses and communal devastation wrought by illicit sexual activities as well as concerns about procreation and childbirth. The festival may have incorporated cleansing and penance as well as magical and medicinal therapies to protect the community, cure infirmities, and ensure healthy parturition. The colonial Ochpaniztli illustrations are thus a vital source of information about the ways in which the indigenous ritual past was remembered or imagined in the Christianizing milieu of mid-sixteenth-century central Mexico. In centering their pictorial imagery on the deity’s body and its appurtenances, the colonial Indian artists left a visual record of Tlazolteotl’s most important role in the celebration: As the bodily agent of purification and protection, she took away with her all of the evils and impurities of the community, restoring equilibrium and harmony.

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Fig. 14.3 Ochpaniztli, fol. 3r, Codex Telleriano-Remensis. Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

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Fig. 14.4 Ochpaniztli. Reprinted from Diego Durán, Book of the Gods and Rites of the Ancient Calendar, eds. Fernando Horcasitas and Doris Heyden (Norman: 1971) Pl. 24. © 1971 by the University of Oklahoma Press.

Anonymous indigenous artists provided the colonial Ochpaniztli illustrations for missionaries who were busy cataloging the gods and rites of native Mexican worship for the utilization of the mendicant colleagues. While Tlazolteotl is prominent pictorially, the friars’ accompanying texts treat Ochpaniztli’s public celebratory manifestations. Though there is no single model for describing the festival, it is usually set in August or September and linked with key participants, attributes, and activities that normally include the sacrifice and flaying of a woman impersonating the goddess, and brooms and sweeping rites. The most substantial accounts were compiled in New Spain’s metropolitan center, Mexico City, including the anonymous Codex Tudela, tentatively dated to 1553, the Dominican friar Diego Durán’s Book of the Gods . . . of the 1570s, and the voluminous writings of the Franciscan Bernardino de Sahagún for his General History of the Things of New Spain, also from the 1570s.5 5

Códice Tudela (1980) 263–65; Durán (1971) 229–37 and 447–49; and Sahagún

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This group of texts describes maize deities in relation to the celebration, which in concert with its autumnal date, has led many modern scholars to conclude that Ochpaniztli was a harvest festival. Its purification aspects have been generally subsumed within these agrarian interpretations.6 Yet it is likely that there were localized variations on these veintena festivities.7 Since lustral rites are also described independently of maize activities, it is my contention that the propitiation of maize gods need not be reconciled with the cleansing activities that constitute much of the festival’s enactment. What is more, Tlazolteotl’s pictorial attributes in the Ochpaniztli illustrations are most readily linked with women’s roles as agents of cleansing and transformation. Indeed, Betty Ann Brown suggests that the rite’s patroness “originally had little to do with agricultural fertility, and . . . only took on this significance when her feast was merged with another, possibly earlier, feast of Chicomécoatl [a maize deity].”8 I will therefore propose that universal purification, linked with social, moral, and corporeal issues, was actually a chief and separate function of the Ochpaniztli observance.9 The cognate Codices Tudela and Magliabechiano, both dating to the mid-sixteenth century, are among the earliest colonial chronicles to (1950–1982) 2:19–20 and 118–26. Sahagún’s General History is commonly known as the Florentine Codex. While the provenance of the Codex Tudela manuscript is not secure, its Ochpaniztli account is especially valuable to this essay because it refers specifically to rites that purportedly took place at the Great Temple in pre-Hispanic Tenochtitlán, now the center of Mexico City. On the provenance and dating of this manuscript, see Boone (1983) 85–88. 6 There is a large body of scholarship on Ochpaniztli’s agrarian overtones. Seler (1963) 1, 123, interprets its cleansing rites as part of the autumn harvest, in which maize is symbolically purified as it emerges from the ground. Margain Araujo (1939–40) 157–74, closely follows Seler’s interpretation. Graulich (1999), especially chapter 3, also offers an agrarian interpretation of Ochpaniztli in his recent study of the calendrical cycle, suggesting that it originated as a springtime sowing festival. In his model, purification rites are linked particularly to the renewal of the earth at the beginning of the rainy season. Broda (1970) 249–52, has discussed its agrarian rites in relation to martial overtones. Carrasco also examines the intersection of warfare and agriculture in a number of essays, most recently Carrasco (2002) 197–225. 7 Indeed, even Durán (1971) 70–71, admits that, although he obtained differing versions of festival activities from his indigenous informants, he only included those things “on which I found my informants agreed.” 8 Brown (1984) 203. Brown’s essay is important for establishing the historical underpinnings of the festival, rooted particularly in early martial conflicts between the Mexica and the people of Culhuacán. 9 My analysis is indebted particularly to Burkhart (1989), especially chapter 4, “Purity and Pollution,” which demonstrates the profound moral and penitential implications of sweeping and straw brooms.

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include representations of the Ochpaniztli festival (Figs. 14.1 and 14.2).10 These illustrations evoke the formal conventions and iconography of pre-Columbian manuscript painting, in which figures are composed of bold, unvarying black outlines that enclose even washes of ink.11 Bodies are treated so as to convey the maximum amount of information about dress and iconography. Torsos and arms are positioned frontally, while heads and legs are depicted in profile, so that all accessories are clearly legible. The sole figure of the goddess comprises the illustration in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis (Fig. 14.3), which may have been painted about the same time as the Tudela, c. 1553–55. A virtually identical illustration appears in the Codex Vatican 3738, a cognate of the Telleriano-Remensis, which was produced in the Italian language at a slightly later date, probably in the 1560s.12 The figures in both codices appear to have been placed on the page before the textual annotations that surround them were. Although the amount of detail in each scene varies, both represent the patron goddess Tlazolteotl laden with the same accessories. She sports a headdress of unspun cotton that supports cotton-bedecked spindles. Black circles adorn her cheeks, usually accompanied by thick blackening around her mouth. She carries a broom in one hand, and in the other a shield decorated with numerous small circles. This iconography remains consistent in Durán’s slightly later chronicles of the 1570s, in which the artist incorporates the pictorial illusionism, naturalism, and landscape associated with the Renaissance style imported to Mexico, yet the goddess herself is still depicted with the pre-Columbian-inherited profile orientation of the head and legs with frontal arms and torso (Fig. 14.4). A related illustration appears in Sahagún’s Primeros Memoriales, which was written in Náhuatl, the lingua franca of indigenous central Mexico, and compiled at the Franciscan mission town of Tepeapulco, Hidalgo in 1559–61.13 Though not expertly drawn, this image provides a wealth of pictorial information about the Ochpaniztli celebration. The left side of

10

On the date of the Codex Magliabechiano, see Boone (1983) 7ff. See Boone (1983) 34, on the use of the pre-Hispanic painting style in these two post-Conquest manuscripts. Robertson (1959) devised a useful series of stylistic categories for analyzing early colonial manuscripts. On style and iconography in late pre-Columbian manuscripts, see Boone and Smith (2003). 12 Quiñones Keber (1995) 128–32. Codex Vatican 3738 has its Ochpaniztli representation on fol. 47v; see Anders, Jansen, and Reyes García (1996). 13 Sahagún (1993 and 1997) fol. 251v. 11

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this pictorial space relates the festival to the goddess’s paraphernalia, a headdress and face mask mounted atop a wooden scaffold. It must be noted at the outset that these early representations of proscribed native gods and rites are not unmediated visions of the pre-Columbian past, since this project was carried out largely for the benefit of those Europeans who sought to extirpate native religion. What is more, the dearth of pre-Hispanic native manuscripts from central Mexico with which to compare the colonial material makes it difficult to know if the Indians drew on established indigenous traditions for representing the veintena festivals. Nevertheless, the colonial images are reminiscent of pre-Columbian pictorials, in which the lavishly adorned bodies of gods and rulers conveyed ample information about their function and associations through paraphernalia, gesture, posture, and careful positioning. What is more, the same image of Tlazolteotl appears—sporting blackened mouth, cotton headdress, and broom—in the elaborate Ochpaniztli celebration depicted in the spectacular Codex Borbonicus, a largely pictorial manuscript from central Mexico.14 While it is of uncertain date, it may have been an early colonial copy of a pre-Columbian manuscript, and is almost certainly of native authorship. I suggest that the native colonial artists were using highly intentional iconographic and pictorial conventions for representing the Ochpaniztli patroness.15 On the eve of the Spanish conquest, the native peoples of heartland Mexico conceived of Tlazolteotl as a dangerous and powerful being. Characterized as the ‘deity of filth’ or ‘divine filth,’ she was linked especially with illicit sexual activity and its disruptive, potentially fatal consequences. We know a good deal about her associations from a variety of viceregal sources, including the veintena accounts, histories, divinatory almanacs, and the ecclesiastics’ catalogs of the Mexican ‘pantheon.’ She was reputed to inspire sexual excesses and adultery, was the patroness of prostitutes, diviners, and midwives, and embodied a kind of love magic that could entice humans to commit all manner

14

Codex Borbonicus (1991) 30. The viceregal veintena illustrations have received a good deal of scholarly attention. For example, Brown (1977) suggests that they were a largely colonial invention, fostered by missionaries and influenced by European calendrical imagery. On the other hand, Nicholson (2002) 65 et passim, has recently argued that the veintena cycle had “almost certainly been illustrated in a fairly systematic fashion at the time of the Spanish conquest” in handbooks. 15

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of carnal sins and sexual transgressions. In his catalog of Mexican deities Sahagún describes Tlazolteotl as ‘another Venus’ who presided over the realm of ‘evil and perverseness’ where she inspired ‘lustful and debauched living.’16 This litany of shame was later echoed in the seventeenth-century writings of Franciscan friar Juan de Torquemada, who characterizes the goddess as a nasty sex demon, the ‘deity of excrement and refuse’ venerated especially by those given to actively indulging their corporeal urges. She is well named, he maintains, because as goddess of sensuality what else could she be but foul, filthy, and stained?17 The commentators of the divinatory almanac in the Codex TellerianoRemensis describe Tlazolteotl as evil, shameless, ‘with two faces,’ a “goddess of garbage and shameful things” who protected adulterers and ‘evil women.’18 They liken her to Eve as the catalyst of original sin, declaring that “before the flood she caused everything evil and deceitful” and that “as time began, so did sin.” Bolstering the Tlazolteotl-Eve parallel, the Ochpaniztli account in the same manuscript states that the natives celebrated this festival for “she who sinned by eating the fruit of the tree.” The association of these two sinister female figures from separate religious traditions no doubt resulted from Eve embodying sexual temptation and its devastating consequences within the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Her labor as a spinner after her expulsion from Eden also links her with Tlazolteotl who, as the patroness of spinners and weavers, invariably wears an unspun cotton headdress that often bears spindles.19 In addition, these associations are interwoven: though spinning and weaving were among the Mexican woman’s chief domestic and economic activities, in native lore they were also well-known metaphors for sexual activity.20 To the Mesoamericans, the unbridled sensuality that Tlazolteotl inspired was more than just a social transgression, however. It could result in chaos, destruction, even death. This goddess was the teotl, the “deity” or supernatural force associated with tlazolli, a Náhuatl term generally translated as “filth.” Burkhart and López Austin in

16

Sahagún (1979) 1, fol. 11v and Sahagún (1950–82) I, fol. 23. Torquemada (1975) 2, 62. My translation. 18 This and the following quotes before the next footnote are from Quiñones Keber (1995) 254–65. 19 Sekules (2002) 83. 20 Brunfiel (1991) 224–51; Burkhart (1989) 93; and Sullivan (1982) 7–8, 14–15. 17

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particular have analyzed the concept of tlazolli.21 It circumscribes a broad realm of pollution, including tangible material substances like dust, dirt, mud, and excrement that made one physically ‘dirty.’ Burkhart suggests that Tlazolteotl’s cotton headdress, “soft, incoherent, unformed, but with creative potential” and clear sexual connotations, was a kind of tlazolli.22 Moral, social, and sexual transgressions like adultery, prostitution, and sodomy were also major sources of corrupting tlazolli. It was thought that contact with too much tlazolli caused a buildup of noxious ‘fumes’ in the liver, which could harm or even kill the transgressor.23 In the Florentine Codex volume on Nahua rhetoric, Sahagún describes the malefactor inhabited by an almost palpable substance “which troubleth him, perverteth him, and . . . which afflicteth his bones, his body, his mind, his heart; and it eateth, it drinketh, it disturbeth his heart, his body.” He characterizes the pre-Columbian concept of engaging in the proscribed activities promoted by Tlazolteotl as bathing in ordure and swallowing “stench, rottenness, and blackness.” The sinner placed himself in the uninhabitable place, the place of fright, where stand the torrent, the crag. The cliff, the gorge, the crag stand sheer, stand ashen, stand reddened: the place where there can be no standing, no place of exit.24

One thus risked physical danger and sudden, violent death. In fact, the Mesoamericans blamed sexual transgressions for a whole host of serious diseases, including tlàcolmiquiztli, which has been translated as “harm caused by love or desire” or “filth death.” It was thought that toxic vapors could emanate from the transgressor’s body to further afflict spouses, children, and even the community at large. An adulterer’s spouse, for example, was held to be susceptible to chahuacocoliztli, “illness due to adultery,” while the unborn fetuses of adulterous women could be irreparably harmed by the mother’s noxious emanations, and pregnant adulterers might be subject to serious difficulties while giving birth. A father’s marital infidelities rendered newborn infants susceptible to ixtlazolcocoliztli, “filth diseases of the eyes.” As Ortiz de Montellano notes, proscribed sexual activities like homosexuality—which was punishable by execution—were believed 21

Burkhart (1989) especially chapter 4, “Purity and Pollution,” 87–129; and López Austin (1988). 22 Burkhart (1989) 93. 23 López Austin (1988) 1, 232–35. 24 Sahagún (1950–82) 6, 30–32.

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to cause property damage, including crop failures and dead livestock, resulting in grave economic consequences.25 Consequently, it was held to be crucial that the malefactor, “thou [who] hast found pleasure in filth, in vice,” rid himself of the accrued muck, “thy evil odor, thy corruption.” Significantly, it was Tlazolteotl herself, the divine instigator of the pollution, who paradoxically offered the path toward balance and cleansing. It was thought that purifying baths and confessional rituals performed under her auspices could relieve the ill effects of the “ugly, stinking, rotten” filth that she inspired.26 For example, in consonance with Tlazolteotl, healers invoked Chalchiutlicue, the rain goddess, “She of the Jade Skirt” (i.e. the cleansing waters), at the ritual “bath for the sickness caused by love affairs or by affection,” tetlazolaltiloni. These ablutions were to relieve the ill effects of sexual misconduct.27 The Codex Telleriano-Remensis congruently locates these same two goddesses at the bathing ceremony for newborn Mexican children, who were held to be born in a state of general corruption resulting from the sexual activity of their parents.28 The Codices Magliabechiano and Tudela situate particular sponsorship of the bathhouse’s cleansing waters with Tlazolteotl, whose head with its cotton headdress and blackened mouth hangs over the bathhouse’s doorway.29 In her role as Tlaelcuani, “filth eater,” she ‘devoured’ sins, indicated by the thick rubber film blackening her mouth, in a one-time confessional ritual. According to Sahagún, the deity forgave, set aside, removed corruption. She cleansed one; she washed one. . . . In her presence confession was made, the heart was opened; before Tlaçolteotl [sic] one recited, one told one’s sins.30

25 I have been assisted in writing this paragraph on the Náhuatl terminology for the pathology of filth by Ruiz de Alarcón (1984) 135; Burkhart (1989) 95–97; López Austin (1988) 1, 262 and 266; and Ortiz de Montellano (1990) 151–52. 26 Sahagún (1950–82) 6, 30–31. 27 Ruiz de Alarcón (1984) 136; López Austin (1988) 1, 266; and Ortiz de Montellano (1990) 164. 28 Codex Telleriano-Remensis, fols. 11v–12r. Quiñones Keber (1995) 170–71, discusses this bathing scene; see also Burkhart (1989) 113, on the bathing rites for the newborn. 29 Codex Magliabechiano, fol. 77r, and Codex Tudela, fol. 62r. 30 Sahagún (1950–82) 1, 23–24. The Christian friars were quite interested in this confessional rite, with its analogies to Christian practices. Tlazolteotl’s role as both the bringer and reliever of filth has been written about extensively. See, for example, Carrasco (1999) 164–87.

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After this confession, the penitent donned paper garments mirroring Tlazolteotl’s own, which were eventually discarded at the crossroads shrines of goddesses known as the Cihuateteo (the “deified women,” parturients who had died in childbirth). Thus the penitent “in the end . . . changed his way of life.”31 Straw and sweeping with straw brooms were crucial elements of this purification process in the native Mexican consciousness. Sweeping was of paramount importance in both the sacred and quotidian realms, unsurprising given the turmoil and peril that could result from a filthy environment. Prior to confessing, the penitent “swept well the place where the new reed mat was placed, and a fire was lit.” This established physical order and focus in this space where the petitioner was to be morally purified. Sweeping could also serve as atonement for one’s sins. Offenders were ordered to “sweep; clean; arrange; order things. . . . Take care of the cleaning. And now thou art to clean things; thou art to clean thyself.” The malefactor was enjoined “to expiate thy sinful life” by fasting after the confession or passing straw reeds or sticks through a perforation in the tongue or genitals, “especially because of adultery.” In the illustration depicting Tlazolteotl in Sahagún’s catalog of gods, she holds a dangerously thorny bundle ready to supply the implements of self-mortification.32 Straws functioned in this penitential exercise as a means of channeling the malefactor’s corruption away from the body.33 Jeanette Peterson has demonstrated that the straws used in auto-sacrificial rites were often made of malinalli, a type of grass whose name can be translated from Náhuatl as “twisted.” The particular usefulness of malinalli in this expiatory context may lie in the metaphorical associations of ‘twisted-ness’ with, as Klein has written, “wrong-doing, danger, hostility,” since one crucial way to overcome dangerous accumulations of tlazolli was to engage directly with it. For example, as shown by López Austin, it was held that fornicators’ wives sometimes rectified a perilous situation by engaging in adultery themselves. The association of malinalli straw and sweeping with lustral observances is significant for our discussion because, as Peterson has further shown, malinalli was the stuff of which Tlazolteotl’s broom was 31

The quote is from Sahagún (1950–82) 1, 27. Burkhart (1989) 117–24, and (1997) 33–38; Sahagún (1950–82) 1, 24 and 26 and 6, 33; and Sahagún (1979) 1, fol. 11r. 33 Burkhart (1989) 101. 32

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made.34 Burkhart maintains that the brooms were useful in Ochpaniztli’s sweeping rites specifically because they were made of straw, which is part of the tlazolli realm.35 Indeed, Tlazolteotl’s malinalli broom is the single most important symbol for Ochpaniztli, “sweeping the roads,” routinely present in illustrations and mentioned in most accounts. For example, the midsixteenth-century Codex Magliabechiano emphasizes sweeping rites and brooms that were placed in the hand of the ‘demon’ (Fig. 14.2). The Tovar Calendar, compiled by the Jesuit Juan de Tovar around 1585, describes Ochpaniztli as a domestic festival venerating household instruments that the “principal women . . . used in performing womanly tasks.” He notes the particular importance of her broom, which they ‘honored particularly’ and put in the temple, and which comprises the accompanying illustration (Fig. 14.5).36 Colonial charts, tables, and calendar wheels routinely depict only the broom as the sole symbol for Ochpaniztli.37 There is, then, a persistent link between Tlazolteotl’s pictorial attributes in the Ochpaniztli illustrations and the physical, moral, and penitential cleansing rites over which she presides. Similar activities carried out on the civic stage were felt to restore communal balance and harmony. For example, Durán highlights bathing rites in addition to the widespread sweeping of houses and streets. At the beginning of the feast, a Mexican woman chosen to impersonate the goddess was bathed and “consecrated to avoid all sin of transgression.” Everyone bathed, and even the bathhouses were cleaned, as were other waterways, including “ditches, streams, and springs” in which the people then washed. The newly immersed female deity impersonator was removed from the human realm and kept locked

34 Peterson (1983) 113–20 and figs. 16–18; Klein (1995) 252; and López Austin (1988) 1, 266. I wish to thank Jeanette Peterson for alerting me to her article. 35 Burkhart (1989) 121. Based on linguistic analysis of Náhuatl terms for sweeping and purifying, Burkhart (1997) 34, further asserts that “the act of cleaning a surface with straw . . . was . . . fundamental to the very notion of cleanliness.” 36 Boone (1983) 196–97; and Kubler and Gibson (1951) 28–29. The Tovar Calendar is located in the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University. My access to it was facilitated by Norman Fiering, Director, and Richard Ring and Susan Danforth, librarians, and by a grant from the Institute of the Americas of the College of Fine Arts, University of New Mexico, for 2000–01. 37 For example, see calendar wheels like the mid-sixteenth-century “Boban Wheel” in Kubler and Gibson (1951) 56 and fig. 12.

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Fig. 14.5 Ochpaniztli, plate IX of the Tovar Calendar. Reproduced by permission of The John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.

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away in a temple or cage under the close watch of midwives and female physicians, emerging from captivity only to sweep.38 The Ochpaniztli activities were intended to do more than just clear away physical grime, however. The Codex Telleriano-Remensis commentator emphasizes that Ochpaniztli was meant to expiate communal sins. Ochpaniztli means cleaning, and thus during this month they swept everything, especially their houses and roads. . . . The reason for this cleaning was that they believed that by performing that ceremony all the evils of the people would go away.39

Tovar calls the Ochpaniztli patroness the mother of Huitzilopochtli, who was the Mexicas’ premier god. Traditionally identified as Coatlicue, according to myth she had been engaged in penitential sweeping when she became miraculously impregnated with Huitzilopochtli. Durán indicates that skirmishes and mock battles raging at the Temple of Huitzilopochtli (now commonly known as the Templo Mayor), in the sacred precinct at the Mexica capital, Tenochtitlán, were penitential in nature, “a kind of ceremonial self-sacrifice which they performed instead of bleeding their tongues or ears, as was usual on other feasts.” What is more, bloodied straw brooms, with their unmistakable overtones of auto-sacrifice and penance, play a major role in Sahagún’s lengthy Ochpaniztli account. He describes a melee at the Temple of Huitzilopochtli, in which the patron goddess, midwives, and female physicians all wield these bloodied brooms in battles with “noblemen and great brave warriors.” Sahagún writes that the conflict was called “ ‘They fight with grass,’ because it was indeed grass, it was indeed straw [brooms] that each of them went carrying in their hands; . . . they were covered with blood.”40 Though it must remain speculation, the blood permeating the straw brooms wielded by our goddess impersonator and her cohort of midwives and curers could have been the blood of penitential auto-sacrifice. The corruption might also have been of a bodily nature, so that the cleansing represented by brooms and sweeping was involved in corporeal ‘filth’ experienced through disease or childbirth. Female doctors and midwives are a major class of Ochpaniztli participants, 38 Durán (1971) 232 and 448–49; Sahagún (1950–82) 2, 119; and Códice Tudela (1980) 263–64. 39 Quiñones Keber (1995) 254. My italics for emphasis. 40 Kubler and Gibson (1951) 28–29; Durán (1971) 236; Sahagún (1950–82) 2, 120–21 and 3, 1–2.

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described by numerous sources accompanying and guarding the goddess impersonator throughout the whole festival. Moreover, numerous pictorial and textual details in the Ochpaniztli corpus can be linked with curative therapies. For example, Tlazolteotl’s cheeks and mouth are blackened with rubber, which was imported particularly from the Mexican Gulf Coast and had an extensive variety of medicinal as well as ritual uses. Andrea Stone has recently demonstrated, for example, that raw, boiled, and dried latex was and still is used in Mexico and among the Maya for any number of physical ailments including hoarseness, dysentery, bloody diarrhea, and head- and toothaches.41 The commentators of the Codices Telleriano-Remensis and Ríos pay special attention to extensive communal fasting, particularly among priests, which took place during the first several days of Ochpaniztli, a practice that was held to be both therapeutic and penitential. There are both textual and pictorial references to the cempoalxochitl, literally translated “twenty flower,” a species of marigold that may have had purgative and healing properties. Sahagún describes the midwives and female doctors in the festivities as pelting each other with balls made of the flower, as well as dancers holding marigold bouquets, two of whom comprise the sole Ochpaniztli illustration in the Florentine Codex. The Codex Magliabechiano depicts two similar figures below the goddess, dressed in capes and holding yellow-orange marigold bouquets (Fig. 14.2).42 Sahagún reports in his catalog of Mexican gods that physicians, “those who purged people,” and the women “who read the future, who cast auguries by looking upon water or by casting grains of maize,” both specifically worshipped Toci-Teteoinnan. I noted at the beginning of this essay that these last two goddess names were inextricably linked with Tlazolteotl. What is more, Sahagún describes priests of the maize deity Chicomécoatl (“Seven Serpent”) strewing maize seeds during Ochpaniztli. While this probably had agricultural connotations, scattering corn kernels was also a principal means of diagnosing diseases in the pre-and post-Conquest native milieus. For example, the 41 Sahagún (1950–82) 1, 16; 2, 19; and 2, 188; Códice Tudela (1980) 263–64; Torquemada (1975) 2, 275; Durán (1971) 232; McCafferty and McCafferty (1991) 26 and 33, note 4; and Stone (2002) 21; Boletín de la Biblioteca Nacional de México (1918) 209–10; and De León (1611) 98. I am grateful to Charlene Villaseñor Black for sharing her transcription of this last-named source with me. 42 Quiñones Keber (1995) 254; Il manoscritto messicano . . . (1900) 35; Emmart (1940) 69; and Sahagún (1950–82) 2, 19, and 2, 118.

