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Notes on Early Murals in Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2019

Martin S. Soria
Martin S. Soria*
Affiliation:
Michigan State University
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Extract

Sixteenth-Century mural painting in Mexican monasteries constitutes the richest body of frescoes of that period anywhere in the Hispanic world. I shall attempt to suggest broad dates, agreeing with those proposed by George Kubler. A tentative list is given, arranged by religious orders and states. It is slightly more complete than previous lists. The themes represented are enlarged by a few classical subjects. Finally, a discussion of the sources suggests frequent dependence on European models.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in the Renaissance , Volume 6 , 1959 , pp. 236 - 242
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1959

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References

1 Mr. and Mrs. Pál Kelemen read the manuscript and made helpful suggestions. The pioneer work is Toussaint, Manuel, La pintura en México durante el sigh XVI (Mexico, 1936)Google Scholar. Fundamental for dating Mexican convents is Kubler, George, Mexican Architecture of the Sixteenth Century (New Haven, 1948)Google Scholar.

2 Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century frescoes seen occasionally in cloister courts as well as refectories of Spanish and Portuguese monasteries suggest that such murals were once frequent there.

3 Research for this paper was carried out at the Mexican monasteries and the Directión de Monumentos Coloniales in Mexico City in 1947 and 1951, and in the main European print rooms in London, Paris, Brussels, Antwerp, and the Vatican in 1948 and 1955-1957.

4 Enciso, J., Archivo español de arte XI (1935), 69–70 Google Scholar; Gariel, A. Carrillo y, La técnica de la pintura de Nueva España (Mexico, 1946), pp. 50–54, 67-73Google Scholar. The medium (fresco a secco oh lime) looks often like true fresco because copious sizing makes the colors look transparent. The lime was polished like marble. The preservation of the frescoes was favored accidentally by bats whose dung greased the surface.

5 Kubler, pp. 366-367.

6 Jiménez Moreno, W. and Mateos Higuera, S., El códice de Yanhuitlán (Mexico, 1940), pls. VIII, XIV, XVI, XIXGoogle Scholar.

7 Kubler, pp. 363, 377. See Soria, and Kubler, , Art and Architecture in Spain and Portugal and their American Dominions 1500-1800 (London, 1959)Google Scholar.

8 Kubler, p. 365, showed that the date 1530 is incorrect and suggested for Tepeapulco and Cholula a date c. 1580.

9 See Kubler, pp. 450-535, for the dates of building activities at all mendicant sites.

10 These paintings at Epazoyucan are in oil.

11 For Actopan, see Enciso, loc. cit.

12 Testera is the head wall facing one as one walks counterclockwise around the cloister. The paintings are arranged in niches next to the corner. In Portugal, during the first half of the sixteenth century, similar Passion scenes were often carved in low relief, as at Santa Cruz in Coimbra.

13 Kubler, pp. 378 ff., discusses the typography.

14 See Martin Soria, S., La pintura del sigh XVI en Sudamérica (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Instituto de arte americano, 1956)Google Scholar, chap. 1, for a joining of Christian and Greek mythological themes in sixteenth-century frescoes in Tunja, Colombia.

15 See Hanfmann, George M. A., ‘Socrates and Christ’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology LX (1951), 215, 223Google Scholar, and note 99.

16 de Cisneros, Fray L., Historia de el principio y origen, progresos, uenida a México y milagros de la Santa Imagen de Na Sa de los Remedies (Mexico, 1621)Google Scholar.

17 See, however, Juan Gerson's paintings at Tecamachalco, 1562 (Kubler, p. 373).

18 So rightly Enciso, p. 70. Weismann, Elizabeth W., Mexico in Sculpture (Cambridge, Mass., 1950), p. 197 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, gives reference to Motolinia, Las Casas, Mendieta, and Torquemada, all of the sixteenth century. Kubler, p. 373, believes that ‘iconographical types, figural arrangement and peculiarities of style differ widely in Mexico from known European work'. The table in the text may partly dispel these doubts.

19 For the opposite suggestion, see Kubler, p. 377, who puts much emphasis on the Flos sanctorum.

20 See Wagner, H. R., Nueva bibliografía Mexicana del sigh XV (Mexico, 1946)Google Scholar.

21 See Toussaint, M., Proceso y denuncias contra Simon Pereyns en la Inquisición de México (Mexico, 1938)Google Scholar, Suplemento al N°. 2 de Anales del Instituto de Inuestigaciones Estéticas).