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Treasured arts from Latin America
USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), March, 2007
Passions. The Spanish and Portuguese colonization of the Americas occurred just at the moment when Europe was suffering a massive crisis of faith. Cortes first entered Mexico in 1519, only two years after Martin Luther posted his 95 theses in Wittenberg, Germany, igniting the Protestant Reformation, an event that would divide Europe forever and considerably limit the powers of the Roman Catholic Church. In response, Rome enacted its own Counter Reformation by the middle of the century, with particularly strong implications for the arts. Newly simplified and accessible imagery henceforth would be used to picture the essential narratives of Christ's life, including the Passion (his final days on Earth), as well as the lives of the saints throughout Catholic Europe and America. In Latin America, a taste for intense drama and the sometimes particularly vivid and jarring elements of religious narrative provoked many of the works of art on display in the exhibition.
The Madonna. The Virgin Mary was venerated throughout Catholic Europe from early Christian times, and devotion to her has continued unabated in Latin America. In colonial art, she often appears in narrative paintings about her life and the life and Passion of her son, Jesus Christ. However, she also is shown in paintings and sculptures as intercessor and co-redemptress--that is, as an avenue through which prayers might more efficaciously reach God, and as playing an active role in the promised redemption of the souls of the faithful. Paintings of the Virgin Mary sometimes represent Catholic dogma, showing her as the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, but many actually are paintings of statues. Special devotions to the Blessed Virgin often are bound to a specific place. For instance, Spaniards in the Americas wanted paintings of revered sculptures at Vlavanera or in the Cathedral of Toledo back home. In the Americas, new devotions arose, such as the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico and the Virgin of Copacabana in South America, and paintings of those cult images became desired around the globe. The depictions of these special sculptures often show the Virgin Mary--even if the wood sculpture itself actually is fully complete, polychromed, and gilded--as "dressed statues," wearing elaborate dresses and jewels provided by her devotees.
18th century. Many urban centers in the Americas had reached a level of sophistication and wealth that, in many ways, substantially was ahead of the economic and social well-being of the Iberian Peninsula and much of Europe. Spain particularly depended on the mining resources in Mexico and at Potosi in the Viceroyalty of Peru (in modern Bolivia), while Portugal relied heavily on the discovery of gold in Brazil that made King John V the richest man in the world. The natural wealth of Latin America had become the foundation of the world economy. The "Creoles"--a class of newly empowered bourgeoisie in the European sense but with more social mobility--came into their own as patrons and supporters of the arts, often of a newly secular type and manner. As in the English colonies in North America, this new middle-class affluence eventually would lead to anti-European resolutions and desires for self-rule. The evidence of this "enlightened" culture reverberated throughout all of Latin America.
COPYRIGHT 2007 Society for the Advancement of Education
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning