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sixteenth-century Historia de los mexicanos por sus pinturas states that the gods gave maize grains to woman so that “she could work cures . . . and so it is the custom of [indigenous] women to do to this very day.”43 In his seventeenth-century treatise intended to stamp out Mexican idolatry, Ruiz de Alarcón likewise indicates that “fortune-telling with the hands or with maize” was a way of determining illnesses. The nature of the disease could be identified by the positions in which the kernels landed.44 The author of the Motolinía Insert I characterizes the Ochpaniztli festival as dedicated to the maize god Centeotl and asserts that it was specifically celebrated “for the patroness against the evil eye (mal de los ojos),” for whom women fashioned offerings of small seed dolls with maize-grain eyes.45 The purgatory implications of these seed dolls are reminiscent of the native practice whereby illnesses were thought to be transferred to small dough figures of animals that were then deposited at the crossroads.46 Ochpaniztli specifically involved pregnant women and midwives, for whom Tlazolteotl was a key patroness. In the divinatory almanac of the Codex Borbonicus she is depicted in the very act of giving birth. Sahagún reports that “midwives, those who administered sedatives at childbirth, [and] those who brought about abortions” were devotees of Toci-Teteoinnan. Moreover, Tlazolteotl’s pictorial appurtenances in the Ochpaniztli illustrations can be linked with medicinal therapies for parturients. As López Austin observes, adulterous women may sometimes have resorted to abortions in order to avoid death from the abundant bodily toxins believed to have been engendered by their misdeeds, and, according to Sullivan, it was held that the bark of the cotton plant could bring about miscarriages by triggering uterine contractions. Pregnant women protected themselves from danger during the difficult birthing process by confessing their sexual sins to their midwives, another link to the blackened mouth of the divinity in her manifestation as Tlaelcuani, “filth eater.”47 Malinalli, comprising the deity’s broom, was held to have curative uses such as the prevention of miscarriages. Congruently, sweep43

García Icazbalceta (1891). Translation into English in Philips (1883–84) 618. See also Sahagún (1950–82) 1, 15 and 2, 124. 44 Ruiz de Alarcón (1984) 153–55. If they came to rest one atop another, for example, the doctor concluded that the ailment had been brought on by sodomy. Lopez Austin (1988) 1, 306. 45 Motolinía (1996) 172. My thanks to Victoria Wolff for translating this passage. 46 Burkhart (1989) 63. 47 Sahagún (1950–82) 1, 15 and 303–4; and López Austin (1988) 1, 269; and Sullivan (1982) 19.

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ing was prescribed especially for pregnant women, doubtless to protect the health of the fetus, which was thought to be so susceptible to the mother’s bad behavior and even to her negative visual perceptions. The mother-to-be was exhorted to diligently sweep, clean, and organize. Immediately before childbirth she was bathed and the house “where the little woman was to suffer . . . to do her work, to give birth” was extensively swept.48 Childbirth is intimately linked with another of Tlazolteotl’s key attributes: the shield. The shield subsumes the well-known pre-Hispanic concept that the parturient was a kind of warrior engaging in battle. The birth of a child was greeted by shouts and ‘war cries’ from her midwife, “which meant that the little woman had fought a good battle, had become a brave warrior, had taken a captive, had captured a baby.” Women who did not survive the rigors of childbirth were known as Cihuateteo, “deified women,” or Cihuapipiltin, “celestial princesses.” These unfortunate women were equated with courageous Mexican warriors who had been felled on the battlefield or captured and sacrificed. Their corpses and shields were borne away by old women and midwives bellowing war cries. The bodies were buried before images of the Cihuateteo, at whose shrines, as noted above, the penitents had deposited their paper garments. These Cihuateteo icons—themselves representing dead parturients—might even have functioned as protective talismans over the women’s corpses. Given that she bears a warrior’s shield, Tlazolteotl may have been beheld as one of the Cihuateteo, since during Ochpaniztli impersonators of the goddess suffered the same sacrificial fate commonly reserved for captive warriors, and impersonators of the Cihuateteo were also sacrificed.49 According to Sahagún, it was crucial to keep careful watch over the dead child-bearers because enemies who captured a piece of their bodies, especially their hair, the left hand, or one of its fingers, “might act boldly in war . . . might overpower, might seize many of their enemies. . . . It was said they paralyzed the feet of their foes.” Doris Heyden posits that fictive battles enacted during Ochpaniztli parallel actual battles waged between warriors and midwives over the bodies of those who perished in childbirth. It is a suggestive coincidence, therefore, that the Codex Tudela reports that after her ritual 48 López Austin (1988) 1, 299; Peterson (1983) 121; Sahagún (1950–82) 6, 141–42 and 167. 49 Sahagún (1950–82) 2, 121 and 189; 6, 161–62 and 167. Sullivan (1964) 63–95; and Klein (1993a) 39–64.

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immolation the Tlazolteotl impersonator’s dismembered body parts were painstakingly stored away in a box “without even missing a nail,” while her flayed skin was mounted on a stick along with her “bones and clothes and broom.” All of this was protected for twenty days “so that the people from Huexucingo [modern Huejotzingo] would not steal it,” to prevent these long-time foes of the Mexica from gaining any martial advantage. Her heart was taken to the battlefield with the Huejotzincas, at the frontier of the ‘Flowery Wars’ that perpetually raged between the Mexica and the peoples of Puebla-Tlaxcala. There it was buried along with the bodies of fallen Mexican soldiers.50 Among the Mexica, Tlazolteotl’s filthy body seems to have simultaneously held the power to harm or to protect, and elicited fierce, even violent responses. Durán reports that at one point the Huejotzincas burned down her wooden scaffold, known as Tocititlán, which stood on the outskirts of the Mexica capital city of Tenochtitlán and where the body and accoutrements of her impersonator were deposited at the end of Ochpaniztli. Tocititlán means “place” or “dwelling” or “city” of the goddess Toci, which is as we have seen one of Tlazolteotl’s homonyms. This attack from Huejotzingo was a ‘frightful thing’ that reportedly enraged the Mexica emperor Moctezuma II (reigned 1502–20) and threw the whole city “into a state of confusion and terror.”51 According to Sahagún, Mexican warriors’ attempts during Ochpaniztli to leave a mask made of her thigh skin ‘in enemy land’ resulted in warfare and death.52 Drawing on Brown’s study of Ochpaniztli’s historical underpinnings, Klein posits that removing the dead goddess’s heart or her thigh skin to enemy territory were overt acts of martial aggression that revived the memories of earlier wars in which the Mexica had prevailed and thus were intended to reinforce “their past and present military might.”53 This author further suggests that the resultant violence is a reaction to indigenous perceptions of Tlazolteotl’s profoundly polluted and therefore potentially injurious nature. At the same time, her body was the agent by which the city annu50 Sahagún (1950–82) 6, 162; López Austin (1988) 1, 165; Heyden (1972) 207; and Codex Tudela (1980) 263–64. Translation of the Codex Tudela passage courtesy of Victoria Wolff, personal communication. 51 Durán (1994) 457. 52 Sahagún (1950–82) 2, 122. 53 Brown (1984); and Klein (1986) 144–45.

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ally rid itself of its accumulated tlazolli. Graulich has made a vital contribution by discussing the seasonal, symbolic expiation of communal sins through casting off skins during Ochpaniztli. He aptly points out the analogy between discarded skins and the paper garments left post-confession at the Cihuateteo shrines. He asserts that Toci’s flayed skin represents sin, which during the festival was symbolically offered back to the goddess in her role as ‘devourer of filth.’54 This author is in agreement with this equation of flayed skins with sins. My emphasis here is somewhat different, however, particularly in the goddess’ relationship to the dire physical illnesses caused by sexual misdeeds, and her corporeal body and paraphernalia as the physical agents purifying and protecting both the city and the individual body. At the end of the festival in Tenochtitlán, the ‘goddess’ was forcefully expelled from the city’s sacred center in a raucous affair. A young man, donning the flayed skin and adornments of the sacrificed goddess-impersonator, departed from the ritual precinct, shrieking out war cries amidst a racket of hostile onlookers who spat and cast flowers in ‘her’ wake. On his way, he left the skin at Tocititlán, where it was stuffed with a straw bundle and adorned with all of her ‘garments and finery.’ This was her final transformation: she became the total embodiment of the filth with which she had engaged. In this expurgatory act her polluted body, imbued with the fetid debris of communal dirt, illnesses, and misdeeds, was banished to the very periphery of the Mexica capital, effecting the definitive cleansing of the sacred center, restoring harmony and equilibrium. Her body and adornments remained at the city outskirts, sentry-like, “look[ing] forth” from the top of the scaffold “so that the straw image seemed a representation of the goddess” (Fig. 14.4).55 This essay has proposed that we privilege the Indians’ illustrations as a coherent visual record of the way Ochpaniztli was envisioned in the early colonial period. A Christian monastic audience doubtless viewed Tlazolteotl as a Greco-Roman-style patroness of the Indians’ ‘idolatrous’ and sanguinary practices. But for native Mexicans she was intimately linked with profound social and sexual issues, encoding serious anxieties about indulging corporeal desires. This

54 55

Graulich (1999) 140–42. Sahagún (1950–82) 2, 125; and Durán (1971) 236.

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goddess visualizes a variety of women’s experiences as the chief Mexican agents of transformation, both within and outside the domestic sphere, as they exercise domestic talents to protect the hearth and apply the female healers’ and midwives’ extensive knowledge of herbs and therapies to cure sick bodies and ensure healthy childbirth. Tlazolteotl is the model purifier. During Ochpaniztli she ultimately comes to embody the very filth with which she engages, enabling its removal through her own repeated transformations and eventual exile. Her transformed body eventually assumes a talismanic function: In remaining at the city outskirts, she is thought to ward off potential intruders and safeguard the newly cleansed city. Even when their details vary, the illustrations’ pictorial focus is the consistent image of this deity’s body with its elaborate paraphernalia. This author submits that this body and its adornment are key elements for understanding the festival’s function, when, under Tlazolteotl’s patronage, individual and communal body alike are held to be cleansed, healed, and protected. The pictorial privileging of her body in the Ochpaniztli illustrations corresponds to the celebratory focus on her body. As the corporeal agent of corporeal change, she ushers in a new, reformed era.

Bibliography Anders, F., M. Jansen, and L. Reyes García (1991) El libro del Ciuacóatl (Graz: 1991). Boone, E. H. (1983) The Codex Magliabechiano and the Lost Prototype of the Magliabechiano Group (Berkeley: 1983). Boone, E. H., and M. E. Smith (2003) “Postclassic International Styles and Symbol Sets,” in The Postclassic Mesoamerican World, eds. M. E. Smith and F. F. Berdan (Salt Lake City: 2003) 186–93. Broda, J. (1970) “Tlacaxipeualiztli: A Reconstruction of an Aztec Calendar Festival from Sixteenth-Century Sources,” Revista Española de Antropología Americana 5 (1970) 249–52. Brown, B. A. (1977) “European Influences in Early Colonial Descriptions and Illustrations of the Mexica Monthly Calendar” (Ph.D. diss., University of New Mexico, 1977). —— (1984) “Ochpaniztli in Historical Perspective,” in Ritual Human Sacrifice in Mesoamerica, ed. E. H. Boone (Washington, D.C.: 1984) 195–210. Brumfiel, E. M. (1991) “Weaving and Cooking: Women’s Production in Aztec Mexico,” in Engendering Archaeology: Women and Prehistory, eds. J. M. Gero and M. W. Conkey (Cambridge, MA: 1991) 224–51. Burkhart, L. “Mexica Women on the Home Front: Housework and Religion in Aztec Mexico,” in Indian Women of Early Mexico, eds. Susan Schroeder, et al. (Norman, OK: 1997) 25–54. —— (1989) The Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico (Tucson: 1989).

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“Calendario Mexicano atribuido a Fray Bernardino de Sahagún” (1918) Boletín de la Biblioteca Nacional de México (April-September 1918) 191–221. Carrasco, D. (1999) “Cosmic Jaws: We Eat the Gods and the Gods Eat Us,” in City of Sacrifice: The Aztec Empire and the Role of Violence in Civilization (Boston: 1999) 164–87. —— (2002) “The Sacrifice of Women in the Florentine Codex: The Hearts of Plants and Players in War Games,” in Representing Aztec Ritual: Performance, Text, and Image in the Work of Sahagún, ed. E. Quiñones Keber (Boulder: 2002) 197–225. Códice Borbónico (1991) eds. F. Anders, et al. (Graz: 1991). Códice Tudela (1980), ed. J. Tudela de la Orden (Madrid: 1980). Códice Vaticano A.3738 (Ríos) (1996), eds. F. Anders, M. Jansen, and L. Reyes García (Graz: 1996). De León, M. (1611) Camino del cielo en lengua mexicana . . . (Mexico City: 1611). Durán, Fr. D. (1971) The Book of the Gods and Rites and the Ancient Calendar, eds. and trans. F. Horcasitas and D. Heyden (Norman: 1971). —— (1994) The History of the Indies of New Spain, trans. D. Heyden (Norman: 1994). Emmart, E. W. (1940) trans., The Badianus Manuscript . . . An Aztec Herbal of 1552 (Baltimore: 1940). Graulich, M. (1999) Fiestas de los pueblos indígenas. Ritos Aztecas: Las fiestas de las veintenas (Mexico City: 1999). Hassig, R. (2001) Time, History, and Belief in Aztec and Colonial Mexico (Austin: 2001). Heyden, D. (1972) “Las escobas y las batallas fingidas de la fiesta Ochpaniztli,” in Religión en Mesoamérica, eds. J. Litvak King and N. Castillo Tejero (Mexico City: 1972) 205–209. Historia de los mexicanos por sus pinturas, in Nueva colección de documentos para la historia de México, ed. J. García Icazbalceta (Mexico City: 1891). Historia de los mexicanos por sus pinturas (1883–1884), trans. H. Philips, Jr., Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 21 (1883–1884) 616–50. Klein, C. (1986) “Masking Empire: The Material Effects of Masks in Aztec Mexico,” Art History 9 (1986) 135–67. —— (1993a) “The Shield Woman: Resolution of an Aztec Gender Paradox,” in Current Topics in Aztec Studies: Essays in Honor of H. B. Nicholson, eds. A. CordyCollins and D. Sharon (San Diego: 1993a) 39–64. —— (1993b) “Teocuitlatl, ‘Divine Excrement’: The Significance of ‘Holy Shit’ in Ancient Mexico,” Art Journal 52 (1993b) 20–27. —— (1995) “Wild Women in Colonial Mexico: An Encounter of European and Aztec Concepts of the Other,” in Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America 1450–1650, ed. C. Farago (New Haven: 1995) 245–63. Kubler, G., and C. Gibson (1951) The Tovar Calendar: An Illustrated Mexican Manuscript, ca. 1585 (New Haven: 1951). López Austin, A. (1988) The Human Body and Ideology: Concepts of the Ancient Nahuas, trans. T. Ortiz de Montellano and B. Ortiz de Montellano (Salt Lake City: 1988). Il manoscritto messicano vaticano 3738 detto il Códice Ríos (Rome: 1900). Margain Araujo, C. R. (1939–1940) “La fiesta azteca de la cosecha Ochpanistli,” Anales del Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Historia 1 (1939–40) 157–74. McCafferty, S. D., and G. G. McCafferty (1991) “Spinning and Weaving as Female Gender Identity in Post-Classic Mexico,” in Textile Traditions of Mesoamerica and the Andes, eds. M. B. Schevill, J. C. Berlo, and E. B. Dwyer (New York: 1991) 19–44. Motolinía (Fr. Toribio de Benavente) (1996) Memoriales (Libro de oro, MS JGI31), ed. N. J. Dyer (Mexico City: 1996). Nicholson, H. B. (2002) “Representing the Veintena Ceremonies in the Primeros Memoriales,” in Representing Aztec Ritual: Performance, Text, and Image in the Work of Sahagún, ed. E. Quiñones Keber (Boulder: 2002) 63–106. Ortiz de Montellano, B. R. (1990) Aztec Medicine, Health, and Nutrition (New Brunswick, NJ: 1990).

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Peterson, J. (1983) “Sacrificial Earth: The Iconography and Function of Malinalli Grass in Aztec Culture,” in Flora and Fauna Imagery in Precolumbian Cultures: Iconography and Function, ed. J. Peterson (Oxford: 1983) 113–48. Quiñones Keber, E. (1995) Codex Telleriano-Remensis: Ritual, Divination, and History in a Pictorial Aztec Manuscript (Austin: 1995). Robertson, D. (1959) Mexican Manuscript Painting of the Early Colonial Period: The Metropolitan Schools (New Haven: 1959). Ruiz de Alarcón, H. (1929) Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions That Today Live Among the Indians Native to This New Spain (1629), eds. and trans. J. R. Andrews and R. Hassig (Norman: 1984). Sahagún, Fr. B. de (1950–1982) General History of the Things of New Spain (Florentine Codex), trans. A. J. O. Anderson and C. E. Dibble (Santa Fe, NM: 1950–1982). —— (1979) Códice Florentino (Mexico City: 1979). —— (1993) Primeros Memoriales: Facsimile Edition, ed. F. Anders (Norman: 1993). —— (1997) Primeros Memoriales, trans. T. Sullivan, eds. H. B. Nicholson, et al. (Norman: 1997). Sekules, V. (2002) “Spinning Yarns: Clean Linen and Domestic Values in Late Medieval French Culture,” in The Material Culture of Sex, Procreation, and Marriage in Premodern Europe, eds. A. L. McClanan and K. Rosoff Encarnación (New York: 2002) 79–91. Seler, E. (1963) Comentarios al Códice Borgia (Mexico City: 1963). Stone, A. J. (2002) “Spirals, Ropes, and Feathers: The Iconography of Rubber Balls in Mesoamerican Art,” Ancient Mesoamerica 13 (2002) 21–39. Sullivan, T. (1964) “Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Deification of the Women Who Died in Childbirth,” Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl 6 (1964) 63–95. —— (1982) “Tlazolteotl-Ixcuina: The Great Spinner and Weaver,” in The Art and Iconography of Late Postclassic Central Mexico, ed. E. H. Boone (Washington, D.C.: 1982) 7–35. Torquemada, Fr. J. de. (1975) Monarquía Indiana (Mexico City: 1975).

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

EXPLORING A FEMALE LEGACY: BEATRIZ ÁLVAREZ DE HERRERA AND THE FAÇADE OF THE CASA DE MONTEJO C. Cody Barteet Since the 1940s, when art historians first began seriously examining it, the façade of the Casa de Montejo (c. 1542–49) in Mérida, Yucatán, has been viewed as a visual embodiment of the Spanish conquest of Latin America (Fig. 15.1).1 Surprisingly, the idea that the iconographic program of the portal focuses on conquest is based upon a handful of studies that have done little to unravel the complexities of the façade, the most ornate sixteenth-century domestic entry extant in Latin America. Taken together, these studies base their shared subjugation hypothesis for the façade’s sculpted ornamentation on the supposition that Francisco de Montejo, who was responsible for the pacification of the region’s native peoples, wished to celebrate his conquests in the Casa. However, this woefully understudied monument is much more complex, as its iconographical elements clearly promote an agenda beyond that of conquest. Indeed, prominent heraldic elements of the façade, an inherently transparent form of visual communication, are derived from established Spanish and even European architectural and sculptural traditions. The various forms of heraldic adornment, including inscriptions, sculptural busts, and escudos, or “coats of arms,” employed in residential façades functioned as symbols or statements about their patrons who wanted to convey these messages to large urban audiences. With the Casa, Montejo sought to legitimize his position as the Yucatán’s adelantado (governor/captain 1 This essay is part of a larger dissertation project titled “Colonial Contradictions in the Casa de Montejo and Mérida: Space, Society, and Self-Representation at the Edge of Viceregal Mexico.” Funding for this essay and my dissertation project has been provided by the Society of Architectural Historian’s Edilia and FrançoisAuguste de Montêquin Junior Fellowship; Binghamton University’s (SUNY) Department of Art History Dissertation Research Assistantship; and SUNY’s Rosa Colecchio Travel Award for Dissertation Research Enhancement.

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Fig. 15.1 Casa de Montejo, Mérida, Yucatán. Ca. 1542–1549. Photo by the author.

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general) because by 1542 his position was endangered, primarily by the Spanish Crown’s growing desire to centralize authority and regularize its New World administration through the viceregal government. Montejo’s hereditary position, compounded by his questionable aristocratic status, had no place within the maturing administration. A large portion of the Casa’s heraldic material suggests that Montejo aspired to establish visually his quasi-feudal authority by relying on his unquestionably noble wife, Beatriz Álvarez de Herrera, for social status and wealth. Although her contribution to the colonizing affairs of the Yucatán has been overlooked for decades in Yucatecan scholarship, Herrera’s role is visibly recorded in her sculpted bust and familial coat of arms that prominently adorn the Montejo façade. These visual representations provide insights into Herrera’s own ambitions as a governor’s wife and, by extension, into the ambitions of her extended family in the colonization and governance of the area. In my recovery of Herrera’s contributions, I reject the traditional supposition that Herrera was a passive participant in Yucatecan affairs. On the contrary, as seen through certain decisive actions taken by Herrera, she appears to have had her own agenda, which at times corresponded with that of her husband, but at others seemingly conflicted with it. To demonstrate Herrera’s active role in Yucatecan affairs, I analyze extant archival documentation concerning Herrera as well as existing scholarly studies that have examined the normative perceptions of sixteenthcentury Spanish and Spanish-American women and their subsequent representations in façade adornment. Here I demonstrate that an understanding of early modern societal customs and laws, even if from a broad perspective, can provide insights into deciphering the role of women as both patrons and subjects in the development of architectural adornment and façade design. Unfortunately, a biography of Herrera has yet to be written; therefore, I must rely upon the documented activities of her husband to try to piece together certain portions of her life. However, what is known about her life does provide clues into both her personality and the contributions she made to the design and iconographic program of the Casa de Montejo façade.2 2 Information on Herrera comes from the following texts and archival documents: Chamberlain (1966), (1958) 15–18, and (1940) 43–56; Rubio Mañé (1941); Rújula y de Ochotorena and Solar y Tabeada (1932); and AGI, México, 3048.

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The Casa de Montejo Façade Herrera is depicted on the façade that Guillermina Vázquez has identified as “a unique example of the first era of Spanish domination, not only in Mexico, but in all of America.”3 The façade’s relatively tall and narrow two-storied configuration embodies the two major architectural styles of Renaissance Spain: purista, or “classical,” and Plateresque with its Gothic antecedents. Flanking the entrance of the classical ground floor are columns and engaged pilasters overlaid by symmetrical representations of mythical creatures that are topped by Corinthian capitals, inturn capped by a series of small demonic heads. Four busts flank the entryway: Crowned male and female busts in the tondos and a young female and a bearded male in the left and right doorjambs. In previous studies these busts were presumed to represent the Montejo family: Montejo and Herrera in the left and right tondo busts; and Catalina, Herrera’s daughter by Montejo, and El Mozo, Montejo’s illegitimate son, in the left and right jambs. Above them, the portal rises to a heavily sculpted entablature of imaginary creatures of composite human and animal forms. The entablature balances upon the shoulders of a central Herculean figure who is flanked by lintel inscriptions that read “Amor Dei” to the left and “Vincit” to the right. The upper floor has a balcony that overlooks Mérida’s plaza mayor, and it is supported by the lower façade’s central figure and a heavenly host of cherubim. The balcony’s door is framed by floral motifs and more cherubim. Above the balcony, emerging from a bed of budding vines, the Montejo escudo appears and is topped by a ducal helmet. The escudo itself is complex: Its four-part division includes a symbolic shield ordered by Charles V for Montejo, which occupies the upperleft quadrant; both Herrera’s paternal and maternal arms, which are in the upper-right and lower-left quadrants; and Montejo’s family blazon, in the lower-right quadrant. Flanking these elements are the Casa’s imposing hallmarks: two armed halberdiers stand atop openmouthed heads bracketed by two club-carrying wild men. Above the soldiers appear the monograms “HIS” (Christ), on the left, and “MA” (Mary), on the right. The façade is topped by a heavily sculpted cornice which has three busts and more hybrid creatures. The cor-

3

Vázquez (1983) 157.

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nice supports a pediment inscription that is flanked by two columns guarded by two lions. The text reads “Esta obra mando hacer el Adelantado Don Francisco de Montejo anno de MDXLIX,” which translates as “This work was ordered done by the Adelantado Don Francisco de Montejo in 1549.” Ultimately, the façade is topped by another bust that looms over it.

A Representation of Conquest or Heraldic Propaganda? The façade’s meanings are immensely complex, but the most pervasive scholarly assumption is that it is a symbol or testament to Montejo’s domination of the Yucatán. This commonly held belief is most often supported by a series of ideological inscriptions and conquest images. In the façade’s lower lintel, a series of politicized religious inscriptions are found. The central Herculean figure, as noted above, is flanked by inscriptions: “Amor Dei” to the left and “Vincit” to the right. According to Vázquez, the word “Omnia” appears on the central figure. In sequence the texts reads, “Amor Dei Omnia Vincit,” or “The love of God will conquer all.”4 Thus, these inscriptions are meant both to proclaim the divine right of Spain and legitimize Montejo’s conquest of the Yucatán in the name God. Additional conquest motifs can be seen within the façade’s divine proclamation; the most pronounced are the armed halberdiers standing upon open-mouthed heads. ‘Decapitated’ heads or figures underfoot were not uncommon in Mayan or Mesoamerican art. In general, these Mesoamerican motifs, along with bound images, signify political or ceremonial conquest, which has led scholars to presume that the Maya would have interpreted the Montejo images in this manner. However, these images could be read in another way. As Matthew Restall has suggested in his book Maya Conquistador, perhaps the Maya could have just as equally interpreted the open mouths of these heads as “permanent but inaudible screams of protest, a symbol not of death but of vitality despite being underfoot.”5 Furthermore, the Montejo façade’s numerous Europeanized decapitated or demonic 4 Ibid., 216. On first-hand examination of the façade in August 2004 I was unable to find this inscription, but I must note the facade has suffered deterioration, making certain details impossible to discern. 5 Restall (1998) 28.

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heads, similar to those next to Herrera’s bust seen in Figure 15.2, could also represent the ‘defeated idolatrous’ Maya as well as the boisterous Spanish opposition that sought to overthrow Montejo’s governorship.6 Indeed, Montejo attempted to silence his Spanish opposition on several occasions both through force and imprisonment.7 Therefore, it can be inferred that the Montejo monument was open to multiple layers of interpretation among the local Yucatecan audiences. This was further compounded by its—and even Mérida’s— construction directly on top of the ancient Maya center of Tihó: the Casa de Montejo was built directly upon the foundations of a temple platform. Due to its placement at the center of Mérida’s urban core and because of its complex iconographic language, the Casa was tremendously important as a symbolic ideological monument and as a form of large-scale urban signage that I suggest legitimized the Montejos’ claims to the hereditary governorship of the Yucatán. As a declarative statement in stone, the Casa draws upon European conventions in which soldiers, wild men, and even open-mouthed heads were common heraldic images found throughout Spain and much of Europe. Indeed, the profusion of heraldic images has led Richard and Rosalind Perry to suggest that “heraldry [has] run riot” in the Casa de Montejo.8 The sculptors of the façade incorporated many common forms of heraldic imagery, including escudos. Due to their individualized nature—escudo imagery can refer to an individual’s merits or to the marriage of two noble families—many are virtually indecipherable. Furthermore, as Juan-Antonio González Iglesias has stated, “because heraldry is not exactly a popular art . . . it is therefore virtually impossible to name a coat of arms that is widely recognized,” despite their often “intentional propagation of symbolic power.”9 Fortunately, this is not the case with the Montejo escudo (Fig. 15.3). Along with his capitulación, Montejo was awarded a coat

6 The Yucatán was never truly conquered by the Spanish; throughout its colonial history pockets of Maya lived independent from Spanish governance. 7 Consult Chamberlain (1966) 275–310, for an overview of this political opposition and how it affected Montejo’s authority in the early years of the colony. 8 Perry and Perry (1988) 95. 9 González Iglesias (1994) 69–70; and Weissberger (2004) 48. Here I borrow from Weissberger’s quotation and translation of González Iglesias’ discussion of the proliferation of heraldic imagery of the Catholic Monarchs, in particular their use of the F and Y initials that correspond with the yoke and arrows of their coat of arms, 47–48.

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Fig. 15.2 Detail: Right Tondo Bust, Lower Façade, Casa de Montejo, Mérida, Yucatán. Ca. 1542–1549. Photo by the author.

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Fig. 15.3 Detail: Coat of Arms, Upper Façade, Casa de Montejo, Mérida, Yucatán. Ca. 1542–1549. Photo by the author.

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of arms, which he received through a provisión royal created by Charles V’s imperial advisors that commemorated his accomplishments in the New World prior to 1527.10 The symbolism of Montejo’s new coat of arms is complex, and like the larger escudo that it joins on the façade, the blazon is divided into four parts. The imagery of the blazon symbolizes the perils Montejo faced and the potential gold to be found in the Yucatán, and it contains images of strength and stoicism. The whole escudo is topped by a ducal helmet, which casts Montejo and his heirs as the “duques[,] marqueses[, and] condes” of the Yucatán, feudal positions that relate to Montejo’s hereditary office of adelantado.11 The larger escudo, of which the shield created by Charles V is a part, is composed of Herrera’s paternal and maternal arms and Montejo’s family crest. The placement of these four blazons in the larger escudo represents a symbolic hierarchy, which is often determined by sex and societal rank. Typically, the male’s family insignia are given superiority, followed by the female’s family blazons. In a fourpart escudo, the upper-left quadrant is the dominant blazon followed by, in descending order of rank, the lower-right, upper-right, and lower-left quadrants. The Montejo escudo is conventional with its shield created by Charles V for Montejo in the upper left, followed in descending order by the Montejo family blazon, and both Herrera’s paternal and maternal arms. Presumably, the familial connotations and the inherent symbolism of Charles V’s blazon were to be understood by an educated Spanish audience. Although it is impossible to know if the local Yucatec Spanish constituents fully understood the escudo’s meanings, many of the motifs would have been recognized for their centuries-old associations with strength, stoicism, and loyalty as exemplified by the lion and castillo as well as the traditional incorporation of Herrera’s familial arms.12

10

AGI, Indiferente, 421, 2r–2v. For additional information on the escudo, see Chamberlain (1940) 52–53; Rubio Mañé (1941) 19–21 (text and footnotes); and Irigoyen Rosado (1981) 9–10. 11 AGI, Indiferente, 421, 2v; and AGI, Indiferente, 415, 91. 12 A castillo can be defined as a masonry fortification with three or more bastions. A bastion is a polygonal, usually five-sided, angular projection from the exterior of a fortification extending from its main walls.

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Herrera was the daughter of Juan Álvarez de Castañeda and Beatriz de Herrera, both of whom were Castilian nobles. She was married twice and had two children, one from each marriage. Her first marriage to Pedro Suárez produced a son, Juan de Esquivel. Suárez died in 1520, and in 1527 Herrera married Montejo prior to his return to Mexico. The following year she gave birth to the couple’s only child, a daughter named Catalina. Soon after Catalina’s birth, Herrera sailed to Mexico with her daughter. It is presumed that while Montejo was attempting to colonize the Yucatán, Herrera resided in Mexico City, where she collected tribute from Montejo’s encomienda at Atzcapotzalco. By 1541 Herrera was in Guatemala with her husband after he was appointed territorial governor in the region.13 Five years later, Herrera made her first trip to the Yucatán after the initial pacification of the peninsula by Montejo’s illegitimate son, Francisco de Montejo (commonly referred to as El Mozo, “the Younger”), and Montejo’s nephew, also named Francisco de Montejo (El Sobrino, “the Nephew”). Herrera settled in Mérida, where she remained until shortly after Montejo’s departure for Spain in 1551, at which time she returned to Mexico City to live out the remainder of her life. Herrera wrote her last will and testament on 5 July 1560, and it is presumed that she died shortly thereafter.14 Despite the vagueness of some of these historical facts, they do provide the necessary information from which to analyze Herrera’s importance in both Montejo’s life and in the iconography of the façade. From the brief history of Herrera’s life, two important pieces of information about her emerge: As a resident of Seville, She was irrefutably a member of an established Castilian noble family, and she had established economic autonomy by 1526. The relevance of these facts rests upon an understanding of sixteenth-century societal customs of inheritance. As her parents’ only child, Herrera inherited

13 Chamberlain (1966) 181. My supposition that she followed Montejo to Guatemala relies upon Chamberlain’s work in which he notes that Montejo sold his holdings in Mexico City to finance another colonizing attempt of the Yucatán, which suggests Herrera went with him. 14 Chamberlain published transcripts of the last wills and testaments of both Herrera (1958) and Montejo (1940).

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their titles and noble coats of arms.15 The Spanish tradition of female inheritance dates from the Visigothic period in which a woman could become the sole inheritor of the family’s noble estates and arms if there was no suitable male heir or if she was an only child.16 Her parents’ noble status helped secure Herrera’s financial position in Seville, which was further strengthened by the monetary entitlements she inherited upon her first husband’s death.17 Therefore, despite her status as a widow, Herrera was seen as an attractive marriage candidate. Not surprisingly, because of her societal stature many scholars have suggested that her titles and money were the primary reasons Montejo married her after what appears to have been a brief courtship.18 According to societal custom, a husband could assume his wife’s noble arms as his own, which Montejo did, elevating his precarious noble status.19 Thus his adoption of her blazons is significant; it remains unclear what degree of nobility Montejo’s family possessed prior to his marriage to Herrera and the ensuing award of his royal patent by Charles V in 1526.20 In addition to claiming her noble status as his own, Montejo also relied upon his new wife’s financial resources. This was crucial because the Crown did not finance expeditions to the New World, and Montejo, as governor and head of the endeavor, was charged with acquiring the necessary resources for the expedition. Once they were married Herrera agreed to cover the cost of a colonizing company as attested in her probanza of 1554, in which she discuses the large sum of money that she provided to Montejo for their joint enterprises in the Yucatán.21

15

Chamberlain (1940) 55. I have yet to determine if Herrera had siblings. Dillard (1984) 26. 17 Chamberlain (1966) 31. 18 See secondary sources in note 2. 19 Woodcock and Robinson (1988) 23. For further information on Spanish heraldic design and practices, see: García Cubero (1992); Messía de la Cerda y Pita (1990); and de Riquer (1986). 20 Chamberlain (1940) 51. In his essay, Chamberlain concluded that the Montejos were of lesser Castilian nobility. There appears, however, to have been some ambiguity in the matter because Montejo was denied entry into certain noble orders; whether the determination was based upon nobility or politics, which in early modern Spain were closely intertwined, remains uncertain. 21 AGI, México, 3048, 21. In her probanza, Herrera also seeks a royal pension because she claims to have been left bankrupt after Montejo was removed from office and their assets were seized by the Crown. 16

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Herrera and Montejo epitomized the ‘American dream,’ in that both took advantage of the opportunities before them to improve their financial and societal lots. In the American frontier, their marriage had important social and political implications because it allowed the newlyweds to elevate their position in Nueva España. Modern scholars are far from the only ones to recognize the social importance of their union. Bernal Díaz del Castillo, in his Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España, makes what Luis Weckman has called a ‘witty comment’ by stating that Montejo brought with him to New Spain the titles of ‘don’ and ‘señor.’22 Aside from Castillo’s direct reference to Montejo’s new status as adelantado, he also specifically refers to—and takes a stab at—Montejo’s marriage to Herrera through his use of the word señoría. In this reference, Castillo appears to be doing more than simply recognizing the marriage of Montejo and Herrera: He directly acknowledges the enhancement of Montejo’s social stock through his ‘witty’ ability to secure a marriage to Herrera and his appointment as adelantado. Scholars commonly claim that Montejo was the initiator of their marriage alliance. However, it could be argued that Herrera was equally active in negotiating their union. In many respects, Montejo was an appropriate suitor for Herrera. He had begun his career in the Caribbean where he enjoyed success in several early colonization endeavors. During his time as Cortés’s ambassador to the court of Charles V, Montejo honed his diplomatic skills, which allowed him to garner his own position as governor of the Yucatán. With his powerful new American title, Montejo potentially stood to gain financial, political, and social prestige from his enterprises in the newly conquered territories, as seen in the optimism he expressed in his petition to the Crown to begin colonization in which he states: “Being colonized [Yucatán and Cozumel], they will be the source of great security and benefit.”23 Once these facts are reflected upon, it becomes difficult to assume that Herrera married Montejo unaware. Therefore, we must consider that she had an equally active role in securing the

22 Weckman (1992) 335; and Díaz del Castillo (1968) CLXVIII: 162. Castillo’s text reads “A Francisco de Montejo Su Majestdad le hizo merced de la gobernación y adelantado de Yucatán y Cozumel, y trajo don y señoría.” 23 Chamberlain (1966) 20; and AGI, Indiferente, 2048, 1. I am relying upon Chamberlain’s translations of this document due to the poor condition of the original text that I recently inspected.

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marriage alliance to enhance her own position as the wife of a governor and also to recoup her investment. Her intentions become explicitly clear when her actions upon arriving in Mexico City are examined. In the capital, Herrera sought soon-to-be-viceroy Antonio de Mendoza’s recognition of her marriage to Montejo. Perhaps more importantly to Herrera was her petition to the viceroy to legitimize their daughter, Catalina, who may have been born out of wedlock. In historical accounts from the period, Herrera’s insistence on obtaining a second recognition of their marriage has typically been used to criticize Montejo’s character. Diego de Landa, in his Relación de las cosas de Yucatán (1566), is one of the few chroniclers to discuss the petition. Landa states that the necessity for the ‘second’ marriage arose because the couple was secretly wed in Seville where they had a daughter, Catalina. Landa further implies that Montejo refused to acknowledge Catalina as his child and Herrera as his wife until Mendoza stepped in to reconcile the matter.24 Despite the questionable veracity of Landa’s account, it must be considered relevant because Landa documents that Montejo ultimately recognized Catalina as his legitimate daughter and Herrera as his wife. Herrera’s insistence upon the second marriage contract demonstrates her savvy as well as her determination to recoup on her financial and social investments. In securing the marriage contract’s recognition from Mendoza, the most powerful man in Nueva España, Herrera politically and socially and publicly bonded herself to Montejo, thus securing her position among the upper rungs of the new American nobility. Furthermore, Herrera made a clear declaration of her determination to take part in Yucatecan affairs, to benefit from her husband’s advancements, and to gain from her own financial ventures.

Aspiring Women By the time Herrera made her way to the Americas, she, along with other sixteenth-century Spanish women, had found herself in conflict over the re-formation of societal conceptions of appropriate female identity and behavior. Many factors fueled the debate, including the continued evolution of the Spanish kingdom that resulted from the

24

Landa (1991) 45.

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fluid nature of the colonization enterprise. In several important trading centers, such as Seville, where coincidentally Herrera claimed citizenship, women were often forced to become responsible for their own livelihoods because of the vacuum left by men who had set sail for the New World. Moreover, tremendous animosity developed between the sexes as many married and widowed women found it necessary to engage in commercial and political activities previously dominated by men.25 Gender roles were also in flux in the Americas, as Luis Martín asserts in his study of Viceregal Peru. There, many colonial women found themselves facing difficulties similar to those confronted by their Iberian counterparts.26 In numerous instances women were forced to step into the world of men in order to scratch out livelihoods as encomenderas, entrepreneurs, politicians, and so forth. But unlike Iberian women, Spanish-American women were forced to take on increased responsibilities as settlers and mothers of new generations.27 As pioneers, women became harbingers of Spanish society, a practice that began very early in the American enterprise under the Catholic Monarchs Isabella and Ferdinand. Throughout early colonization the Crown insisted that the conquistadores bring their wives, daughters, and other female relatives to the newly pacified territories as soon as possible. The Crown’s resolve in this matter was driven by the awareness that groups of conquistadores had the potential to become marauding mercenaries who could pillage the American frontiers in search of new riches.28 The Crown hoped that the presence of Iberian women in the Americas would calm the conquistadores and help them establish permanent settlements. The plan often did not work, however, because many men set out on other endeavors, only to leave their wives behind to fend for themselves in the developing

25

Perry (1990) 7. Martín (1983). 27 Dillard (1984) 12. Dillard identifies the following ‘indispensable roles’ of women in the Reconquista: “settlers, wives of colonizers, mothers of successive generations of defenders, and vital members of the new Hispanic communities.” These roles are undeniably similar to those played by women in the American colonization. 28 There were several instances in the Yucatán when Montejo’s men waged several brutal campaigns against the Maya. The most infamous were the attacks by the Pacheco from 1543 to 1545 that left many Maya dead or mutilated. For a summary of these events, see Chamberlain (1966) 232–236. For information as to why the conquistadors often employed such deadly campaigns, see Restall (2003) 24–25. 26

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colonial centers. Indeed, Herrera experienced similar circumstances— for much of her time in Mexico, her husband fruitlessly attempted to colonize the Yucatán Peninsula, leaving Herrera alone with their daughter. To some degree, Herrera, as an encomendera, was forced to provide not only for herself and her daughter in Mexico City, but also for the continual financial support of her husband’s expeditions.29

Society’s Noble Politics With a better understanding of Herrera’s character and her in role in Montejo’s affairs, the Montejo façade can begin to be understood from the broader social and political perspectives of colonial Yucatán. Montejo’s attempts to suppress his political opposition would ultimately fail, creating a fissure between himself and the Crown. As a result, Montejo was removed from office in 1550 and replaced by the Crown’s viceregal government. Although his title as adelantado would eventually be restored to his heirs, its powers were greatly diminished. Montejo’s ultimate downfall was largely caused by his ambitious desire to establish an extensive feudal adelantamiento that encompassed the territories of Yucatán, Tabasco, and Honduras. In essence, it would have been an enormous feudal estate that would pass from one generation of Montejos to another as decreed through the hereditary nature of the title of adelantado. He actually achieved the adelantamiento at one point in the late 1530s—but only on paper.30 Clearly, however, the Montejos’ ambitions were doomed from the start because of the developmental track taken by the viceregal government: It had no place for the rise of feudal lords with the potential to challenge the monarch’s authority. Aside from the bureaucratic issues that arise, however, I will pay specific attention to the hereditary nature of the title and the inherent societal demands placed upon such positions in sixteenth-century Spain and Spanish America.

29 The colonization of the Yucatán was an extremely slow process during which time Montejo and his colleagues failed on two occasions to establish permanent settlement on the peninsula. Numerous scholars have suggested that there developed among the Montejo group a realization that quick riches would not be found in the peninsula as in other American locations. They realized that in order to recoup their losses, they were going to have to make a permanent and lasting settlement. 30 Chamberlain (1948) 168.

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To understand Montejo’s precarious situation in the mid-sixteenth century, his appointment as adelantado, which was awarded to him through his capitulación of 1526, must be examined.31 In essence, Montejo’s patent stipulated the terms and conditions of his colonizing enterprise, which included the duties and taxes that were required of him and his subordinates. His capitulación also outlined his powers as adelantado, granting Montejo direct authority to distribute house-plots, land, and encomiendas and to appoint local public offices (constables, aldermen, etc.). Many of the rights outlined in his capitulación correlate to the nature of his position as adelantado, a position that originated in medieval Spain during the Reconquista when monarchs appointed individuals with both military and judicial authority over frontier provinces.32 As military commanders, adelantados were responsible first for pacifying a region, and, after a colony was established, they became judicial officers and governors. Before the early modern period, the position evolved into a lifetime appointment that was passed from one generation to the next. The position of hidalgo, or “nobleman,” carried certain cultural implications because the title adelantado had to be mapped within the social strata of the Spanish nobility; it fell between the classes of duke and marquise.33 Furthermore, the position now demanded proof of nobility and limpieza de sangre, “pure blood.” As Barbara Weissberger has noted in her book Isabel Rules: Constructing Queenship, Wielding Power, the Catholic Monarchs sought to establish a single Christian nation whose “national self-concept was disseminated in therapeutic terms, as a purification of the body politic and a purging of alien and contaminating agents that had resided in Spain for centuries.”34 In most instances, their desire to 31

AGI, Indiferente, 415, 90v–98v. Stone (1990) 55–56; and Weckman (1992) 333–335. Weckman offers a more in-depth analysis of the royal position. Important to note from his observations, although not entirely relevant to the above discussion, is the full evolution of the position through the Reconquista. Important regulations with regards to the position were instituted by the Spanish monarch, Alfonso the Learned, who defined the adelantado’s functions in the Espéculo, the Siete Partidas, and the Leyes para los adelantados mayores of 1247 and 1255 not all of these regulations were relevant by the sixteenth century. 33 Hidalgo is derived from the Spanish phrase hijodalgo de solar conocido, literally son of something of a known household. Additionally and of similar construction, hidalguía de pobladuría (nobility of settlement) was used in the New World to demonstrate the actual possession of a built house. 34 Weissberger (2004) xiii. 32

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purge Iberian noble blood lines did not stop at attempts to physically rid the peninsula of ‘tainted’ Jewish and Muslim (and later in the Americas, Indian) blood. Indeed class distinction became of utmost importance, a result of the societal uncertainty that developed during the American colonization, as the existing Spanish aristocracy attempted to maintain its societal stranglehold. Thus, the monarchy and the nobility developed a system with which to investigate family records, scouring for signs of tainted racial blood as well any other factors deemed undesirable. The Americas, too, became a site of contention because the Spanish Crown initially had to rely upon all willing individuals—as well as their pocketbooks—to carry out the enterprise. In certain instances the Crown had supposed many of these able-bodied men worthy of some distinction. As a result, many Spaniards were awarded noble titles and governmental positions in Spanish America for their honorable military service. Had they remained in Spain, these individuals would have had little chance to improve their position due to society’s rigid hierarchy, but America, on the other hand, was a land of opportunity where many individuals even managed to achieve high societal and political standing. When he was awarded the title adelantado in 1526, Montejo became one such individual. The implicit hereditary nature and the aristocratic honors bestowed upon the position of governor did not go unnoticed, however, and several sixteenth-century chroniclers clearly viewed Montejo unworthy of being recognized as ‘noble,’ or, more importantly, as deserving of a hereditary governorship. Bartolomé de Las Casas best expressed this widely held view: In the year 1526, another wretch was deemed governor of the kingdom of the Yucatán, through lies and falsehoods and offers that he made to the King, as other tyrants have done until now in order to obtain offices and positions so that they may rob [the king].35

For Las Casas, Montejo was clearly the antithesis of what it meant to be a governor and, more specifically, to be noble in Spanish society, even in the decadence of Spanish-American society. These sentiments were further compounded by the decision to deny Montejo

35 Las Casas (1999) 124. The Spanish text reads “El año de mil y quinientos y veintiséis fue otro infelice hombre proveído por gobernador del reino de Yucatán, por las mentiras y falsedades que dijo y ofrecimiento que hizo al rey, como los otros tiranos han hecho hasta agora, porque les den oficios y cargos con que puedan robar.”

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entry into the noble Order of Santiago.36 With the colonial environment as a background, it is possible to infer that the imagery of the Montejo façade actually attempts to rebuke these ideas through its affirmation of Montejo’s noble status as governor of the province. It must be remembered that Montejo’s position as governor was synonymous with being noble, which was uncertain, whereas Herrera’s nobility was never questioned. Therefore, through the prominent display of her sculpted bust and familial arms on the façade of the Casa de Montejo, the Montejos attempted to strengthen their societal stock and give further legitimacy to Montejo’s dubious lineage by relying upon the conventions of Spanish nobility. The inclusion of Herrera’s paternal and maternal arms was not unknown in Spain, but it did carry certain connotations. The tradition of marshalling a woman’s arms with those of her husband is believed to have been initiated in the mid-thirteenth century by a Spanish king who included the arms of a female relation on the new Castilian royal shield.37 In so doing, the king was granted the opportunity to appreciate his spouse’s noble status as his own both publicly and politically and through her distinction was able to further enhance his own noble lineage. Like the thirteenth-century king, the Montejos used the courtly custom to further their own legitimacy within the nascent American nobility, a message they conveyed to a larger urban audience through the architectural adornment of the Montejo façade. Throughout Spain and its dominions, heraldic images were used as architectural embellishment and in other visual media. Heraldic motifs were synonymous with establishing certain conceptions about the patron. Perhaps the most studied example of the practice in early modern Spain is the case of the Catholic Monarchs. Under Isabella’s guidance, the monarchs launched an ambitious building campaign; its objectives were to revitalize and commemorate important monarchical sites and monuments throughout Spain. Their intent, as Jonathan Brown has stated, was to “signal the dominant presence of the monarchy throughout the kingdom.” One way their symbolic presence was

36

Chamberlain (1940) 51. See sources from note 19. There is some ambiguity in these sources as to when the tradition actually began. It appears that it initiated with Ferdinand III when he marshaled his father’s arms with those of his mother’s to create the shield of Castile and Leon upon his father’s death in 1230. 37

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achieved was through the use of heraldic representations in architectural effigies that visually and emphatically established the monarchs’ claims of ‘dynastic legitimacy and continuity’ at traditional monarchical sites.38 As such, these monuments and their architectural adornments became symbols of public display or, better yet, propaganda. Not surprisingly, as González Galván has explained in his study of civil facades in colonial Mexico, this fashion arrived in Spanish America with the burgeoning American nobility who sought to establish their own “dynastic legitimacy and continuity.”39 Indeed, one means by which members of the nobility attempted to visually establish themselves was through the development of a new descriptive façade language, a language couched in the patron’s desires to make declarative statements in stone. By the time the Casa’s façade was constructed, the Spanish monarchy was well aware of the power of visual propaganda. Furthermore, in the Casa de Montejo, Charles V was mindful of the Montejos’ plan to establish large-scale urban signage because Charles had stipulated that Montejo’s new blazon, which Charles V awarded to him after his appointment as adelantado, not only commemorated Montejo’s accomplishments, but more importantly, also became a symbol of Montejo and his heirs’ legitimacy as governors of the Yucatán. The façade of the Casa de Montejo, with its large escudo protected by armed Spanish halberdiers and wild men, does this in dramatic fashion.40 These images are complemented by a series of busts assumed to represent the founding members of the Montejo dynasty, including at least three female busts. One of these idealistically depicts Herrera—in the upper-right corner of the portal’s lintel—wearing a crown and the emblems of her noble status as the governor’s wife. Moreover, her noble lineage is indisputable: Herrera’s legitimizing coat of arms appears prominently on the façade.

38 Brown (1992) 42. Brown also notes that other intentions of this program were “to assert their [Ferdinand and Isabella’s] hegemony over the nobles; . . . displaying their zeal as defenders of the Christian faith,” and to demonstrate “dynastic legitimacy and continuity.” 39 González Galván (1989) 95–98. 40 Restall (1998) 3, notes that Montejo relied upon a large number of Nahuas from Central Mexico during the final colonization. This fact adds interesting complexity to the interpretations of the wild men in that they cannot be seen solely as standardized representations of European wild men. It seems plausible to infer that on some level these warriors could be equated with the foreign Nahuas who helped the Montejos pacify the Yucatán Peninsula.

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Scholarly accounts about the lives of the Montejo children are similar in form to those of their parents in that the life of Catalina, like that of her mother, has been glossed over while the exploits of her half-brother are well documented. The emphasis placed on El Mozo in published works is understandable due to the pivotal role he played in the colonization of the Yucatán Peninsula, but, I argue, Catalina also played an equally important role, particularly through her politically driven marriage to the older Alonso Maldonado, who at the time was head of the Audiencia de los Confines.41 The goals of their marriage were clear: To secure a stronger allegiance between these two important families (Montejo and Maldonado were both from Salamanca) and to strengthen their combined hold over Yucatecan and Central American politics.42 Furthermore, it was Catalina, rather than El Mozo, who inherited their father’s noble titles after his death in 1553. In some scholarly accounts the fact of her inheritance has been exploited to characterize the adelantado as a father who neglected his son and rightful heir.43 When placed in the context of the historical framework, however, Catalina’s inheritance was ensured by the astute pre-emptive actions of her mother soon after she arrived in Mexico. At this time, Spain was quite unlike the rest of Western Europe because its officials recognized female inheritance. Likewise, issues of illegitimacy were equally important in the early modern context, because in Spain an illegitimate offspring could be officially recognized through royal ratification. As Ann Twinam has alluded in her study of illegitimacy in colonial Latin America, the practice of seeking ratification from the king was not uncommon in Spain and had occurred throughout the kingdom for some time.44 The practice of legitimization is significant in the context of this study because El Mozo was Montejo’s illegitimate son from an affair he had with Ana de León. While at Charles V’s court, Montejo sought and was granted the king’s official recognition of El Mozo, his only biological son, as 41 Chamberlain (1958) 15, has noted that there is still some discrepancy as to when they were married due to the vagueness in the archival documents, but he suggests it was in either 1542 or 1544. 42 Stone (1990) 53; and Chamberlain (1958) 181. 43 Arrigunaga Peón (1965) 421. 44 Twinam (1999).

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his rightful heir. As seen in archival documentation, including his last will and testament, Montejo often names El Mozo as his hijo natural—implying that El Mozo was his legitimate beneficiary. Furthermore, El Mozo had established a permanent settlement in the Yucatán when he founded Mérida in 1542 (and began construction on the Montejo palace for his father) and was often highly praised by other government and church officials in the Yucatán. Despite his role in the colonization of the area, his ratified legitimacy did not relieve the political and societal prejudices that had developed towards him and his father, prejudices apparent after Montejo’s death when Catalina became the primary heir over her half-brother. From the broader political perspective, Montejo and his son were vestiges no longer suited to the needs of the American government. The viceregency was a complex system that was meant, as Inga Clendinnen states, “to discourage the growth of any overmighty faction.”45 Through their actions, which included, among others, the barring of municipal elections and the imprisonment of political leaders, the Montejos became an ‘overmighty faction.’ Their exploits created a breakdown in the American bureaucratic government. In response, the Crown punitively ended their monopoly over Yucatecan affairs by publicly reprimanding Montejo and stripping him of his governorship in 1550. In addition, El Mozo’s illegitimacy was brought to the fore by the official passing of his father’s titles to his halfsister through what seems to have been a politically driven move. From a broader perspective, Catalina’s social position was much more secure than that of her half-brother. Her security is unquestionably Herrera’s doing because she insisted upon the public recognition of her marriage to Montejo and the important affirmation of her daughter as legitimate. Herrera’s actions reflect the Visigothic tradition of establishing female heiresses. Despite the royal ratification in Spain that legitimized him on paper, realistically El Mozo remained illegitimate. Thus, in societal and political contexts he was not a suitable heir, but his sister was. Furthermore, Catalina was married to Maldonado, who was an audiencia president. Despite the political tensions that had been created by the families in their attempts to manipulate Central American

45

Clendinnen (1987) 59.

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politics, Maldonado was the epitome of a Spanish bureaucrat. Indeed, Maldonado came from established Castilian nobility and was an influential member of the viceregal government. Therefore, the passing of the title adelantado, even if it possessed no real official power, to Catalina and effectively to Maldonado through marriage, blended well with Maldonado’s stature, a status that El Mozo, or even Montejo, could never possess. An interesting element of the lower portion of the Montejo façade that relates to the aspect of Catalina’s status is found in the two sculpted jamb busts, commonly assumed to represent Catalina and El Mozo. As seen in Figures 15.4 and 15.5, these images have two different expressions and fields of sight. Despite some deterioration, principally of the male figure, it is possible to discern portions of their original design. On the left, the female bust raises her head to the upper right while the male figure, on the right, appears to look horizontally across the entryway of the façade toward the female (Catalina’s) head, instead of to the expected upper left, which would have created a symmetrical balance in rhythm with the entire façade. What makes this composition even more complex is that Catalina’s bust looks directly up to that of her mother. Furthermore, Catalina’s bust breaks with the symmetry of the façade as she is possibly the only female figure or symbol found on the left-hand side of the monument. In contrast, there are multiple female representations— Herrera’s bust, the inscription MA (Mary), and another female bust in the second storey frieze—on the viewer’s right half of the façade, the side that is traditionally the ‘female,’ or ‘sinister,’ side in Western religious iconography.46 It appears that Catalina’s bust was placed deliberately on the viewer’s left-hand side (traditionally the more prestigious and more often ‘male’ side) of the façade so that she can look in perpetuity at her mother, the ultimate source of her political and social power. Thus, the bust’s placement not only suggests Catalina’s preferential familial status—and begs the question as to who devised the Casa de Montejo façade’s iconographic program in the first place—but also reinforces Herrera’s presence in Yucatecan affairs.

46 In the upper frieze appear three busts, one clearly identifiable as a man in the center of a frieze and one clearly a female to the right of the façade. The third figure has deteriorated, but it does not appear to possess the features of a woman.

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Fig. 15.4 Detail: Left Jamb Bust, Lower Façade, Casa de Montejo, Mérida, Yucatán. Ca. 1542–1549. Photo by the author.

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Fig. 15.5 Detail: Left Jamb Bust, Lower Façade, Casa de Montejo, Mérida, Yucatán. Ca. 1542–1549. Photo by the author.

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Conclusion Even though much remains to be determined about the life of Beatriz Álvarez de Herrera, what has been uncovered to date provides interesting insights into the political and artistic development of the Yucatán. My study of established political and societal conventions underscores the relevance of some of Herrera’s actions and provides a backdrop from which to analyze her representations in the architectural adornment of the Casa de Montejo. Through an understanding of early modern normative conventions in Spain, it becomes possible to see how these conventions manifest themselves in the Americas. Although the Casa de Montejo façade does not break with tradition, it nevertheless provides a vital clue that contributes to an understanding of the Montejos’ ambitions in the Yucatán as expressed in the iconographic program of such an important viceregal monument. It also helps shed new light on the role of architectural representation in viceregal culture. As I have suggested, one way these intentions were expressed in the Montejo façade was through the visual legitimization of and homage to Herrera. It follows, then, that the study of these images provides a vehicle from which to begin to understand her role in Yucatecan affairs. Herrera’s determined actions, although seemingly slight on the surface, rippled out and influenced subsequent political and social events. Herrera becomes a point of origin from which to begin to reevaluate the history, the art, the architecture, and the role of women in early modern Latin America.

Bibliography Archivo General de las Indias (AGI), Seville, Sección Indiferente General Leg. 415, l. 1, f. 90v–98v. Real Cédula de capitulación con Francisco de Montejo, vecino de México para la conquista de Yucatán, 1526–12–08, Granada. Leg. 421, l.12, f. 1r–3r. Real Provisión a Francisco de Montejo, alcalde de Veracruz en Nueva España, haciéndole merced de escudo de armas en remuneración de sus servicios en los descubrimientos de aquellas partes, 1526–12–08, Granada. Sección Audiencia de México Leg. 3048, b. 1, f. 1v–30r. Probanza de Doña Beatriz de Herrera, 1554, Mérida. Arrigunaga Peón, J. (1965) “Falso Mayorazgo de la Casa de Montejo,” Humanitas, México 6 (1965) 421–437. Brown, J. (1992) “Spain in the Age of Exploration: Crossroads of Artistic Culture,” in Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration, ed. J. A. Levenson (Washington, D.C.: 1992) 41–50. Chamberlain, R. (1966) The Conquest and Colonization of the Yucatan, 1517–1550 (New York: 1966).

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—— (1958) “El ultimo testamento y mandato de Doña Beatriz de Herrera, esposa del Adelantado don Francisco de Montejo,” Anales de la Sociedad de Geografía e Historia 31 (Dec.–Jan. 1958) 15–18. —— (1948) “The Governorship of the Adelantado Francisco de Montejo in Chiapas, 1539–1544,” Contributions to American Anthropology and History 9, no. 44–47 (1948) 163–208. —— (1940) “The Lineage of the Adelantado Francisco de Montejo and His Will and Testament,” Revista de Historia de América, México City, 8 (Apr. 1940) 43–56. Clendinnen, I. (1987) Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517–1570 (New York: 1987). Díaz del Castillo, B. (1991) Historia verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva España (Mexico City: 1991). Dillard, H. (1984) Daughters of the Reconquest: Women in Castilian Town Society, 1100–1300 (Cambridge, MA: 1984). García Cubero, L. (1992) Bibliografía heráldico-genealógico-nobiliaria de la Biblioteca Nacional (Madrid: 1992). González Galván, M. (1989) “La arquitectura colonial a través de las portadas de los edificios civiles,” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 60 (1989) 95–98. González Iglesias, J. (1994) “El humanista y los príncipes: Antonio de Nebrija, inventor de las empresas heráldicas de los Reyes Católicos,” in Antonio de Nebrija: Edad Media y Renacimiento, eds. C. Codoñer and J. A. González-Iglesias (Salamanca: 1994) 59–76. Irigoyen Rosado, R. (1981) Pórticos coloniales de Mérida (Mérida, Yucatán: 1981). Landa, Fr. D. de. (1991) Yucatan before and after the Conquest, trans. W. Gates (Mérida, Yucatán: 1991). Las Casas, B. de. (1999) Bravísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias, ed. C. Varela (Madrid: 1999). Martín, L. (1983) Daughters of the Conquistadores: Women of the Viceroyalty of Peru (Dallas: 1983). Messía de la Cerda y Pita, L. F. (1990) Heráldica española: El diseño heráldico (Madrid: 1990). Perry, M. E. (1990) Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville (Princeton: 1990). Perry, R., and R. Perry (1988) Maya Missions: Exploring the Spanish Colonial Churches of the Yucatan (Santa Barbara, CA: 1988). Restall, M. (2003) Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest (Oxford: 2003). —— (1998) Maya Conquistador (Boston: 1998). Riquer, M. de. (1986) Heráldica castellana en tiempos de los Reyes Católicos (Barcelona: 1986). Rubio Mañé, J. I. (1941) La Casa de Montejo en Mérida de Yucatán con un estudio de Manuel Toussaint (Mexico City: 1941). Rújula y de Ochotorena, J., and A. del Solar y Tabeada (1932) Francisco de Montejo y los adelantados del Yucatán: Genealogía de las condes y duques de Montellano (Badajoz Spain: 1932). Sebastián López, S. J. de Mesa Figueroa, and T. Gisbert de Mesa (1989) Historia general del arte: Arte iberoamericano desde la colonización a la independencia, vol. 3 (Madrid: 1989). Stoler, A. L., and F. Cooper (1997) “Between Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a Research Agenda,” in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Culture in a Bourgeois World, eds. F. Cooper and A. L. Stoler (Berkeley: 1997) 1–56. Stone, S. (1990) The Heritage of the Conquistadors: Ruling Classes in Central America from the Conquest to the Sandanistas (Lincoln, NE: 1990). Twinam, A. (1999) Public Lives, Private Secrets: Gender, Honor, Sexuality, and Illegitimacy in Colonial Spanish America (Stanford: 1999). Weckman, L. (1992) The Medieval Heritage of Mexico, trans. M. López-Morillas (New York: 1992).

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Weissberger, B. (2004) Isabel Rules: Constructing Queenship, Wielding Power (Minneapolis: 2004). Woodcock, T., and J. M. Robinson (1988) The Oxford Guide to Heraldry (Oxford: 1988). Vázquez, G. (1983) “Una aproximación a la iconografía de la fachada de la Casa de Montejo,” in Estudios acerca del arte novohispano: Homenaje a Elisa Vargas Lugo, ed. J. G. Victoria (Mexico City: 1983) 157–166.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

ISABEL DE CISNEROS IN HER OWN ROLE A. Lepage

In the Name of Santiago In the introductory catalogue to the broad collection of Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño, the prominent Ecuadorian historian José María Vargas casts the seventeenth century as being represented by “Miguel de Santiago, his daughter Isabel and his disciple Nicolás Javier Goríbar, with their canvases prepared with conscience, their defined designs, and their colors of cold tones.”1 Traditionally appearing as a tenuous first name, squeezed here between those of her father and her cousin in a slightly sentimental account of her time, Isabel de Cisneros (ca. 1666–ca. 1714) barely exists.2 Only known in art history as Isabel de Santiago, she appears as the daughter of the most ‘famous’ colonial Quiteño painter, or again as a wife, working in Santiago’s workshop “along with her husband Captain Antonio Egas.”3 In her own last will and testament, however, and throughout various ecclesiastical documents pertaining to her marriage and the baptism of her children, Isabel (de Santiago) consistently identifies herself and signs her own name as Cisneros, a name she inherited from her mother.4 Therefore, in the absence of any trace of her professional identification during her time, Isabel de Santiago will be referred to, in the following lines, as Isabel de Cisneros. 1 Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño was an early twentieth-century archaeologist and art connoisseur. In 1963, the funds to establish a museum, along with his private collection, were donated to the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador by Jijón y Caamaño’s heirs; see Vargas (1978) 12 and 22. 2 The biological mother of Miguel de Santiago was Juana Ruiz and the grandmother of Goríbar was Mariana Ruiz: The two artists have therefore been considered relatives; ibid., 36. 3 Vargas (1960) 189. 4 Throughout Ecuadorian scholarship, however, Cisneros is referred to as ‘Isabel’ or ‘Isabel de Santiago.’ All original references to her under the name of Santiago have been retained in cited sources.

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Identifying Isabel de Cisneros and individualizing her work among the artists trained in her father’s workshop and active in late seventeenth-century Quito appears to be the first duty of any historical study. One must first recognize, however, that she is one artist among many in a “notably anonymous artistic scene,” as Alexandra Kennedy recently qualified it in her discussion of the art of Goríbar (1665–1736), of which only one signed painting is known.5 In another study Kennedy asserts that this artistic anonymity resulted as a natural consequence of the fundamental characteristic of colonial religious art, which, according to the author, was entirely functional rather than aesthetic. “Religious art . . . served an end: To transfer, support or cement a particular religious creed.”6 Thus, while it is not exceptional to encounter works attributed to Cisneros on the walls of major museums and colonial churches throughout Ecuador,7 the correctness of attributions concerning Isabel de Cisneros is as disputable as it is for most Quiteño artists of this period, including her renowned father, cousin, and husband. The specific tradition of Ecuadorian art history of this period might have fostered, until recently, a myth surrounding not only Cisneros and her work, but also—by extension—other artists’ production. Moreover, in the anonymous landscape of Quiteño art, Cisneros’s minor figure has certainly been less inclined to gain the favor of art historians reasonably eager to generate a more coherent panorama than the actual one, and to elevate it to the standard of western historiography by focusing on a few major figures: Miguel de Santiago (c. 1633–1706) or Goríbar, for example. One problem, hence, might be the subsequent failure of scholars to place Cisneros or her work historically and, in turn, to have a compelling urge to fix this injustice. However, addressing this problem might finally appear to be a fallacy in the perspective of Quiteño art, the dominant model of which partly relied, for a long time, on a tradition reiterated by a few historians. Similarly, the question can-

5 My emphasis; Kennedy Troya (2002) 43–65. Goríbar’s name also appears at the foot of a print; see Vargas (1978) 36. 6 Kennedy Troya (1998) 95, 87–111. 7 Museums including the Museo Jijón y Caamaño in Quito, the Museo de Arte Colonial in Quito, the Museo Municipal de Guayaquil, and the Museo Nahim Isaías de Guayaquil. Churches including the Convent of Carmen Alto, the Santuario de Guápulo, the Monastery of San Diego, the Monastery of San Francisco, and the Monastery of San Agustín, all in Quito.

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not be simply to discover (or rather re-discover) an unknown or underrated woman painter. Of course, following some contemporary western art historical preoccupations, her academic value would appear purely gender based, and studying Cisneros would then be an opportunity to dispute her rank as a woman in a male-dominated culture. Such concern, no matter how interesting, seems to fall far from the reality of a complex artistic scene where the identity of the artists, the distinctiveness of their works, and the circumstances of their production thus far defy any definitive classification. Still, an essential and complicated task is first to pry away the numerous layers of fiction driven by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century ideologies that have, until now, permeated the historiography of Cisneros. Only then can Isabel de Cisneros be situated in her own right within the artistic scene of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Quito, which involved a complex interaction of religious and secular patronage. Resulting, as it seems, from such combination, the series of the miracles of the Virgin of Guápulo realized by Miguel de Santiago’s workshop might be seen as one of the most significant frameworks in which to study Cisneros’s contribution to this artistic scene, as well as an appropriate starting point to consider the delicate problem of her work’s attribution. If this latter question ends in a very confusing state of affairs, it is nothing, however, compared to the current mythical status of Isabel de Cisneros’ life in Quiteño art history.

The Role of Her Life Considering the available documentation, any account of Isabel de Cisneros’s life is tentative if not totally fictional. The latest attempt in this domain by Fernando Jurado Noboa in his 1995 study of Las Quiteñas (Quiteña Women) reads as a typical mix of facts and interpretations fostered by the composite academic background of its author.8 Jurado’s first mention of Cisneros’s existence immediately

8 Jurado Noboa (1995) 68–70. As the short biography printed on the back cover of Las Quiteñas indicates: “The author, Fernando Jurado Noboa (Quito, 1949), is a doctor of medicine at the Universidad Central del Ecuador, and specialized in psychiatry at the Universidad de Navarra (Spain) . . . [he] is the author of 38 books related to history and genealogy;” Jurado Noboa (1995) jacket.

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follows a surprising discussion devoted to the vices of women in colonial Quito. Nonetheless, Jurado reveals that ‘there are good examples’ (Pero hay buenos ejemplos) of Quiteña women, and Cisneros appears as one of them along with Sor Mariana de Jesús and Sor Juana de Jesús Paz y Miño, due to the posthumous portrait of the latter she painted around 1703 (Fig. 16.1). The completion of such a commission, one must understand, elevates Cisneros to the status of something of a saintly figure herself. While Jurado felt bound to provide us with a beatified psychological portrait of the artist, his subsequent brief study under the promising though misleading title “El arte e Isabel de Santiago” (Art and Isabel de Santiago) contributes nonetheless some progress to the understanding of Cisneros’s life and might be accounted as a first example of a discussion of this painter outside the scope of Miguel de Santiago. Working with Cisneros’s last will and testament and the baptismal records of the children of Cisneros and her husband, Don Antonio Egas Venegas de Córdoba (ca. 1635–ca. 1705), Jurado puts to rest the common belief that Cisneros left no descendents and mentions five children.9 Beyond this new information about her heirs, one is left with a relatively traditional account of Isabel de Cisneros’s life (still named ‘Santiago’ by the author). In short, Doña María Isabel de Cisneros y Alvarado was born in 1666 from Miguel de Santiago, a mestizo whose adopted name was given to him by Don Hernando de Santiago, a city alderman of Riobamba, Ecuador, and Doña Andrea Cisneros y Alvarado (†1700) who, as Jurado emphasizes, was ‘very Spanish.’10 It is in the light of this dual ethnic legacy that one can retrospectively read—literally—the role of Cisneros as penned by Alfredo Pareja Diezcanseco in an influential novel titled Vida y Leyenda de Miguel de 9 Vargas (1957) 21. In fact, baptismal records for five children—who are also named in Cisneros’s will—have been discovered by Jurado. They are: Agustín Lauriano (1689), María Monica (1692), Nicolás Fortunato (1693), Antonio (1696), and María Tomasa Venegas de Córdoba (1700); Libro de Bautismos, Archivo Histórico Curia Metropolitana, Quito [Hereafter AHCM/Q , Sección Sacramentaria (Santa Bárbara), Libro 1, 170, 181; Libro 2, 18v, 44]. As for additional biographical details, matrimonial records from the parish of Santa Bárbara indicate that Cisneros was legally married to Egas in 1691 and married in the church on January 15, 1692. The death of Andrea de Cisneros y Alvarado occurred in 1700; Jurado Noboa (1995) 68–70. 10 Miguel de Santiago was the natural son of Lucas Vizuete and Juana Ruiz; see Miguel de Santiago’s will as published by Vargas (1970) 131–135. See also Jurado Noboa (1995) 69. While some historians of Quiteño art acknowledge the Spanish tradition of Cisneros taking her mother’s name [See Navarro (1991) 82; and Vargas (1957) 21.], they do not apply this name to Cisneros.

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Fig. 16.1 [Copy of ] Portrait of Juana de Jesús, original: Isabel de Cisneros. Ca. 1703, Convent of Santa Clara, Quito, Eduador.

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Santiago.11 Written in 1952, this account of the life and legend of Miguel de Santiago adds one layer of significance to Isabel de Cisneros’s existence and status in Ecuadorian art. Cisneros, the painter, does not enter the novel until halfway through Pareja’s account, long after the stage has been set for the gradual creation of Santiago as a brooding master witnessing the death of his three sons, and later the death of his daughter Juana Ruiz, that of his wife, and of his sonin-law Egas. In fact, Cisneros gains her importance as a painter only after Santiago’s abandonment by his most gifted student, Nicolás Goríbar, whom he had trained and—we are told—who had been sent to him as a “reparation for the loss of his sons.”12 Relying upon the work published in 1929, among other historical documents, by the art historian José Gabriel Navarro on Ecuadorian sculpture from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries and exploiting the first publication of Miguel de Santiago’s last will and testament, Pareja seems to have used the genre of the historical novel with a specific purpose in mind.13 Known from the twenties through the seventies as an Ecuadorian socialist novelist, Pareja’s writings, along with the issue of several socialist manifestoes, have been viewed by his contemporaries as potentially fueling the (ultimately frustrated) socialist revolution that began on July 9, 1925.14 In 1952, emphasizing the indigenous heritage of Miguel de Santiago, who in his genius becomes a symbol for Pareja’s cause, the novel is clearly in the continuity of the author’s ideological line, valorizing the indigenous or otherwise marginalized (black and mulatto) populations of Ecuador. From a political point of view, perfectly perceived by Kessel Schwartz shortly after the publication of Pareja’s novel, Miguel de Santiago and those associated with his genius clearly become representative of the mestizo’s general condition, and symbols of a wider revolutionary spirit fighting social control over the indigenous population: 11

Pareja Diezcanseco (1952). Ibid., 76–77. The entrance of Cisneros as an artist occurs on pages 91 to 95. 13 See ibid., 129, for a bibliography including, notably, Valentín Iglesias (1922); and Navarro (1929). In what might be seen as a pre-emptive strike, Valentín outlines the origins of the numerous myths surrounding Santiago, although he notes “. . . there is nothing secure or stable in relation to these myths, which have been modified through time to the taste and fancy of various writers . . .,” 4–19. Pareja’s greatest contribution in this camp might be seen then as the concrete stabilization of the myths of Santiago in Ecuadorian tradition in the form that would later be continuously repeated. 14 Schwartz (1959) 220–228. 12

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The [Ecuadorian] contemporary novelists—noted Schwartz—have campaigned in the hope of redeeming the Indian, Negro, and other downtrodden elements from an old slavery. In their emphasis on the social problems they form a part of a general Ecuadorian movement, in art, sculpture, and literature, and they have absorbed a conflicting mass of foreign influences in an attempt to bring a foreign culture into the Ecuadorian tradition, and especially to graft European socialism on that tradition.15

This explains why Schwartz, a few years later, identifies—apparently wrongly—the Vida y Leyenda de Miguel de Santiago as one of Pareja’s three works of non-fiction.16 Certainly Pareja’s colorful writing and his taste for incestuous romance blatantly contradict Schwartz’s interpretation. But the cultural implications of the novel, on the other hand, establish plainly Pareja’s work within the reality of Ecuadorian history. Hence, one must not be surprised by the feedback effect of Pareja’s work in the art history of seventeenth-century Quito. As a distant echo of the novelist’s reliance on Navarro’s 1929 historical work on Ecuadorian art, Pareja’s Romantic approach to this work reappears in the form of a ‘tradition’ according to which, Navarro says one day [Goríbar] was obligated to abandon the workshop, due to the excessive obstinacy and bad temper of his master Miguel de Santiago: Whereas the tradition has painted the master’s flaws to posterity, it has profiled his disciple as docile and agreeable in character.17

To a great extent, all of Navarro’s following historical account of the master-disciple relationship borrows from Pareja’s fictional creation, and a similar shift can be traced in some versions of Cisneros’s life.18 In this regard, the breeding of history and fiction produces a tradition nurtured to some extent by Pareja’s ideological stance, and in which Cisneros’s relationship to her father might still bear an underlying significance in relation to Ecuadorian cultural history at large. As the betrayed spirit of the revolution itself, in a sense— whose accomplishment might always be followed by disillusionment— the fulfillment of Santiago’s artistic genius might depend on its 15

Schwartz (1955) 297, 294–298. Ibid., 227. “[Pareja’s] three major non-fictional works are La hoguera bárbera, Historia del Ecuador and a biography, Vida y Leyenda de Miguel de Santiago.” Also note that this novel is frequently considered to be a work of non-fiction; see Vargas (1957) 16; and Pareja Diezcanseco (1995) 40. 17 Navarro (1991) 100. For corresponding fiction, see Pareja (1952) 89–90. 18 See, notably, Vargas (1957) 21; Vargas (1960) 188; and Navarro (1991) 81. 16

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perpetuation.19 This role is fulfilled through the life of his preferred daughter, Cisneros, who serves as a fragile but consistent spirit through which his legacy persists. Indeed, Pareja’s ultimate lines read: “Isabel lived many, many years [after the death of her father]. From time to time, works painted by her hand surface.”20 Hence, although a secondary character, Cisneros nonetheless becomes something of a hero; for not only does she survive the traditional malediction surrounding the life of her genius father, but as an artist herself, she carries on his tradition. This is a heritage to which Pareja attributes, in disguise, a meaning that ties together the arts and the life of Ecuadorian people. As such, one might understand that Cisneros’s symbolic role in the history of Quiteño art in general strongly depends on the posterity of her father’s name, a name to which she has been consistently tied even though, as Pareja and other historians such as Vargas have read: “In his will . . . Miguel de Santiago mentions his daughter, Isabel de Cisneros y Alvarado, widow of Capitán Antonio Egas.”21 Of course, the historical validity of Pareja’s novel is disputable, and has been argued at times.22 Similarly, despite some troubling appearances, one should not overemphasize its cultural interpretation and ideological legacy. On the other hand, no matter how arguable, Pareja’s creation was precisely intended to permeate a reality that, unless one reads it uncritically, is already the product of a fiction. In any case—wrote Pareja—the most credulous is the person who believes totally in the official document, which is always calculated . . . or the work of another inventor with less wisdom than the novelist.23

That is why, whether one wants it to or not, the status of Pareja’s fictional character, in its influential marginality, remains that of Isabel de Santiago in contemporary studies of Quiteño art—infiltrating, as a solid myth, any attempts to define her significance within Ecuadorian 19 In Pareja’s own account of the revolution, he concludes, “Little by little, the protagonists of the revolution of 1925 began to dis-integrate themselves from the movement . . .;” Pareja Diezcanseco (1999) 85. 20 Pareja (1952) 128. 21 Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador (1976), s. n. See also Terán (1950) 14; Navarro (1991) 81–82; and Paez (1957) 56, in which he employs the testament of Santiago, while still naming Cisneros ‘Isabel de Santiago.’ 22 See, for example, Vargas (1960) 187. 23 “En todo caso, más crédulo es quien se fía totalmente del documento oficial, siempre intencionado, o del hecho . . . escrito por otro inventor con menos sagacidad que la del novelista;” Pareja (1952) 8.

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art history. Until now, Cisneros’s allusive presence in this history has been token: Either related to an ideological assessment of Ecuadorian society or as a uniquely feminine, and therefore remarkable, contribution in its art history. In fact, Cisneros is not a unique example of a woman artist working in Ecuador, and a recent study by Kennedy illustrates that cloistered women were actively involved in all aspects of art production during the colonial period: Patronage, manufacture, and collection.24 This type of cloistered art production in Ecuador is consistent with the practices of cloistered women in Europe. Recent studies by Susan Verdi Webster and Kimberly Gauderman, however, tend to demonstrate that women held a much higher status—especially economically—in Quito than they did in Europe.25 This elevated status of women in seventeenth-century Quito, while not being directly related to Cisneros’s condition, is nevertheless an encouragement to consider Cisneros’s artistic career through the examination of the surrounding conditions of the artistic production of her time.

Quiteño Connection Although no information seems to surface about the time Isabel de Cisneros started her formation, one can confidently assert that she was trained and worked in her father’s workshop. Santiago’s workshop was already established at the time he received the commission for the cycle of the life of Saint Augustine, dedicated in 1656, in the eponymous monastery. Notably, artists including Bernabé Lovato, Simón de Valenzuela, Nicolás Javier Goríbar, Antonio Egas, and Gregorito were also trained in the same workshop. Among the securely attributed works commissioned from Miguel de Santiago’s workshop, it is only possible to speculate that Isabel de Cisneros worked, along with Goríbar, on the Series of the Milagros de la Virgen in the sanctuary of Nuestra Señora de Guápulo, realized between 1699 and 1706.26 First, in investigating the commission of this very cycle of 24

Kennedy Troya (2002a) 109–127. For example, Webster asserts that while women held such high positions within confraternities as stewards in Ecuador, it would have been impossible to attain such a position in a contemporary European-based confraternity; Webster (2002b) 69, 67–85. For a detailed study of the elevated economic status and liberty of women in Quito in the seventeenth century, see Gauderman (2003). 26 For the most recent related study, see Kennedy Troya (2002a) 50, 43–65. Among 25

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paintings, one must examine how the complex weaving of the religious and secular representatives of Quiteño society intervened in the life of a given workshop and, possibly, in the subsistence of an individual artist such as Isabel de Cisneros. Although she lived during times when the perspective of an artist largely focused on obtaining commissions from the Catholic Church, private citizens were also active patrons of religious art. In this regard, the examination of estate inventories indicates that by the turn of the eighteenth century almost every household, however humble, owned at least a painting or two of some saintly advocation. To understand the status of painting and sculpture at the moment Cisneros was most active artistically, from circa 1686 to her death,27 it is possible—as a preliminary inquiry—to turn to the estate inventories from the parish of Santa Bárbara where Santiago and Cisneros lived for the majority of their adult lives. Depending on the socioeconomic status of people living in the area, some might very well have been patrons of Cisneros’ oeuvre. In the 1715 inventory of the estate of Don Luis de Araus, a vecino of Quito, for example, the contents of four separate residences were inventoried.28 In the principle home of Araus no fewer than seventynine paintings of all sizes, most in gilded frames, are inventoried. These are images of numerous saints, including Our Lady of Sorrows, Sts. Mary Magdalene, Lawrence, and Catherine, among others,29 along with forty-four landscape paintings. This collection, just one of three that this particular family owned, was made up of both New and Old Testament saints and figures, modern saints, and secular landscapes. The scale of this collection and the fact that most of

other securely attributed series, one can mention: Christian Doctrine (ca. 1670) in San Francisco, Quito; Ave Maria, (ca. 1673) in San Francisco in Bogotá; The Articles of the Faith (1673), and Misericordia (ca. 1673) in the Bogotá Cathedral. 27 While comparatively little is currently known about seventeenth-century practices in painting workshops in Quito, metalworking workshops have been studied extensively in an Ecuadorian context. Accordingly, apprentices were admitted into workshops between the ages of thirteen and twenty. Therefore, with caution, Cisneros may be considered an active workshop member by at least the age of twenty. For related studies, see Paniagua Pérez and Truhan (1997) 59–70; and Garzón (1995) 12–24. 28 Inventory of the estate of Don Luis de Araus, Archivo Nacional de Historia, Quito [Hereafter ANH/Q ], Notaría 4. Jucios. Caja 8. 28-I-1715. 29 Ibid. One can add to this list: Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Saint Isabel, Saint John the Baptist, Saint Rita, David, and Judith.

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these paintings are framed, along with the Araus’ possession of a large quantity of worked silver, undoubtedly places this family among the upper classes of Quito. Still, one must keep in mind that the thematic diversity of this collection as well as the inclusion of secular works is entirely typical of most collections of the time period.30 With Cisneros’s status as the daughter of a renowned painter, the upperclass Araus family represents precisely the type of private patron for whom she must have worked.31 Unfortunately, it is impossible, at this point, to identify which if any of these works listed in the estate of Don Luis de Araus could have belonged to the hand of Cisneros. A second facet of Isabel de Cisneros’ relatively obscure artistic milieu is to be traced via the estate of Don Manuel de Lomas, whose surrounding circumstances unveil a network of remarkable connections in which she plays a certain while indeterminate role. Indeed, Lomas’s estate was executed in 1705 by Maestro Don Antonio de la Chica Cevallos (†ca. 1717) who shortly afterward will also be the executor of Miguel de Santiago’s closed last will and testament. As the executor to Lomas, Chica delegated some of the work of liquidating this estate to two particularly striking individuals: First, to José Jaime Ortiz, the main architect of the city, who was put in charge of the real estate, and second, and most importantly, to Miguel de Santiago, whose assignment was to liquidate the paintings of Lomas.32 Lastly, during the sale of Lomas’s estate, Antonio Egas purchased a piece of worked silver for the price of fourteen reales. While indirectly implicated in Lomas’s estate through familial connections, Cisneros is in fact directly part of this intricate circle. As her own last will and testament—remarkably witnessed by Goríbar— indicates, Cisneros owed money to Chica at the time of her death. Subsequently, in order to solve a debt contracted by her husband, she consented to pay for the balance of a house that is in the heights of Santa Bárbara which has been used as collateral against the 200 peso debt owed to Maestro Don Antonio de la Chica, plus 50 pesos, which should be paid to the said Maestro

30 For supporting examples, see AHCM/Q: 1687-II-31; and ANH/Q: 1714-XI-13, 1717-VI-18. 31 Based on investigation of estate records, Kennedy asserts Santiago as the only artist of his time to be consistently identified as the author of works; see Kennedy (2002a) 208, n. 16. 32 For a recent comprehensive study on Ortiz, see Webster (2002a).

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Hence, suggesting more intimate connections between the involved parties, Cisneros offers Chica a sculpture that belonged to Egas in exchange for the outstanding sum. Whether such compensation had been previously agreed upon or not is unknown. What matters, finally, is the possibility to witness, through these very circumstances, Cisneros’s personal involvement in an artistic scene—as tenuous as her participation might at first appear.

Behind the Miracles This fragile link, indeed, prolongs itself in the examination of the conception and realization of the Santuario de Guápulo, whose decoration most likely begins circa 1685 and continues through the eighteenth century. Guápulo’s priest, Doctor Don José de Herrera y Cevallos, was in charge of the artistic decisions at the Santuario de Guápulo. A familial connection between Chica and Herrera comes to light through the examination of archival sources, and considering his abovementioned role in the artistic community, Chica might have been partially involved in the organization of such a group comprising the most distinguished artists and artisans of late seventeenth-century Quito.34 As recorded by the Cofradía de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe (The Confraternity of Our Lady of Guadalupe) through the Libro de Cofradía, the construction was led between 1650 and 1685 by the lay Franciscan Fray Antonio Rodríguez. Subsequently,

33 “. . . a la deuda de doscientos pesos en favor de Mro Don Antonio de la Chica con mas sin cuenta para que pague a dicho Mro con el valor de un Santo Cristo de bulto que quedo para vienes de dicho mi marido y para que en el precio referido no se halla dicho Mro se le darán veinte pesos de mis vienes__” Last Will and Testament of Isabel de Cisneros, ANH/Q , Notaría 4, vol. 65, 1714, p. 129v. 34 For family relationship between Chica and Herrera, see ANH/Q: 1714-XI13, 50; and AHCM/Q: Caja 28, 7v–14. Goríbar himself is also closely connected to the Santuario de Guápulo based on his family connections. His uncle, Bachiller Miguel de Goríbar, served as the Coadjutor in Guápulo 1686–1698. AHCM/Q: Caja 28, 14–28. The connections between Santiago’s workshop and Guápulo continue: Between ca. 1688 and 1690, Antonio Egas is actively involved in the fundraising campaign toward constructing and decorating Guápulo; AHCM/Q: Libro de Cofradía, 24–38.

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Capitán Marcos Tomás Correa designed the retables and Juan Bautista Menacho executed them. The confraternity recorded their first payment of fifty pesos to Miguel de Santiago in 1684 for the painting of the doors of the niche of the sanctuary,35 and it appears that Santiago’s workshop also received the commission for at least four painted retables and a series of twelve independent paintings that were realized between 1699 and 1706 and dedicated to the miracles of the Virgin of Nuestra Señora de Guápulo.36 One of them, now titled Castigo de la Virgen a Francisco Romo y su hijo (Fig. 16.2), is initialed by Miguel de Santiago following the inscription: Don Francisco, having promised to go to the novena on foot, [instead] went on a mule. [The mule then] dragged [Don Francisco] to the corner of the plaza in the year 1665; and while eating, his son choked on a bone; [the bone] was taken out covered in blood.37

While the representation of these two ‘miraculous’ punishments presided over by the image of the Virgin is still readable on the bottom left and right of the canvas, the current state of the painting shows, as a translucent, centered scene, what Vargas identified in 1990 as a sacred family previously painted, he asserted, by Miguel de Santiago.38 Whether the resulting hallucinogenic vision is to be attributed to the effects of time or to a restoration is irrelevant to our concern. First, one should rather acknowledge the relative difference of styles between the two superimposed scenes, hardly produced by the same hand. Subsequently, a slightly closer look at the ‘sacred family’ instantly calls to mind a late seventeenth-century depiction of the education of the Virgin preserved nearby at the Museo Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño and presently attributed to Cisneros. Probably credited to Isabel de Cisneros based on Vargas’s assessment that the composition of ‘domestic scenes’ (asuntos familiares)39 constitute her special domain, the compositional and stylistic characteristics of this very work could naturally suggest the established presence and activity of Cisneros at the time of Santiago’s work on the Guápulo series and before. Therefore, 35

AHCM/Q: Caja 32. This series is now preserved in the sacristy. 37 Inscription, as cited by Vargas: “Habiendo prometido D. Francisco Romo ir a pie a un novenario, fuese a mula y le arrastró desde la esquina de la plaza en el año de 1665 y un hijo suyo estando comiendo se le atravesó un hueso y lo sacaron lleno de sangre;” Vargas (1990) 17. 38 Ibid., 17. 39 Vargas (1972) 22. 36

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Fig. 16.2 Miguel de Santiago, Castigo de la Virgen a Francisco Romo y su hijo. Ca. 1699–1706, Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guápulo, Quito, Ecuador.

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despite the indisputable presence of Miguel de Santiago’s initials, one might be able to witness here the undermining of a possible, though fragile (re)apparition of Cisneros’s art underneath that of her father’s. Although no definitive authorship can be reasonably claimed, there is no apparent reason to disregard Cisneros’s involvement in the realization of the twelve paintings that, undoubtedly according to ‘tradition,’ were painted “under the direction of Miguel de Santiago.”40 On the other hand, it is not necessary to X-ray the series of the Virgin of Guápulo to unveil Cisneros’s active presence at the time of their realization. Indeed, the decoration of the Santuario de Guápulo started precisely when Isabel de Cisneros can be considered, with some certainty, to have become active in her father’s workshop (as well as more independently), and lasted until after her death. Her name is systematically concealed, however, behind the workshop’s accomplishment, and the great value of these collective efforts, as we have seen, is ultimately granted to Santiago’s genius. The omission of Cisneros’s name by scholars appears normal in the recognition of the Quiteño anonymous scene, or considering the status of Miguel de Santiago as the head of the workshop. However, this exclusion is relatively surprising when one encounters—consistently—the names of other workshop members such as Lovato, Valenzuela, Carreño, and finally Goríbar in connection to the workshop’s production in general.41 The latter, whose Guápulo retable of the Virgen del Pilar is inscribed fecit Goríbar, has even often been partially credited—more specifically—for the Virgin of Nuestra Señora de Guápulo series.42 From one extreme to the other, only Juan de Dios Navas, a Franciscan historian of Guápulo, attributed the paintings on the lower registers of the retable of La Virgen de la Nube to Isabel de Cisneros in an early study of the Santuario de Guápulo published in 1926 (Fig. 16.3).43 Navas’s motivation to credit Cisneros seems to rely mainly on the

40

My emphasis; ibid., 21. For examples, see Valentín (1922) 9, 21; Puig (1933) 34; and Terán (1950) 18, 51. Workshop activity is especially recognized in the completion of the early San Agustín series. 42 Vargas (1960) 189. In addition, Vargas has associated Goríbar with the series of the Articles of the Faith and the Truths of the Christian Doctrine; ibid., 195. 43 Navas (1926) 266. Navas does not refer to Cisneros by name, but rather as “the daughter of Miguel de Santiago.” 41

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Fig. 16.3 Detail of the retable of La Virgen de la Nube. Previously attributed to Isabel de Cisneros and currently attributed to Miguel de Santiago. Late 17th c., Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guápulo, Quito, Ecuador.

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logical composition of the workshop at the time of the commission, as well as on the stylistic similarity between these works and another attributed to Cisneros (Fig. 16.4).44 Nevertheless, Navas’s attribution suggests that Isabel de Cisneros held an outstanding status in her father’s workshop, in complete contradiction with her common ban from the Guápulo cycle. Facing such historical inconsistency, asserting Cisneros’s actual involvement in this very workshop production appears to be a reasonable albeit unusual first step in studying her work. It is in any case a more essential gain to the recognition of her work than any loose attributive effort that, often based on shared and widespread stylistic qualities, cannot but lead to a speculative dead end.

Attributive Waltz Certainly, one of the earliest appreciations of Isabel de Cisneros’s contribution to the artistic scene of her time, paired with an almostcontemporary placement of her within Santiago’s workshop, is to be found in Padre Francisco Javier Antonio’s Vida prodigiosa de la venerable virgen Juana de Jesús de la Tercera Orden de Penitencia de Nuestro Seraphico Padre San Francisco: Que florecio en el monasterio de Santa Clara de Quito, published in Lima in 1756.45 Here, in order to promote the virtues of the tertiary Franciscan, the author briefly evokes in the following terms the miraculous circumstances surrounding the commission of Juana de Jesús’ (1662–1703) posthumous portrait from painter and sculptor Antonio Egas around 1703:

44 Lovato and Valenzuela are considered to have worked mainly in Santiago’s workshop early in his career during the completion of the Saint Augustine cycle; see Navarro (1991) 66–83. See also Navas (1926) 266. Since Navas’ publication, the retable of La Virgen de la Nube has been reattributed—in its entirety—to Miguel de Santiago. However, the retable of San Pedro de Alcántara has now been attributed by the same Museo Franciscano “Fray Antonio Rodríguez, OFM” to Cisneros. 45 Santa Maria (1756). Santa María’s work was based on the account written by Juana de Jesús’s confessor, Dr. Antonio Fernández Sierra. In addition, Vargas cites another early reference to Cisneros in a 1786 discourse presented by Don Nicolás Carrión at the Universidad de Quito. Carrión stresses Cisneros’ artistic activity within the Santiago workshop; Vargas (1944) 154.

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Fig. 16.4 Archangel St. Michael. Previously attributed to Isabel de Cisneros and presently without attribution. Early 18th c., Monastery of San Agustín, Quito, Ecuador.

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After several valiant attempts, his wife, Doña Isabel de Santiago, finally made the portrait, and if not with perfection with some likeness because she had met her so many times in life.46

To Jurado’s contemporary eyes, though, Juana de Jesús “looks incredibly Quiteña with a long nose, a subdued smile, a narrow face, and delicate hands.”47 But for him as well, it is thanks to her apparent intimacy with the defunct model more than to her skills that Isabel de Cisneros could, with some success, bring the saintliness of the religious back to life. Her effort, however, can only be witnessed through its resuscitation, for this very painting, which remains her only securely attributed work, only survived through a secluded copy in the convent of Santa Clara, Quito, where Juana de Jesús was professed (Fig. 16.1).48 As early as it is, Padre Francisco Javier’s account still represents the present state of scholarship on Isabel de Cisneros. Her secure body of work seems to be reduced to a single inaccessible copy and it is hard not to feel some hopelessness in Navarro’s conclusion, when he stated: Many writers have spoken about the art of Isabel de Santiago in a favorable way [although] there is no known work by this woman whom tradition signals as the preferred painter of Miguel de Santiago.49

This latter comment by Navarro is somewhat puzzling, as throughout his career he denies neither the existence of Cisneros, nor her status as a painter. In fact in the same volume, notably, Navarro discusses Cisneros’s portrait of Juana de Jesús, while in other publications he specifically identified and discussed a painting of an archangel located near the old portal of the church of San Agustín in Quito (Fig. 16.4), a work he attributes to Cisneros, and an attribution that served as the basis for Navas’s attribution of the Guápulo retable of La Virgen de la Nube to Isabel de Cisneros.50 46 “Tras algunos intentos y valiéndose finalmente de doña Isabel de Santiago [su mujer . . .] señalada en el arte, quien por las especies que le quedaron de las veces que la había visto, la sacó, sino con perfección, con alguna semejanza;” as quoted by Kennedy (2002b) 119. 47 Jurado Noboa (1995) 62. 48 Navarro (1991) 83. Navarro provides no further information about the origin of the copy. Today, this painting is preserved in the still-cloistered Convent of Santa Clara, within the cell in which Juana de Jesús lived during the seventeenth century. 49 Ibid., 83. It should be noted that this manuscript was written in the 1940s, subsequently published posthumously, and without edition. 50 Navarro (1945) 174. Navarro does not reproduce this work. It is likely, however,

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Navarro’s reluctance to attribute works to Cisneros is not unusual. In fact very rarely have works been attributed to her, and when they have been the method of attribution remains somewhat of a mystery. Two of them, located in the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador, have been identified in the mid-seventies as: The two paintings of Santa Ana con la Niña María and the scene of the Hogar de Nazaret have been attributed to Isabel de Santiago. In both paintings the characteristics of the technique of Miguel de Santiago are noticeable, along with details of a markedly feminine taste.51

There is no need to emphasize the markedly sexist methodology, separating male-inherited skill from unrepressed natural taste, which leads the historian to identify these two works as being the fruit of a woman painter—the only available choice being the daughter of Miguel de Santiago. One can remember, moreover, that Vargas silently rejected any connection between Santa Ana con la Niña María and the domestic scene that, miraculously, came through the only painting initialed by Miguel de Santiago in the series of the Virgin of Guápulo. In any case, such omission might prove to be the best alternative, for the few attributions that have been made to Cisneros, to which one should add the Taller de Nazaret located in the convent of San Diego in Quito, essentially rely on Vargas’s categorization of her talent at painting ‘domestic’ scenes in a feminine fashion. Without contesting these attributions, this body of three domestic scenes credited to her seems to be more of a restriction than a benefit to her identification. Differently, in the light of the diverse patronage demands, considering her possible involvement in the Santuario de Guápulo commission and, at the very least, acknowledging her plain contribution in her father’s workshop, Cisneros’s production can be broadened—even if this production would remain anonymous. As contemporary scholars like Kennedy stress, this anonymity is an intrinsic characteristic of colonial religious art. Departing at this time from this established property of anonymity only leads to unnecessary and confusing assumptions. In 1944, for instance, Vargas attribthat the work to which Navarro referred appears under the title Archangel San Miguel in the 1995 convent museum exhibition catalog. Neither the catalog nor the presentday museum identifies this painting as the work of Cisneros, but rather as an anonymous eighteenth-century work. Convento de San Agustín (1995) 19. 51 Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador (1976) s. n. Vargas’s position as director of this museum as well as his later publication, which included long, unreferenced quotations contained in this earlier publication, make Vargas’s participation in the 1976 publication clear; see Vargas (1978).

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uted to Cisneros a work depicting Saint Anthony, now in the convent of Carmen Alto in Quito. Later in 1972, and without explanation, Vargas reattributed the same work, this time to the painter Antonio Salas, who died almost 150 years after Cisneros.52 Ultimately, it remains difficult to resolve this specific dilemma as styles, techniques, and subject matters are at the same time diffused and mingled in the chronology of Quiteño art. In this very context, in which religious art has been predominantly preserved, one hundred years does not imply, in most cases, drastic changes in what would define, as it does for a specialist of western art, the characteristic features of a given period. Thus, unless any commission, contract, or other facts can be firmly established, any authoritative attempt to shape the relative fluidity of the field of colonial Ecuadorian art, and subsequently any will to attribute a singularized position to a painter named Isabel de Cisneros, would appear to be a fallacy. Then again, there exists an element of truth in what the unstable tradition concerning Ecuadorian colonial art has consolidated throughout time.

The Reality of the Myth In sum, to date and as far as the research conditions permit, no existing work can be securely attributed to Isabel de Cisneros unless one wants to play a dissonant attributive waltz. As far as the facts go, Cisneros’s own last will and testament might be considered, ultimately, as the only first-hand source attesting that she was a painter, and was completing pending commissions during the last moments of her life: To Don Antonio Bera—she wrote—to pay for my said husband’s debt regarding two paintings which were commissioned, and the other works of which he was also commissioned to complete for various other people: [the paintings] will be delivered with my sweat and work, painting them by selling some of my said husband’s estate in order to buy the materials. Likewise I paid 40 pesos to Ignacio de Miranda by painting canvases with said materials.53

52 Vargas (1944) pl. LXVI. In this same work, Vargas attributes to Cisneros a second painting entitled La Virgen del Carmen, also located in the Convent of Carmen Alto, Quito (pl. LXV). Vargas (1972b) 254. 53 Testament of Isabel de Cisneros, ANH/Q , Notaría 4, vol. 65, 1714, pp. 127v–128. “[A] Don Antonio Bera para deuda del dicho mi marido por dos lienzos de obra que estaban a su cargo y las mas hechuras de que estaba a cargo del dicho mi marido

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Based on her relationships with her father and husband and relying, as indicated in her will, on the ties she seemed to have maintained to Goríbar throughout her life, we can locate Cisneros amidst what appears to be a coherent artistic community in colonial Quito, in which sculptors, painters, and architects all appear to gravitate in the same circles, perhaps orchestrated by figures of a few patrons, such as Chica or Herrera. Facing the works themselves, Navarro’s general approach, and his caution in assigning works to a painter of which very little is known, appear to be an appropriate, while disappointing conclusion regarding Isabel de Cisneros’s production. Undoubtedly, breaking the bonds of fiction surrounding Cisneros and her work appears a preliminary task for a better understanding of her individual contribution and to clarify our perception of the workshop practices of seventeenth-century Quito in general. All the uncertainties surrounding Isabel de Cisneros’s life and work, however, would only irritate those scholars for whom history only exists in the accumulation of attested evidence inscribed in a logical sequence and leading to an ultimate truth. As an attempt to reconcile truth and fiction, one might stress, in conclusion, the impact that some of the works produced at the time of Isabel de Cisneros might still have in the cultural history of Ecuador. As Kennedy recently demonstrated, the series of the miracles of the Virgin of Nuestra Señora de Guápulo (as well as her portrait of Juana de Jesús) participates in a process of ‘criollization’ of Christian doctrine by the New World born Spaniards.54 This movement, one must add, appears perfectly aligned with the contemporary Spanish American criollo campaign to assert primary ownership of the New World over peninsular Spaniards. Inevitably, the heroic figures of a few prominent artists, whose works literally represent this cultural shift, have become—throughout both art history and fiction— the symbolic vehicles of their patrons’ ideology. In what is the tradition of Ecuadorian art, Miguel de Santiago stands as one, if not the major, symbol of the perpetuation of this cultural subterranean force. In that particular context the identification and individualization of tocantes a destintas [sic] personas de cumplimiento a sus entregas con mi sudor y trabajo pintándolos vendiendo algunos vienes del dicho mi marido para la compra de los materiales como así mismo pague cuarenta pesos a Ignacio de Miranda pintando lienzos con dichos materiales y con el valor de algunos vienes de dicho mi marido.” 54 For further analysis see Kennedy Troya (2002a) and (2002b).

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Isabel de Cisneros is most likely irrelevant. In this scenario, her work only exists when associated with her father’s name, thereby perpetuating his myth through the name of his daughter. Thus, even though everything about her might turn out to be erroneous, or worse turned into a work of fiction, it is not wrong. For Ecuadorian history seemingly answers back, along with Pareja, that the fiction which is usually held in every soul forms the tradition and activates the authentic functions of man, [and that] the symbol obscuring the truth is able to create a spirit determined to reach concrete conclusions.55

Bibliography Archivo Histórico Curia Metropolitana, Quito (AHCM/Q ) Libro de Bautismos, Sección Sacramentaria (Santa Bárbara), Libro 1, marzo 1645–junio 1649, 170 (María Monica); 181 (Nicolas Fortunato). Libro de Bautismos, Sección Sacramentaria (Santa Bárbara), Libro 2, junio 1694– noviembre 1792, 18 v (Antonio Tomas); 44 (María Thomasa). Libro de Bautismos. Seccion 18, Parroquias (Guápulo), caja 28, c. 1682. Libro de Cofradía de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. Seccion 18, Parroquias (Guápulo), caja 32, from 1682. Inventory of the estate of Maestro José Rodríguez Sansuela, Sección 9, Juicios Civiles, caja 4, expediente 1687-II-31. Inventario general de todas las cosas pertenecientes a la Cofradía de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe . . ., Sección 18, Parroquias (Guápulo), caja 29, c. 1841–1845. Archivo Nacional de Historia, Quito (ANH/Q ) Inventory of the estate of Dr. Joseph Benitez Ramirez de Campos, Notaría 1, Juicios, caja 7, expediente 1717-VI-18. Last Will and Testament of Isabel de Cisneros, Notaría 4, vol. 65, 1714, 127–129v. Inventory of the estate of Don Francisco de Cevallos, Notaría 4, Juicios, caja 8, expediente 1714-XI-13. Inventory of the estate of Don Luis de Araus, Notaría 4, Juicios, Caja 8, expediente 28-I-1715. Convento de San Agustín (1995) Exposición de arte y fe: Quito, 26 de mayo–30 de junio, 1995 (Quito: 1995). Garzón, G. M. (1995) “Situación de los talleres, gremios y artesanos. Quito. Siglo XVIII,” in Artes “académicas” y populares del Ecuador, I Simposio de Historia del Arte, ed. A. Kennedy (Quito/Cuenca: 1995) 12–24. Gauderman, K. (2003) Women’s Lives in Colonial Quito; Gender, Law, and Economy in Spanish America (Austin: 2003). Jurado Noboa, F. (1995) Las Quiteñas (Quito: 1995). Kennedy Troya, A. (1998) “Circuitos artísticos interregionales de Quito a Chile, siglos XVIII y XIX,” Historia (Instituto de Historia, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) 31 (1998) 87–111.

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Pareja Diezcanseco (1952) 8.

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—— (2002a) “Algunas consideraciones sobre el arte barroco en Quito y la ‘interrupción’ ilustrada (siglos XVII y XVIII),” in Arte de la Real Audiencia de Quito, siglos XVII–XIX, ed. A. T. Kennedy (Hondarribia Spain: 2002) 43–65. —— (2002b) “Mujeres en los claustros: Artistas, mecenas y coleccionistas,” in Arte de la Real Audiencia de Quito, siglos XVII–XIX, ed. A. T. Kennedy (Hondarribia Spain: 2002) 109–127. Navarro, J. G. (1929) La escultura en el Ecuador, siglos XVI al XVIII (Madrid: 1929). —— (1945) Artes plásticas ecuatorianas (Mexico City: 1945). —— (1991) La pintura en el Ecuador del XVI al XIX (Bogotá: 1991). Navas, J. de D. (1926) Guápulo y su Santuario. (Quito: 1926). Páez, J. R. (1957) “Contestacion al discurso de ingreso en la Academia Nacional de Historia del Muy Reverando Padre Maestro Fray Jose María Vargas,” in Miguel de Santiago y su pintura (Quito: 1957). Paniagua Pérez, J., and D. Truhan (1997) “La organización gremial: Los contratos de aprendizaje en Cuenca durante el período colonial,” Anales (Revista de la Universidad de Cuenca) 41 (April 1997) 59–70. Pareja Diezcanseco, A. (1952) Vida y leyenda de Miguel de Santiago (Mexico City: 1952). —— (1995) Las tres ratas (Quito: 1995). —— (1999) Breve historia del Ecuador, 2nd ed. (Quito: 1999). Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador (1976) Guía Museo Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño (Quito: 1976). Puig, V. (1933) Un capítulo más sobre Miguel de Santiago (Quito: 1933). Santa Maria, F. X. A. de (1756) Vida prodigiosa de la venerable virgen Juana de Jesús de la Tercera Orden de Penitencia de Nuestro Seraphico Padre San Francisco: Que florecio en el monasterio de Santa Clara de Quito (Lima: 1756). Schwartz, K. (1955) “Some Aspects of the Contemporary Novel of Ecuador,” Hispania 38 (September 1955) 294–298. —— (1959) “Alfredo Pareja y Diez Canseco, Social Novelist,” Hispania 42 (May 1959) 220–228. Terán, E. (1950) Guía explicativa de la Pinacoteca de Cuadros Artísticos y Coloniales del Convento de San Agustín, precidida de las biografías del P. Basilio de Ribera y Miguel de Santiago (Quito: 1950). Valentín Iglesias, P. A. (1922) Miguel de Santiago y sus cuadros de S. Agustín (Quito: 1922). Vargas, J. M. (1944) Arte quiteño colonial (Quito: 1944). —— (1957) Miguel de Santiago y su pintura (Quito: 1957). —— (1960) El arte ecuatoriano (Quito: 1960). —— (1970) Miguel de Santiago, su vida y su obra (Quito: 1970). —— (1972a) Arte religioso ecuatoriano (Quito: 1972). —— (1972b) Patrimonio artístico ecuatoriano, 2nd ed. (Quito: 1972). —— (1978) Museo Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño y el patrimonio artístico (Quito: 1978). —— (1990) Nuestra Señora del Quinche (Quito: 1990). Webster, S. V. (2002a) Arquitectura y empresa en el Quito colonial: José Jaime Ortiz, Alarife Mayor (Quito: 2002). —— (2002b) “Las cofradías y su mecenazgo artístico durante la colonia,” in Arte de la Real Audiencia de Quito, siglos XVII–XIX, ed. A. T. Kennedy (Hondarribia Spain: 2002) 67–85.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

FROM MUJERCILLA TO CONQUISTADORA: ST. TERESA OF ÁVILA’S MISSIONARY IDENTITY IN MEXICAN COLONIAL ART Christopher C. Wilson

By 1622, the year of her canonization, the fame of St. Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) extended throughout the Spanish Empire. Biographies, engravings, miracle-working relics, and reports of her incorrupt body fueled widespread fascination with the Spanish nun who had reformed the Carmelite Order and had authored best-selling texts on prayer and mystical experience. Teresa’s cult flourished in the colonial Americas as editions of her books were carried across the Atlantic, and as nuns and friars of her Order, the Discalced Carmelites, established New World communities. Golden-Age Spanish playwright Lope de Vega celebrated the rapid geographical spread of Teresa’s cult in his drama The Life and Death of St. Teresa of Jesus: In lands, isles and seas, now incense is kindled, temples for you are readied, and altars are erected.1

The reference to temples and altars newly dedicated to the saint is not mere poetic exaggeration, but points to a historical reality: Teresa’s extraordinary rise in popularity coincided with an explosion of ecclesiastical construction in the Spanish colonies. Her image was included in the decoration of many newly erected churches, convents, and monasteries, especially those of her Order. Beyond the Virgin Mary, few other female subjects were so often depicted in Latin American art of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as St. Teresa of Ávila. This paper investigates a key aspect of Teresa’s posthumous reputation, not yet discussed in art historical scholarship, which contributed to her popularity and helped shape the contemporary reception of 1

Quoted in translation in Eire (1995) 393.

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her image: She was regarded as a patron of the Church’s missionary effort. Early modern texts (including Teresa’s own books), highlighting the missionary desires that motivated her work as a religious reformer, fostered perceptions of her as a leader in the Counter-Reformation Church’s battle to rescue souls of those regarded as heretics and infidels. Concentrating on art produced in New Spain, I suggest that this identification underlay her image and contributed to the success of its dissemination. Like other triumphalist colonial representations, such as Santiago trampling the infidel (relief in the retablo mayor of the Parish Church of Tlatelolco) or the Baptism of the Four Lords of Tlaxcala (Cathedral of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, Tlaxcala), Teresa’s iconography helped satisfy the needs of the colonial Church, which propagated images of heroic soldiers in God’s army to assist its vigorous implementation of Catholicism.

The Missionary Inclination of Teresa and Her Order “A woman in this stage of prayer is distressed by the natural hindrance there is to her entering the world, and she has great envy of those who have the freedom to cry out and spread the news abroad about who this great God of hosts is.”2 In this passage from the Interior Castle, as in other places throughout her writings, Teresa expresses a recurrent wish to take on the role of missionary, to join the ranks of friars who sailed to far-away lands for the purpose of ‘winning souls’ to Catholicism. Central to her project of reforming the Carmelite Order was an overriding desire to rescue the souls of two groups, who, in her view, were headed toward eternal damnation: The Protestants in Europe and the unconverted Indians in the New World. In the Way of Perfection Teresa explains that she founded the Convent of St. Joseph in Ávila (inaugurated 1562) with such strict observance of poverty and external austerity because she had heard reports “of the harm being done in France and of the havoc the Lutherans had caused and how much this miserable sect was growing . . . I cried to the Lord and begged Him that I might remedy so much evil. It seemed to me that I would have given a thousand lives to save one

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Teresa of Ávila (1976–85) 2:392.

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soul out of the many that were being lost there.”3 Through unceasing prayer and rigorous observance of the primitive (or unmitigated) Carmelite Rule, she asserts, the nuns of St. Joseph’s could assist the Church in its war against the spread of Protestantism and thereby counteract further loss of souls. Since the small community of women would remain occupied in prayer for priests and defenders of the faith—those on the front lines of the Church’s militant offensive— “we shall be fighting for [God] even though we are very cloistered.”4 Teresa included Native Americans as intended beneficiaries of her project after 1566, the year she was visited at St. Joseph’s by Fray Alonso Maldonado, a Franciscan missionary just returned from Mexico. According to The Book of Her Foundations, he spoke to her of the “many millions of souls that were being lost there [in the colonies] for want of Christian instruction.” Teresa was distraught at hearing this assessment of the Indians’ spiritual state, and frustrated that gender prevented her from joining the missionaries overseas: “I was very envious of those who for love of our Lord were able to be engaged in winning souls, though they might suffer a thousand deaths . . . This is the inclination the Lord has given me.” In the aftermath of the friar’s visit, comforted by what she understood as a promise from Christ that she would ‘see great things,’ Teresa found that she could indeed participate in the colonial missionary effort: Within a year’s time she began extending her reform beyond Ávila, founding houses of nuns and friars in other Spanish cities and towns.7 The prayers and penance of these multiplying communities of austere religious, she believed, would buttress the Church’s labors in the New World as well as in Europe. Though sometimes belittled by misogynist detractors who labeled her a mujercilla, or “silly little woman”—a derogatory epithet applied to women whose spiritual goals were criticized as too ambitious—Teresa had found a formula for shaping her apostolic desires into a form acceptable to the Tridentine Church.8 The saint’s motivating concern for the rescue of souls became familiar to readers in Catholic Europe and Spanish America through circulation of her texts, first in manuscript copies and then in printed 3 4 5 8

Ibid., 2:41. Ibid., 2:49. Ibid., 3:101–102. For a discussion of Teresa as mujercilla, see Weber (1990) 17–41.

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editions. The first edition of Teresa’s writings, printed in Salamanca in 1588 (and again in the following year), contained three of her four major prose works: The Book of Her Life, The Way of Perfection, and The Interior Castle. Subsequent editions came rapidly. Over the next fifty years her works were published at Saragossa (1592), Madrid (1597, 1602, 1615, 1635, 1636), Naples (1604), Brussels (1604, 1610), Valencia (1613 and 1623), and Antwerp (1630). The 1610 Brussels edition was the first to contain The Book of Her Foundations, her chronicle of founding Discalced Carmelite communities throughout Spain. The writings of Mexican nuns, many of whom regarded Teresa as the ideal model for the female religious, affirm that the saint’s books were disseminated in New Spain.9 Subsequent generations of Discalced Carmelites retained the missionary zeal described in the Founding Mother’s books, but with widely divergent interpretations of how such desires should be put into action. Jerónimo Gracián de la Madre de Dios, provincial of the Order from 1581 to 1585, encouraged expansion into missionary territories. In 1582, Discalced Carmelite friars set out from Lisbon, in the presence of King Philip II, for “Guinea, Ethiopia, or whatever other heathen kingdom the Catholic King Don Philip may think well to send them,” each armed “with a small-sized Bible, and a catechism.”10 Critics within the Order complained that such ventures were at odds with its essentially contemplative nature. Gracián responded with his treatise Stimulus for the Propagation of the Faith (Lisbon, 1586), an ardent defense of missionary activity.11 In 1585 Discalced Carmelite friars sailed to Mexico, originally for the purpose of evangelizing the Native American populations, with plans of eventually spreading into California, New Mexico, and the Philippines. These ambitions were frustrated when Gracián’s critics prevailed, and the Mexican Discalced friars found themselves living not within Native American communities in frontier areas, but in houses usually situ9 The theme of Teresa as model for Spanish and colonial Latin American female religious, including Mexico’s most famous nun, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, runs throughout Arenal and Schlau (1989), especially 341–42, 412, and the texts by Mariana de la Encarnación that the authors include on 368–74. 10 From Jerónimo Gracián’s letter of instruction to the Discalced Carmelite missionaries, dated March 19, 1582, quoted in translation in Peers (1954) 73–74. All of the friars in this first group perished in a shipwreck, while those in the second group, on an expedition to the Congo, were captured by pirates. The third party, which sailed from Lisbon on April 10, 1584, successfully reached its African destination. 11 Chorpenning (1993) 11–12.

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ated in or near the Viceroyalty’s cities, beginning with communities founded at Mexico City and Puebla in 1586. Mexican houses of the Order’s friars proliferated rapidly; fifteen were founded between 1589 and 1796.12 In addition to preaching to urban populations in which criollos or Spaniards often comprised the majority, the friars served the Church through prayer and observance of the rule, according to the ideal articulated by Teresa and her collaborator, St. John of the Cross. John would have been satisfied with this historical outcome, since he had warned that exterior missionary activity would carry the Order into regions incompatible with its contemplative spirit, forcing the friars to spend too much time outside the monastery. In his Spiritual Canticle he had written: Let those, then, who are singularly active, who think they can win the world with their preaching and exterior works, observe here that they would profit the Church and please God much more . . . were they to spend at least half of this time with God in prayer.13

Meanwhile in Europe Teresa’s nuns carried the Order to regions where the Catholic Church sought to enlarge and fortify its presence as a defense against the spread of Protestantism. During the first decade of the seventeenth century, two of the nuns most closely associated with Teresa during her lifetime, Ana de Jesús and Ana de San Bartolomé, founded convents in France and the Spanish Netherlands.14 Both women held the conviction that the physical presence of convents filled with groups of praying nuns, living according to the primitive Carmelite rule, would bolster a Church in crisis. Unlike the friars, Spanish Discalced Carmelite nuns did not make the journey across the Atlantic to found houses in the Americas. Instead, convents were started by women already settled in the colonies who had learned of Teresa’s life by reading her books and had felt inspired to follow her example. Such was the case for Mariana de la Encarnación (1571–1657), one of the founders of the Order’s first convent in Mexico City, who wrote that she resolved to become a Discalced Carmelite nun after the pivotal experience of reading the saint’s autobiography.15 The first American convent of the Order’s nuns was founded in Puebla de los Ángeles in 1604, the same year 12 13 14 15

Ramos Medina (1997) 16. John of the Cross (1979) 524. Peers (1954) 116, 118–9; and Arenal and Schlau (1989) 21–27. Arenal and Schlau (1989) 368.

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that the two Anas arrived in Paris to make the first French foundation. Like Teresa’s first convent in Ávila, the one in Puebla was named for St. Joseph (San José). In 1616 a convent was founded in Mexico City, also named for Joseph, although today it is known as St. Teresa the Ancient (Santa Teresa la Antigua), to distinguish it from a second house also established in the capital in 1704, St. Teresa the New (Santa Teresa la Nueva). Guadalajara received a community of nuns (Santa Teresa) in 1694, and Puebla’s second Discalced Carmelite convent, Our Lady of Solitude (Nuestra Señora de la Soledad ), was inaugurated in 1748. In 1803 a convent was founded in Querétaro, called Our Lady of Carmel or Sweet Name of Jesus (El Dulce Nombre de Jesús).16 Settled within colonial cities, nuns and friars of the Order were charged with the task of perpetuating the Teresian charism, which, at its heart, consisted of saving souls through an apostolate of prayer and rigorous observance of the Rule.

The Construction of Teresa as God’s Soldier The missionary attitude, so apparent in Teresa and early members of her reform, resulted in literary portrayals of the saint as a powerful commander in the Church’s campaign for the conversion of souls. Late sixteenth-century hagiographers characterized her as a virile woman, more conquistador than nun, since, as Alison Weber has observed, “the only way to comprehend such virtue in a woman was to reassign her gender.”17 Thus, Fray Luis de León, in his dedicatory letter to the first edition of Teresa’s written works (1588), asserts that it was God’s plan for Teresa to transcend the usual boundaries of femininity: At a time like this, when the devil seems to be triumphing and a multitude of unbelievers follow him and so many nations are obstinate in their heresies . . . [it seems] to have been God’s will that they should be faced, not by a valiant man armed with learning, but by a poor woman who defied the devil and set up her standard against him and openly raised up people to conquer him and spurn him and trample him beneath their feet.18 16 For studies of Discalced Carmelite convents in colonial Mexico, see Ramos Medina (1997); Amerlinck de Corsi and Ramos Medina (1995); Muriel (1995) 377–455; Alberto de la Virgen del Carmen (1968) 537–47; and Ramón Martínez (1963). 17 Weber (1990) 165. 18 Luis de León (1588) 370–71.

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Similarly, Diego de Yepes, in his 1599 biography of Teresa, uses militaristic imagery to describe her assault on the spread of heresy: “God took her up as an instrument to wage war against the heretics, not through sword and spear, but through more mighty and powerful arms, which are those of prayer.” In another passage, Yepes introduces the notion of Teresa as an antidote to Martin Luther: This, too, was God’s plan, that at around the same time the wicked Luther began to plot his lies and deceptions, and to concoct the poison with which he would later kill so many, He should be forming this holy woman, so that she would serve as an antidote to this poison; and so that whatever was taken away from God on one side was gathered and restored on another side by her.20

Yepes points out that Teresa’s preoccupation with rescuing lost souls was global in proportion. Having recounted the effect of Fray Maldonado’s meeting with her, when Teresa heard about the unconverted Indians, and, consequently, founded more houses of the reform, Yepes emphatically states that she “did not limit her desires to the conversion of heretics in France and Germany, but with an apostolic heart and spirit, she dedicated this new and holy reform to the salvation of the entire world, and to the conversion of all infidels.”21 But it was another passage in Yepes’ widely circulated biography that must have resonated most deeply in the Spanish colonies. It can be found in one of the book’s final chapters, in which Yepes recounts some of Teresa’s posthumous apparitions. He writes that on a certain occasion, the saint appeared in the city of Granada to Madre Antonia del Espíritu Santo, one of the earliest nuns of the Teresian reform: She [Teresa] showed the great glory she now enjoyed, and the special favors that had been granted to her as recompense for the zeal with which she had guarded God’s honor while she was living on earth, and for the great pity she had felt for the souls of those heretics and infidels who were heading toward damnation. Since she had dedicated her convents to praying for their conversion, our Lord granted her this reward: That she would be the special patron and advocate for

20 Yepes (1599) 1:9. In her Book for the Hour of Recreation, María de San José also identifies Teresa as God’s antidote to Luther’s poison, pointing out that the saint was born “a little less than three years before the ill-fated Luther declared his apostasy” and that “it is the custom of His Divine Majesty to foresee the remedy for misfortune;” in María de San José (2002) 106. 21 Yepes (1599) 2:19.

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christopher c. wilson this cause in heaven. Thus did God pay her back with many degrees of glory for the work she had carried out while living on earth.22

This passage highlights the perception that Teresa’s mission continued, on an enlarged scale, even after her death—that from her place in heaven she would persevere in the work of converting souls. Such a presentation of Teresa easily took hold in Spanish America where, beginning immediately after the conquest, the primary function of the colonial Church was conversion of the indigenous population. By the end of the sixteenth century, the missionary project had resulted in substantial achievement, though the process was still far from complete. While the Church was well established in central Mexico, with its metropolitan centers of Mexico City and Puebla, there remained Indian populations in provincial areas, particularly the northern territories, in need of evangelization. In the late seventeenth century, the Franciscans addressed this issue by dedicating their attention to inhabitants of the northern frontier. Beginning in 1682 they founded four missionary colleges there, responsible for both the conversion of the Indians and the propagation of the faith among Hispanic and mestizo populations.23 In addition to sheer numbers still requiring evangelization, there was the problem of efficacy of conversions already made. To perceptive clerics, the missionary effort had only been a partial success. There was an increasing awareness that, while Indian populations might respond enthusiastically to Catholicism, they sometimes viewed the new teachings as compatible with their own traditional beliefs. Outward superficial practice of Christianity did not guarantee genuine conversion. Seventeenth and eighteenth-century reports of idolatry triggered anxiety that, among some Indian populations, Christianity and indigenous religions existed as complementary faiths.24 In short, despite the zeal and dedication of the early friars, there was a realization after the first hundred years of Spanish rule that the process of evangelization was an ongoing one. 22

Yepes (1599) 2:221. Madre Antonia’s vision was also reported by Ana de Jesús during the canonization proceedings. See Depositions of the Processes of St. Teresa of Jesus (1969) 100–101. 23 William Wroth (1991) 32. 24 See, for example, the selection from Gonzalo de Balsarobe’s 1656 book, Relación auténtica de las idolotrías, supersticiones, vanas observanciones de los Indios del Obispado de Oaxaca (An Authentic Account of the Idolatries, Superstitions, and Vain Observances of the Indians of the Bishopric of Oaxaca), in Carmichael (1971) 138–47.

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In a land where Christianity was still taking root, the identification of Teresa as a missionary saint endowed her image with particular value and contributed to its widespread dissemination. Through works of art she could be acknowledged as a champion of the colonial Church’s past and current success, and as a patron of what remained to be accomplished. Teresa’s fame was such that, even for those outside the Order, especially audiences of ecclesiastics, her image must have carried these associations. Certainly Discalced Carmelite nuns and friars, living in a colony populated in part by indigenous peoples for whose salvation Teresa had prayed and worked, must have contemplated these issues when viewing her image. Though any representation of Teresa could have evoked reflections on her missionary role, there were certain types of portrayals that, I suggest, best conveyed this message. Images of her rescuing souls from purgatory, for example, proclaimed her supposed ability to bring individuals to salvation.

Rescuer of Imperiled Souls According to the Roman Catholic Church, purgatory is the place, state, or condition where departed souls, who have died in the state of grace but are not entirely free of imperfection, are purified of their sins through punishment before entering heaven. While there is no theological consensus on the nature and intensity of the punishment, the Latin Church has generally maintained that fire is imposed on souls in purgatory, though some, such as St. Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510), have asserted that the soul in purgatory experiences a desire for God that is an ardent fire, more devouring and painful than any earthly flames. The Church holds that works of piety practiced by the faithful on earth, such as prayer, penance, indulgences, almsgiving, fasting, and sacrifices, can aid souls in purgatory. Prayers can be directed for the benefit of an individual soul, with the expectation that God, upon hearing such petitions, will accelerate its departure from purgatory and final entry into heaven. The Council of Trent reemphasized the doctrine in 1563: Since the Catholic Church, instructed by the Holy Ghost, has [taught] that there is a purgatory, and that the souls there detained are aided by the suffrages of the faithful and chiefly by the acceptable sacrifice of the altar, the holy council commands the bishops that they strive diligently to the end that the sound doctrine of purgatory, transmitted by the

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christopher c. wilson Fathers and sacred councils, be believed and maintained by the faithful of Christ, and be everywhere taught and preached.25

The Carmelites (both Calced and Discalced) have a strong devotional concern with the release of souls from purgatory, rooted in the Virgin’s 1251 apparition to St. Simon Stock, prior general of the Order, in which, according to hagiographic tradition, she presented him with the Carmelite scapular and promised that those wearing it would be preserved from hell. This concession expanded to a claim that the Virgin would liberate scapular wearers from purgatory on the first Saturday after death. Known as the Sabbatine Privilege, the indulgence was supposedly ratified by John XXII in 1322, but was widely disputed by other Orders hostile to the Carmelites. In 1577, Gregory XIII issued the bull Ut laudes that permitted the Carmelites to continue to preach the belief in Mary’s intercession and special protection on their behalf on the Saturday after death.26 In art of early modern Europe and Spanish America, Teresa sometimes supplants the Virgin Mary as rescuer of souls in purgatory. A canvas painted by Luis Juárez in the first half of the seventeenth century, probably originally displayed on the high altar of a Discalced Carmelite church but now in the Viceregal Museum at Tepotzotlán, shows Teresa kneeling within an interior setting, absorbed in reading from her breviary (Fig. 17.1).27 Behind her, contained within a window-like frame, is a view into purgatory. An angel reaches down to pull a naked figure out of the flames; he apparently has been freed on account of Teresa’s devotional exercises. Another burning figure, at the lower-right edge of the scene, implores Teresa for salvation. In the left portion of the canvas, within what seems to be an adjoining room, is a temporary funerary monument, fitted with candlesticks and a skull-and-crossbones emblem. The composition implies that a recently deceased individual, whose death has been commemorated within the convent, is the same soul who finds release from purgatory as a result of Teresa’s prayers.

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Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (1941) 214. Rohrbach (1966) 73–4; María de San José (2002) 72 n. 97. 27 Alarcón Cedillo and García de Toxqui (1992–96) 1:158; Ruiz Gomar (1987) 212–14 attributes the painting to Juárez and suggests that it might have once formed part of an altarpiece in the Church of El Carmen in Mexico City, where two more of that artist’s Teresian-themed paintings remain. It entered the collection at Tepotzotlán in 1970, having previously been housed in the Museo Nacional de Historia. 26

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Fig. 17.1 Luis Juárez, St. Teresa Praying for the Release of a Soul from Purgatory. First half 17th c., Museo Nacional del Virreinato, Tepotzotlán, Mexico.

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The theme of the work echoes Teresa’s own declarations that God freed souls from purgatory in response to her requests: It often happens that our Lord draws souls way from serious sin . . . because of my beseeching Him. The Lord has already granted me so many favors by freeing souls from purgatory and doing other noteworthy things that I would tire myself and whoever reads this if I mentioned them all. He has granted me much more in regard to the health of souls than He has in regard to the health of bodies.28

During the canonization proceedings, the Discalced Carmelite nun María Bautista testified that Teresa once declared that she had obtained the release of her (María Bautista’s) recently deceased father from purgatory. This same nun also testified about “another religious whom the Mother [Teresa] saw depart from purgatory, and she [the deceased nun] said to her: ‘I owe my salvation to you.’”29 According to a 1628 statement by Francisco de Quevedo, it was commonly believed among the Discalced Carmelites that Teresa had obtained the release of King Philip II from purgatory within eight days of his death, even though, as Quevedo put it, one would expect “that he deserved a long stay in purgatory.”30 While there are many examples recorded by Teresa and others who knew her of her intercession for souls from purgatory, Juárez’s composition probably alludes to a specific instance mentioned in the saint’s autobiography. News reached her that a former provincial of the Carmelite Order (probably Gregorio Fernández) had died. Fearing for his salvation, she immediately went ‘with much anxiety’ to an oratory and prayed that his soul be freed from purgatory. While beseeching the Lord for this, according to her account, she saw the person emerge “from the depths of the earth at my right side” and ascend to heaven.31 Juárez’s painting draws upon this episode, although the liberated soul is shown emerging at Teresa’s left, rather than right, side as is stated in the text. The funerary monument in the background suggests that an individual of great importance to the convent community has passed away, in this case a former provincial. But by showing Teresa reading from a book of prayer, Juárez has conflated the above account with another analogous circumstance recounted by the saint: 28 29 30 31

Teresa of Ávila (1976–85) 1:269. Depositions (1969) 132–33. Quoted in translation in Eire (1995) 371. Teresa of Ávila (1976–85) 1:265.

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I shall only mention what happened to me on the night of All Souls: While I was in the oratory after having recited a nocturn and while saying some very devotional prayers that come at the end, a devil appeared on the book so that I couldn’t finish the prayer. I blessed myself, and he went away. When I began again to recite the prayers, he returned. I believe it was three times I began, and until I threw holy water at him I couldn’t finish. I saw that some souls left purgatory at that instant; little must have been lacking to their freedom, and I wondered if he had aimed at preventing this.32

Members of the Discalced Carmelite Order, for whom Juárez’s painting was most likely produced, would have understood this composition as pointing to more than just a specific instance, or conflation of instances, of Teresa’s intercession on behalf of souls in purgatory. They would have viewed it, rather, as an emblematic representation of the Founding Mother’s celebrated missionary identity. Teresa’s ability to rescue souls from purgatory was characteristic of a larger, more general role that was assigned to her—as a bringer of souls to salvation, whether they be sinners in the flames of purgatory, lost heretics in France, or unconverted Indians in the New World. As Diego de Yepes had put it, Teresa was committed to “the salvation of the entire world.” When looking at Juárez’s canvas, the viewer could first witness, then invoke, and finally, emulate, Teresa’s determined efforts to rescue souls through an apostolate of prayer. The theme of Teresa interceding for souls in purgatory was not without precedent in European art, though it was treated infrequently. Rubens took up the subject in a canvas painted during the 1630s for the church of the Discalced Carmelite friars in Antwerp. Teresa is shown kneeling before Christ, on a plateau above a group of nude figures engulfed in flames. As the saint makes gestures of supplication, a small angel lifts a male figure out of the pool of fire. A print after Rubens’ painting, by Schelte à Bolswert, bears an inscription identifying the rescued figure as Bernardino de Mendoza, one of the persons mentioned in Teresa’s Book of Her Foundations.33 There the saint recounts her revelation that Mendoza was liberated from purgatory because of his donation of a house for Teresa’s new foundation at Valladolid.34 32

Ibid., 1:206. Göttler (1999); and Vlieghe (1972–73) 2:166–68. Rubens’s painting, formerly in the Discalced Carmelite friars’ church in Antwerp, is now in the collection of that city’s Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten. Other European examples of the subject are discussed in Gutiérrez Rueda (1964) 106. 34 Teresa of Ávila (1976–85) 3:146–7. 33

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In Mexico there are several other representations of this theme by colonial artists in addition to Juárez’s painting. In the Church of San Antonio (today the parish church of Cuencamé, Durango) is a large canvas signed by Juan Manuel Hernández, an artist known only by this single work. Style and iconography suggest that it dates from the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century. A hieratic figure of Teresa stands frontally beneath the dove of the Holy Spirit, supporting a book and doctor’s biretta in her left hand and reaching her right arm down toward a group of souls in the flames of purgatory, as if to rescue them from torment.35 This iconography derives from images of the Virgin of Carmen or the Virgin of the Rosary, which show Mary assisting souls in the flames of purgatory by extending toward them a devotional device—a scapular or rosary—to serve as a lifeline that enables their transfer to heaven. In the painting in Cuencamé, Teresa takes the place of the rescuing Virgin, in accordance with her similar ability to aid in souls’ salvation. An eighteenth-century canvas in Tepotzotlán’s Museo Nacional del Virreinato, by an unidentified artist, shows Teresa participating with the Virgin, St. Joseph, and the Christ child in saving souls from the flames.36 The grandest, most elaborate representation of Teresa’s role in bringing souls to salvation is a canvas signed by Cristóbal de Villalpando in 1708, in the Church of Santiago in Tuxpan, Michoacán (Fig. 17.2). The painting belongs to a genre of New Hispanic portrayals that show a panoramic view into heaven, with groups of saints interceding on behalf of souls suffering in purgatory. According to Francisco de la Maza, Villalpando’s is the largest such painting surviving from colonial Mexico.37 It bears an inscription identifying the donors as Don Pedro Alonso Dávalos-Bracamonte and his wife, Doña Francisca de Orozco Rivadeneyra Castilla y Orendaín.38 At the bottom of the painting are souls in purgatory, in various poses of agony and repentance. Just above them is St. Michael the Archangel,

35

Vargas Lugo and Guadalupe Victoria (1994) 424. Alarcón Cedillo, García de Toxqui, et al. (1992–96) 2:130. Another eighteenthcentury work with a similar composition, showing the Virgin of Carmen accompanied by St. Joseph and St. Teresa rescuing souls from purgatory, exists in the Museo del Carmen, San Ángel; see Ángeles and Fernández (1987) 47. 37 De La Maza (1964) 223–24. The painting measures 725 × 525 cm. See also P. Ángeles, Catalogue 109, in Gutiérrez Haces, et al. (1997) 322–25. 38 ”A devoción del Capitán don Pedro Alonso de Abalos y de doña Francisca de Orosco su Muger.” 36

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Fig. 17.2 Cristóbal de Villalpando, St. Teresa Interceding for Souls in Purgatory. 1708, Church of Santiago, Tuxpan, Michoacán, Mexico.

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wings outspread, facing the viewer. In the center of the composition’s heavenly zone is the figure of Teresa, painted on a larger scale than the figures around her, looking up toward the Holy Trinity as she pleads for the salvation of the burning souls, to whom she gestures with one hand. Two of her attributes, a book and a doctor’s biretta, rest next to her. She is surrounded by smaller figures of saints, among them the twelve apostles, St. Peter Nolasco, St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Anthony of Padua, who echo her requests. Completing this assemblage of the heavenly court are the figures of St. John the Baptist and St. Nicholas Tolentino (a saint also recognized as a patron of souls in purgatory) at the upper right, and the Virgin and St. Joseph at the left. In spite of the crowded composition, Teresa is the clear focus of the scene; just as in Yepes’ book she is portrayed as the special patron and advocate of the missionary cause in heaven, so in this painting she is the central figure in the work of winning souls to God. The iconography of Teresa rescuing souls from purgatory, as illustrated by the above examples, must have had different resonances for different audiences, depending upon the painting’s location (whether in a parish church or one associated with the Order) and the viewer’s level of knowledge of the saint’s writings and cult. Upon viewing her image, Teresian devotees would have selectively contemplated what was important for them: For laypeople, such as Villalpando’s donors, the subject offered comforting promise for their own speedy departure from purgatory through Teresa’s intercession; for religious with a vocation for saving souls, such as Discalced Carmelite nuns or friars, the same subject pointed to Teresa’s perceived centrality in the work of extending God’s grace to imperiled souls, including the ethnically diverse New World population.

Charitable Penance The notion of Teresa as missionary is also implicit in another work by Villalpando with very different iconography, showing the saint performing penance (Fig. 17.3). This canvas is one in a series of five paintings with which the artist decorated the sacristy of the Discalced Carmelite monastery in San Ángel.39 Paintings on the lateral walls

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Gutiérrez Haces, et al. (1997) 361–62; and De La Maza (1964) 177–79.

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Fig. 17.3 Cristóbal de Villalpando, St. Teresa in Penitence. Late 17th-early 18th c., Sacristy of former Discalced Carmelite Monastery (today Museo de El Carmen), San Ángel, Mexico.

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depict the suffering Christ (Christ as the Man of Sorrows, Agony in the Garden). In the center of the main wall is Christ Bound to the Column, flanked by canvases showing Teresa and John of the Cross in penitence. Taken together, the series of paintings associates the redemptive suffering of Christ with the self-imposed suffering practiced by Christ-imitators, Teresa and John. The painting of Teresa shows her kneeling in front of an altar preparing to flagellate herself with a scourge consisting of a bundle of three cords with metal keys at their ends. From her mouth emerge the words from Psalm 89 that often appear in engraved and painted representations of the saint: “Misericordias tuas domini in aeternum cantabo” (I will sing the mercies of the Lord forever). In the background of the scene, a nun, standing in the doorway of an adjoining room, studies the Founding Mother’s penitential behavior. Villalpando probably took inspiration for his composition from one of a series of twenty-five engravings of Teresa’s life issued by Adriaen Collaert and Cornelis Galle in Antwerp in 1613 (Fig. 17.4). In the Flemish print, Teresa kneels before an altar adorned with a painting of the Ecce Homo. Surrounded by a variety of penitential instruments, she uses a scourge of cords and keys, as in the Mexican painting, to punish her flesh. Devils flee in terror, repelled by the saint’s self-mortifying behavior. For viewers familiar with Teresa’s life (such as the friars at San Ángel), the painting would have communicated more than just a scene of Teresa in the midst of one of her devotional exercises; rather, it conveys a fundamental point about the saint’s mission. According to Teresa’s way of thinking, the primary aim of bodily mortifications was not individual spiritual progress, but salvation of souls. She instituted such harsh physical rigors at St. Joseph’s, she says, because of reports of the spread of Protestantism in France. Fasts and physical discipline were a means by which she and her nuns could be useful to the missionary Church. The Bull of Teresa’s canonization underlines the missionary purpose of her penance: She showed her constant charity for her neighbor in many ways, chiefly by her ardent desire for the salvation of souls. She often wept over the darkness of infidels and heretics, not only continually praying God to enlighten them, but offering for them fasts, disciplines and other bodily mortifications.40 40

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Fig. 17.4 Adriaen Collaert and Cornelis Galle, St. Teresa in Penitence. 1613, The Carmelitana Collection of Whitefriars Hall, Washington, D.C.

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The corresponding image of St. John of the Cross, Teresa’s early friar, confessor, and collaborator, emphasizes that the purposeful use of mortification extended into the male branch of the Discalced Carmelites as well—an important point, since these paintings were created for an audience of friars. Villalpando’s paintings functioned by evoking an idea that lies at the heart of the Order: By imitating the sufferings of Christ through penance, as did Teresa and John, the Discalced Carmelite becomes associated in Christ’s plan of redemption, working for the salvation of the entire world. Teresa is presented as both the model and patron of this missionary endeavor. Finally, a late eighteenth-century canvas by Andrés López, undoubtedly created for a Discalced Carmelite setting since it belongs to a series of paintings depicting saints of the Order, is an encyclopedic portrayal of themes central to Teresa’s life and reform (Fig. 17.5). Inscriptions identify her as the mother of the Carmelite reform and provide the titles of her books. The half-length figure of Teresa looks toward Christ, who presents her with a nail of his Crucifixion, a token of her mystical marriage. On Teresa’s left is an angel holding an arrow in reference to her vision of the piercing of her heart. Below is a skeletal personification of death, bearing a book inscribed with a favorite motto of Teresa’s: “Either suffer or die.” Most interesting is the figure standing near Teresa’s downstretched right arm, a Native American in feathered costume. This figure’s presence communicates two ideas: He is an allegorical personification of the Americas, alluding to the spread of the Discalced Carmelite Order to the New World. He also refers to the missionary orientation of Teresa’s reform, which was shaped, in large part, by her anxiety about the spiritual state of Indians. “For what grieves me is to see so many souls lost, and I am very anxious about those Indians,” she once wrote to her brother Lorenzo in Ecuador; “may the Lord give them light.”41 Although her apostolic aspirations were thwarted on the one hand by the restrictions imposed by a male-dominated society, they ultimately found expression, with far-reaching effects, through her religious reform. As it turned out, Teresa’s sense of mission elevated her to a position far beyond that of a mujercilla confined within the walls of a tiny Spanish convent. Instead, she became a heavenly patron of the missionary Church, her image among the most favored in Spanish America. 41

Written from Toledo on January 17, 1570; in Teresa of Ávila (2001) 85.

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Fig. 17.5 Andrés López, Emblematic Portrayal of St. Teresa of Ávila. Second half 18th c.

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INDEX

abstraction 104, 167 Academy of San Carlos 64, 128, 271 Acolman, San Agustín 113, 297, 305–306, 310–315 adultery 351, 353, 355 agriculture 87, 91, 213 allegory 4, 15, 16, 22, 24, 33, 41, 51, 52, 58, 59, 61, 62, 67, 101, 133, 136, 192, 208, 24–249, 251–256, 258, 262, 265, 266, 274, 275 Altamirano, Ignacio 66 altars 103, 302, 303 altarscreens (see retablos) amas (see wet nurses) Amazon women 13 Andreasi, Blessed Osanna 104, 108, 109 animals 31, 38, 48, 94, 175, 230, 249 Araus, Luis de, will of Arrieta, José Agustín 208–216 architecture 17, 268, 271, 283–284, 306–367 artists, see native artists, women artists Augustinians 99, 112, 113, 114, 289, 296, 305–307, 310–311 audiencia Aztecs (also Nahuas, Mexicas) 15, 54, 67, 115–117, 166, 124, 189, 194, 199, 200, 213, 221–241, 362 beatas 116, 333 beauty 66, 151, 157, 159–161, 163, 176, 276 biombos 16, 182, 265–286 birds (see also eagle and feathers) 31, 38, 61, 67, 73, 78, 90, 93, 94, 95, 210, 249, 253 birth, see childbirth blood (also see color) 44, 362–383 body 190, 203, 346, 353, 362 female 14–15, 16, 57, 58, 61–62, 66–67, 79, 125–46, 221–242, 247–264 king’s 54–59 breast 91, 125, 133, 140, 213, 216, 2232, 225, 228–232, 234–239, 247–264, 271 breast feeding (see breast) brooms (see straw, sweeping)

burial practice, also see death 84, 90, 93, 94, 95, 151, 158, 163–164, 166, 168, 170–172, 177, 331, 36, 361, 362 buttocks 157, 159, 166, 174, 175, 177 cabildo 21, 29 Cabrera, Miguel cacique 9–10, 260 calabash 174, 175, 177 calendar 230, 344–356 cannibalism 192 Carmelites 339, 419–439 Casa del Deán 21–44 Casa de Montejo 367–391, 368, 373, 374, 389, 390 casta (caste) paintings 127, 195–196, 197, 202 Catholic (Counter) Reformation 40, 128, 255, 420 censorship 30, 49, 70, 129, 132 chariot 26, 27 Charles II 280 Charles IV, statue of 48–51, 53, 64 Charles V 28, 370, 375, 377, 378, 385, chastity (also see virginity, virtue) 33–34, 132, 136–137, 188, 190, 222, 325 Chica Cevallos, Don Antonio de la 405, 406, 416 chicha (also see drinking) 78, 79 childbirth 63, 82, 130, 164, 176, 214, 230–232, 234, 235, 260, 344, 345, 353, 354, 355, 358, 360, 361 children (also see childbirth) 131, 132, 140, 141, 164, 168, 176, 188, 189, 215, 230, 232, 247, 254, 259, 353, 395, 398 Chimalhuacan Chalco, Mexico, cloister of 300–301, 311, 314 china poblana 208, 214–215, 216 Chosen Women 88–89, 94 Christ child, image of 75, 84, 85, 89, 90, 91, 92, 108, 109, 133, 135, 186, 247, 255, 256, 257, 262, 263, 332, 336, 338, 339, 432 Cihuacóatl 117, 229, 234, 235, 236

444

index

Cihuateteo 355, 361 Cisneros, Isabel de 17, 395–417 class 188–191, 195–197, 200, 201, 203, 204, 211, 216, 282, 285, 321, 328, 332, 337, 340, 369, 383, 400, 405 cloister 14, 16, 99–118, 289–315 cloister piers 14, 99–118, 309 clothing (also see textiles) 55, 61, 64, 69, 77, 81, 83, 84, 86–90, 93, 95, 191, 104, 125,127,128, 131, 133, 138, 149, 151, 158, 165, 167, 190, 191, 192, 193, 195, 221–242, 253, 256, 259, 262, 321, 325, 331, 333, 334, 338, 339, 350, 359, 362, 363 coats of arms (insignia; also see heraldry, emblems) 7, 29, 87, 88, 93, 193, 253, 367, 373, 369, 370, 372–373, 375, 377, 384, 385 Coatlicue 234, 235, 237, 358 Cobo, Bernabé 89 Codices 344–364 Azcatitlán 225, 226, 227, 227–228 Borbónicus 351, 360 Borgia 230, 232, 236 Florentine 182, 228, 229, 232, 235, 238, 353 Ixtlilxóchitl 235 Magliabechiano 235, 237, 346, 349, 354, 356, 359 Mendoza 7 Osuna 240 Primeros memoriales 228, 229, 232, 235 Rios 359 Telleriano-Remensis 236, 347, 350, 352, 254, 358, 359, Tudela 235, 237, 345, 348, 349, 354, 361 Vaticanus 230, 232, 350 Colonna, Francesco 27 color (also see skin color) 94, 158, 164, 167, 188, 195, 196, 197, 214, 227, 229, 268, 344, 350, 354, 358, 359 columns, Solomonic 37 Conceptionists 325–333 Concha, Andrés de la 9 Concordia 184, 199 conquistadors 123, 138 convents of nuns 132, 133, 137, 321–340, 419–439 corn (maize; also see food) 78 164–165, 174–177, 208, 210, 212–13, 214, 216, 348, 359, 360

Corpus Christi 28, 29 n. 29, 33, 40, 83, 295 Correa, Juan 182 Cortés, Hernán 5, 7, 14, 54, 67, 68, 182–204, 278 Council of Trent 37, 40, 321, 427 Counter Reformation (see Catholic Reformation) Covarrubias, Miguel 149, 155–156, 166, 167 Coya 73, 76, 84, 86–88, 95 crescent moon, see moon criollismo (also see criollo) 15, 185, 416 criollo (creole) 11, 15, 16, 55, 58, 68, 69, 128, 137, 140, 142, 181, 188, 200, 201, 321, 328, 330, 333, 335, 337, 340, 423 crown (also see headdress) 64, 86, 74, 90, 91, 93, 251, 253, 256, 276, 326, 330, 332, 336, 338, 339 cuadros de costumbres (also see still lifes) 208, 209, 216 Cuauhtinchán, Puebla, cloister murals of 291–293, 297, 314 cupid 31–32, 276 Cuzco, Peru 73, 76, 77–83, 86, 89–91, 259 Cuzco School 73, 77, 82, 84 dancer (see dancing) dancing 149–151, 165, 166, 167–168, 170, 174, 177, 197 Dante 26 death (also see burial practice) 22, 34, 41, 125, 138, 222, 229, 230, 234, 295, 321, 333, 336, 338, 353, 361, 362, 37, 428, 430, 438 deities, female (see Pachamama, Mama Ocllo, Moon deity, Coya, Mama Quilla, Ochipantli) 6, 14, 76, 115–118 221–242, 344–364 Dessalines, J. J. 138, 139, 140, 141 Díaz del Castillo, Bernal 182, 184, 194, 378 Disease 353, 360 dismemberment 125, 138, 139, 140, 141, 146, 361, 362, 371 domestic space 128, 196, 207, 208–209, 214, 215, 282–285, 321, 336, 361, 363 Dominicans 99–118, 128, 289, 300, 311, 334 Doña Marina 182, 184, 194, 203, 204

index drinking 15, 78, 79, 170, 173, 177, 208–216 duality 115, 117 Durán, Fray Diego 165, 181, 236, 238, 242, 348, 350, 356, 363 Dutch art influences 208, 210, 211, 212 eagle 7, 61, 67, 230, 253 early modern period, defined 11–12 earth symbolism 13, 79, 159, 173, 175, 213, 234, 235, 236, 311–312, 313 Eden (see Paradise) Egas Venegas de Córdoba, Antonio 395, 398, 402, 405, 406, 411 emblems (also see heraldry, coats of arms) 25, 30, 136, 184, 193, 199, 266–268, 271–285, 428 embrace 184, 194 enclosed garden 312–313 engravings (see prints) Epazoyucan, Hidalgo, cloister murals of 293–296, 294, 302, 314 epidemics, see disease Erauso, Catalina de 190–191 escudos de monjas (nuns’ badges) 321–336, 322, 323, 324, 340 estofado 84, 86 Extremadura, Spain 5 evangelization 419–439 Eve 10, 186, 194, 216, 222, 258, 289, 299, 312, 313, 352 family 62, 127, 131, 195–196, 210, 283, 337, 353, 369, 380, 407 feathers 53, 58, 61, 67, 73, 78, 90, 91, 93, 94, 95, 96, 223, 249, 253, 438 feminist methodology 2–5 Ferdinand VII 51, 53, 58 fertility symbolism 78, 88, 154, 164–165, 173–174, 175, 176, 199, 213, 214, 216, 222, 234, 236, 241, 312, 349 festivals (also feast days, fiestas) 28, 29, 94, 214, 344, 345, 348–364 Ficino, Marsilio 32 filth 234, 241, 344–369 Fiore, Joachim of flowers 24, 55, 73, 78, 81, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, 268, 329, 332, 336, 338, 339, 359, 363, 370 folding screens (see biombos) food (see also calabash, corn, fruits) 15, 44, 61, 78, 164, 174, 199,

445

208–216, 247, 249, 258, 259, 261, 262, 293 Foppens, Francisco (also see Theatro moral ) 266, 268, 271, 274–286 Franciscans 5, 99, 112, 114, 116, 289, 300, 303, 311, 315, 327, 350, 411, 426 French Revolution 49–50, 61, 64 frescoes (see murals) fruits (also see food) 197, 210, 311, 312, 313, 352 Gaceta de México 138 gender bias 12–13, 15, 114, 127, 151–177, 375, 414, 421, 424 gender roles 8, 33, 62, 114, 115, 116, 127, 130–132, 133, 137–138, 140, 146, 160, 170, 173, 176, 185, 189–192, 214–216, 232, 267, 283–285, 344–364, 375, 380 Gendrop, Paul 156 gifting 185, 186, 188, 194, 199 glyph 223, 225 Goríbar, Nicolás Javier 395, 396, 400, 401, 403, 405, 409, 16 Goya 157 Grito de Dolores (see Hidalgo y Costilla, Miguel) Guayman Poma de Ayala 88 Haiti 125, 138, 140–141 headdresses (see also crowns) 64, 81, 83, 84, 88, 90, 93, 87, 158, 193, 235, 253, 338, 339, 344–350, 351, 352, 353, 354, 375 hematite (see mirrors) heraldry (also see emblems, coats of arms, Casa de Montejo) 193, 367, 372, 384–385 heredity 369, 376–377, 381, 382, 385–387 Herrera, Beatriz Álvarez de 17, 369–391 Hidalgo y Costilla, Miguel 53–54, 56, 59, 61, 63, 68, 69 history painting 64, 181–182, 186, 196, 265 homosexuality (also see gender roles, gender bias) 191–192, 353 huaca (see wak "a) Huejotzingo, Puebla, cloister murals of 293, 297–305, 298, 311, 314, 315, 362 Huitzilopochtli 165, 235, 358

index

446

iconography 7, 8, 26, 30, 32, 36, 54, 64, 76, 78, 86, 88, 90, 136, 151, 163, 165, 175, 184, 186, 192, 196, 203, 223, 229, 230, 234, 253, 255, 265, 274, 281, 285, 330, 332, 333, 350, 369, 376, 420, 432 identity 185, 188, 190, 192, 196, 200, 201, 202, 204, 328, 332, 337, 339, 369, 379, 388, 391 idolatry 83–84, 174, 343, 421, 426 illegitimacy imágen de vestir 83 independence from Spain: Mexico 51, 57, 59, 61; Peru 247, 254, 262 indios/as (naturales) 13, 102, 253, 259 indulgences 128, 130, 428 Inés de la Cruz, Sor Juana infanticide Inkas 73–97, 253, 259 Inquisition 30, 49, 70, 114, 128, 129, 137, 141, 142–146, 240 insignia (also see coat of arms) 325 Italian art influences 32, 255, 293 Iturbide, Agustín 58, 61, 62 jade 24, 172, 173, 354 Jeronymites 314, 331 Jesuits 129, 333 jewelry (also see metals, jade) 24, 73, 78, 81, 84, 87, 88, 89, 90, 149, 158, 168, 171, 172–173, 182, 194, 234, 237, 259, 325–336 Juárez, Benito 64, 69 Juárez, Luis 428–431, 429 Jurado Noboa, Fernando Juno 22, 38, 39 Kubler, George

157, 158, 167, 306

lady 151–157, 161, 16, 176 Landa, Diego de 379 Las Casas, Bartolomé de 383 Laws of the Indies 129 limpieza de sangre 195, 337, 382 Lienzo de Tlaxcala 182 Lomas, Manuel de, will of 405 López, Andrés 438 López Cancelada, Juan 138, 141 López de Arteaga, Sebastián 186 López López, Manuel 126, 138, 139 Latin Doctors of the Church maguey (see also pulque) 213 Mama Ocllo 73, 82, 86, 91

Mama Quilla 73, 76, 81, 82 Manso y Zuniga, Francisco 321–325 Marianna of Austria 280, 285 marriage 10, 15, 185, 186–188, 199, 203, 204, 210, 212, 239–240, 259, 260, 284, 335, 336, 337, 372, 377, 378–380, 386, 395, 398, 438 Maya 175, 359, 371–391 Mena, Luis de 197, 198 Mendoza, Viceroy Antonio de 41, 379 menstruation (also see blood) Mérida, Yucatán 367, 370, 372, 376, 387 mestizaje 10, 212, 210, 337 mestizos 188, 195, 199, 203, 259, 398, 400 metals (also see jewelry) 27, 30, 49, 53, 78, 81, 83, 84, 86, 88, 91, 93, 273, 325, 327, 329, 332, 338, 339, 375, 405 Mexicas (see Aztecs) Mexico City 48, 49, 53, 54, 56, 64, 70, 128, 149, 188, 195, 197, 200, 230, 234, 282, 303, 367, 315, 334, 335, 348, 376, 379, 382, 43, 424, 426 Midwives (also see childbirth) 344, 351, 358, 359, 361 miniatures 327, n. 5, 328, 330, n. 13 miscegenation 188, 194, 196, 197, 200, 202 missions 9, 99–118, 289–315, 284–315 mirror of the prince 279–282 mirrors (also hematite) 171–173, 177 Moctezuma 15, 67, 182–204, 234, 362 monjas coronadas (crowned nuns) 10–11, 321, 335–340 Monroy, Petronilo 65, 65 moon (also see Moon deity) 6, 7, 78, 81–82, 86, 87, 96 Moon deity (also see moon) 73, 77, 81–82, 86, 87, 96 Montejo 370, 376, 377, 386, 387, 388 Montejo, Francisco de 367–391 Montejo, Francisco de, El Mozo (the Younger) 370, 376, 386–388 Morelos, José María 57 motherhood (also see breast feeding, childbirth, children) 127, 131, 151, 164, 222, 228, 234, 241, 380 mountains 14, 77, 78, 79, 81, 90, 174, 15, 176, 177

index murals 21, 24–45, 76, 81, 82, 83, 88, 95, 99–118, 289–315 mummies 83, 86, 89, 90, 95 mythological and classical subjects 21–44, 129, 274, 285, 370 Nahuas (see Aztecs) Napoleon 51, 57 nationalism (also see crilloismo) 15, 17, 47–71, 130, 185, 200, 201, 203, 210, 215, 247, 382, 401 native women, influence on art 101–118 native artists 21, 22, 26, 81, 83, 88, 95, 103, 109, 223–242, 253, 343–364 negotiation 15, 19, 109–112, 204, 241, 283, 351 Neoclassicism 208, 212, 268, 271 Neo-Platonism 32 Nino, Luis 84, 85 nobility 9, 76–77, 79, 82, 86, 87–89, 90–93, 94–96, 173, 177, 178, 189, 193, 197, 201, 232, 234, 239, 253, 37, 338, 369, 372, 375, 376–377, 379, 382–385, 388 nudity 127, 151, 157, 158, 163, 192, 212, 216, 221, 222, 228, 237–242, 249, 251, 253, 271, 302, 431 nuns 10–11, 16, 115, 127, 131–137, 146, 321–340, 398, 403, 411, 413, 419–439 Ñusta 74, 84, 87, 88 Oaxaca 9, 21 Oaxtepec, Morelos 14, 99–118 Ochpaniztli 344–364, 345, 346, 347, 348, 357 ollín 169, 173 Olmos, Fray Andrés de 24, 41–44, 240 Otero, Mariano 47, 63 Pachamama 76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 86, 91, 96 Paéz, José de 331 Paradise 36, 37, 118, 289–315 Pareja Diezcanseco, Alfredo Passion of Christ 27, 103–104, 118, 136, 243, 295, 302, 307, 436, 438 patronage 4, 48, 127, 176, 189, 321, 367, 385, 397, 403, 404, 414, 416, 432 Paz y Miño, Juana de Jesús 398

447

peninsulars ( gachupines) 140, 188, 196, 201, 416 Petrarch 25–31, 32–34, 36–37 phallus 194, 238 Pisarro, Francisco 14, 73 Plan of Iguala 58 Plateresque 307, 370 Plaza, Tomás de la (see also Casa del Deán) 21–22, 34, 37, 44 pregnancy, see childbirth portraiture (also see monjas coronadas) 4, 10, 11, 127, 132–133, 136, 137, 139, 141, 193, 335–340, 398, 411, 413, 416 power 16, 35, 101, 116, 118, 125, 189, 195, 201, 203, 204, 223, 240, 242, 369–391 prints 7, 15, 22, 224, 30, 31, 37, 40, 125–146, 186, 192, 208, 211, 238, 291, 419, 431, 436; violence against 141–146 procession (also pilgrimage) 27, 28, 29, 34, 43, 79, 81, 83, 113 n. 16, 118, 290, 295, 301, 302, 303, 305, 307, 309, 315, 337 profession, religious 332, 335–339 prostitution 351, 353 Puebla, Mexico 21, 24, 208, 211, 237, 334, 335, 423, 424, 426 pulque (see also drinking, maguey) 173, 208, 212, 213, 21, 216 purgatory 427–434 purification 346–364, 382 Quito, Ecuador

395–417

race 185, 191, 192, 194, 203, 204, 210, 259, 337 rape 14, 138, 140, 141 refectory 109 Relación geográfica 117 Renaissance 76, 103, 104, 109, 222, 249, 350, 370 retablos 8–9, 11, 14, 103, 113 n. 16, 188, 291, 302, 303, 315, 329, 407, 409, 413, 420 Ripa, Cesare 136 Riva Palacio, Vicente 67 Rivera, Diego 149, 203, 204 Rococo 268 royalty (see nobility) Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 49, 69, 70 Rubens, Peter Paul 38, 40, 431 Ruíz de Alarcón, Hernando

448

index

sacrifice (also see self-mortification) 348, 355, 358, 361, 434–438 Sahagún, Bernardino de (also see Florentine Codex, Primeros memorials) 229, 232, 240, 348, 350, 353, 355, 358, 360, 362 saints (also see individual saints) 9, 11, 14, 99–118, 130, 256–258, 309, 313, 329, 331, 332, 338, 404, 419–439 St. Agnes of Montepulciano 111 n. 13 St. Ann 332, 414 St. Anthony 415 St. Augustine 43, 112, 308, 310, 311, 403 St. Barbara 332 St. Catherine of Alexandria 9, 10, 105, 111 n. 13, 327, 404 St. Catherine of Genoa 427 St. Catherine of Siena 9, 10, 111 n. 13, 113 St. Dominic 110 n. 13, 256 St. Francis 110 n. 13, 112, 257, 332, 434 St. Gertrudis 256, 257 St. John of the Cross 423, 436, 438 St. Lucy 111 n. 13, 113 St. Mary Magdalene 10, 111 n. 13, 258, 404 St. Mary of Egypt 10 St. Paul 105, 112, 313 St. Peter 103, 107, 112, 313 St. Rose of Lima 111 n. 13, 256 St. Teresa of Avila 17, 332, 334, 419–439, 429, 433, 435, 437, 439 St. Thomas Aquinas 111 n. 13, 114, 117, 297, 298 Santiago, Isabel de (see Isabel de Cisneros) Santiago, Miguel de 395–416, 408 Scapular 326, 338, 339, 428, 432 scourge (also see self-mortification) 132–137, 436 sculpture (also also Tlatilco figurines, Casa de Montejo, Charles IV, statue of ) 6, 48, 49, 50, 51, 53, 64, 77, 83, 84, 91, 230, 237, 321, 336–391, 400, 404, 406 self-mortification (also see scourge) 132–136, 355, 358, 436–438 serpent 7, 67, 94, 172, 225, 234, 235, 237, 359 sexism in scholarship (see also gender bias) 151–177, 414

sexist language (see gender bias, sexism in scholarship) sexuality (see also gender roles) 8, 10, 36, 62, 66, 115–116, 131, 136, 163, 165, 188, 215, 212, 222, 235, 236, 238–240, 251, 260, 283, 284, 285, 344, 345, 351–353, 360, 363 shaman 165, 168, 169, 170, 171–173, 177, 344, 351, 359 Sibyls 22, 24, 28, 42, 43 Siguënza y Góngora, Carlos de 200, 201 skeleton (also skull) 151, 163, 169, 170, 171, 172, 232, 234, 237, 295 skin color (also see color) 195, 197–198, 201, 202, 203, 210, 247, 254, 258, 400 slaves 121–128, 138, 141, 259, 401 snake (see serpent) Spanish art influences 76, 82, 88, 91, 208, 211, 212, 328, 336 speech scroll 24, 238 still life painting 208, 209, 210, 216 Stradanus, Johannes ( Jan van der Straet) 38, 130, 192, 249, 250 straw (also see sweeping) 355, 356, 358, 363 Suárez de Peredo, Patricio 51, 52 sun 34, 36, 73, 81, 83, 86, 87, 94, 169, 173 sweeping (also see straw) 29, 344–348, 350, 360–362 syncretism, defined 76 Theatro moral (also see Foppens) 266, 268, 271–286 Teresa de Mier, Fray Severando 49 textiles (also see clothing) 30, 36, 37, 38, 83, 84, 86, 88, 89–91, 93–96, 258, 262 Tira de Tepechpan 223, 224, 225, 227, 228, 241 Titian (Tiziano Vecelli) 32, 36 Tlahuica women 102, 112, 117 Tlatilco figurines 149–177, 150, 152, 153 Tlazolteotl 234, 235, 344 Tonantzín 7, 165 Torquemada, Juan de 352 tortoise shell 326, 327, 329, 330 n. 15, 331, 332 Tovar Calendar 356, 357 tumi knife 84, 86 tzitzimime 234, 237 Triumphs 22, 25–44

index Vaillant, George C. 155–156, 159 Veen, Otto van (also see Foppens, Theatro moral ) 38, 266, 267, 268, 271, 279–285 Vega, El Inga Garcilaso de la Velázquez, Diego 211, 330 Venus 32, 154, 156, 157, 352 Vespucci, Amerigo 251 viceregal, defined 1 n. 1, 12 Villalpando, Cristóbal 432–436, 433, 435 violence (see also dismemberment, war, weapons, self-mortification, prints) 14, 84 125, 126, 131, 137–138, 140, 141, 142, 146, 174, 195, 228, 229, 271, 283, 362 Virgin Mary 5, 8, 16, 22, 36, 42, 73, 77, 79, 84, 87, 88, 93, 95, 96, 113 n. 16, 115, 130, 142, 186, 196, 222, 28, 290, 289–315, 26, 332, 338, 407, 419, 428, 434 of Malaga 86 of the Annunciation 291, 292, 293, 297–308, 309, 310, 314, 315, 332 of the Apocalypse 7, 332, 339, 340 of the Assumption 81 of the Candlestick 78, 82, 91, 92, 95 of Guadalupe (Extremadura, Spain) 5, 8, 314 of Guadalupe (Mexico) 6, 8, 51, 53–57, 61, 62, 63, 70, 128–129, 130, 142–145, 144, 165, 197, 198, 201, 213, 330, 332, 406 of Guápulo 397, 403, 406, 407, 409, 414, 416 de Los Remedios 5–6, 54–55, 130 of the Pilgrims 81 of the Rosary 128, 432, 428 of the Rosary of Pomata 75, 78, 82, 89–90 of Sorrows 404 Adoration 309 Assumption of the Virgin 81 Coronation of the Virgin 295–296, 329, 331, 333 Death of the Virgin 293–296, 294, 302

449

Ecclesia 22, 35, 36, 37–38, 40, 42, 44 Immaculate Conception 5, 11, 29, 78, 81, 82, 83, 247, 298, 301–302, 303–304, 315, 325, 327, 330 Marriage of the Virgin 186, 187 Pastoral Virgin 78 Queen of Heaven 11, 22, 35, 38, 40, 42, 43, 82, 83, 84, 313, 333 Virgin Militant 6, 54 Virgin as Paradise or cloister 289–315 Virgin Spinning 78, 88, 89 Virgin with the Mountain of Potosiama 79, 80 Virgo Lactans 247, 255, 257, 262, 263 Visitation 309 virginity (see also chastity, virtue) 188, 190, 191, 222, 249, 313 virtue (see also chastity, virginity) 131, 219, 267, 269–285, 274, 276–280, 338 wak’a 82, 83, 84, 86 war 6, 11, 96, 184, 190, 223, 225, 238–239, 349, 358, 363 weapons (also see tumi knife, violence) 61, 84–86, 137, 138, 139, 193, 199, 249, 253, 271, 274, 344, 350, 361 weaving (also see textiles) 344, 350, 352 wet nurses 247, 254, 258–262 widows 377, 380 witches 114 women artists 395–417 womanhood (see gender roles) woodcuts (see prints) Xochimilca women 102, 112, 117 Yucatán 364–391 Yanhuitlán, Oaxaca 9 Yautepec, Morelos 112–113 Yepes, Diego de Zacatenco Zumárraga, Juan de 33, 51, 55, 240

THE ATLANTIC WORLD ISSN 1570–0542

1. Postma, J. & V. Enthoven (eds.). Riches from Atlantic Commerce. Dutch Transatlantic Trade and Shipping, 1585-1817. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12562 0 2. Curto, J.C. Enslaving Spirits. The Portuguese-Brazilian Alcohol Trade at Luanda and its Hinterland, c. 1550-1830. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13175 2 3. Jacobs, J. New Netherland. A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America. 2004. ISBN 90 04 12906 5 4. Goodfriend, J.D. (ed.). Revisiting New Netherland. Perspectives on Early Dutch America. 2005. ISBN 90 04 14507 9 5. Macinnes, A.I. & A.H. Williamson (eds.). Shaping the Stuart World, 16031714. The Atlantic Connection. 2006. ISBN 90 04 14711 X 6. Haggerty, S. The British-Atlantic Trading Community, 1760-1810. Men, Women, and the Distribution of Goods. 2006. ISBN 90 04 15018 8 7. Kleijwegt, M. (ed.). The Faces of Freedom. The Manumission and Emancipation of Slaves in Old World and New World Slavery. 2006. ISBN 90 04 15082 X 8. Emmer, P.C., O. Pétré-Grenouilleau & J. Roitman (eds.). A Deus ex Machina Revisited. Atlantic Colonial Trade and European Economic Development. 2006. ISBN 90 04 15102 8 9. Fur, G. Colonialism in the Margins. Cultural Encounters in New Sweden and Lapland. 2006. ISBN-10: 90 04 15316 0, ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15316 5 10. Kellen Kee McIntyre & Richard E. Phillips (eds.). Woman and Art in Early Modern Latin America. 2007. ISBN-10: 90 04 15392 6, ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15392 9