The Eighteenth Century: Repeat or Die, An Artistic Culmination

San Luis Potosí, San Luis Potosí, El Carmen, Portata de los ArcángelesReferring to the extravagantly ornate Portada de los Arcángeles (1787-1792) in the church of El Carmen, San Luis Potosí, Colonial Mexican historian John Collis wrote that, upon its completion, “nothing remained except repetition or death”. This curiously dramatic comment suggests the visionary heights to which colonial architecture had ascended in the second half of eighteenth-century Mexico. To the writer, the sophisticated splendor of this particular church portal represented Baroque’s zenith, its most ecstatic New World exclamation, leaving no further room for human creativity and emotional escalation. One could at best repeat its greatness, if not die fulfilled by it.

A New Dynasty for a New Century

With the passing of Charles II (1661-1700), the dawning of the eighteenth century saw a regime change in Spain. This last of Spain’s Habsburg kings was mentally challenged, at the time referred to as the Bewitched. Unsurprisingly, he died childless. As France outmaneuvered England and Holland for legitimacy to Spain’s throne, a youthful and energetic Philip V (1700-1746) represented the first of the Spanish Bourbon kings. The so-called War of the Spanish Succession formally ended in 1712 with the Treaty of Utrecht, shaping Europe’s map for the next hundred years.

Philip’s son Ferdinand VI (1746-1759) was succeeded by his eldest half-brother Charles III (1759-1788). A progressive King who embraced the Enlightenment, Charles supported the reformist policies of the influential judge and royal academician Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos (1744-1811) in his efforts to stimulate manufacturing and modernize Spain. The arts were very much fostered with the ascendance of one of Spanish history’s greatest painters, Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828), simply known as Goya. While asserting the Crown’s authority over the Catholic Church, Spain also decentralized its administrative control over the colonies.

“The tendency of the Bourbons to decentralize the territorial administration of their American empire was doubtless due in general to an increasing appreciation in Spain of the geographical conditions and difficulties involved, accompanied by a rapid development of the science of cartography, and by an enhanced interest in mathematics and the physical sciences.” (Haring, C.H. The Spanish Empire in America, Oxford University Press, New York, 1947, p. 100)

Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes, La Guadalupe, lateral portal, central figure, St. John NepomukUnfortunately, Charles’ III son, the IV (1788-1808), betrayed his father’s ideals and under his rule abetted much malfeasance. He pursued a retrograde policy of conservative despotism until his forced abdication in 1808 after a mob uprising in Aranguez, outside of Madrid. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) then intervened, installing his brother Joseph (1768-1844) to the Spanish throne. Stripped of its Boubon dynasty and passed over by the Industrial Revolution, Spain failed in its bid for modernity. In the decades to come it would cede nearly all of its American territories.

“Again this is not the first or the last time that a vast empire, overextended, unaware of its many flaws, went surely towards its doom but actually created out of the corruption of its deterioration the ferment necessary to achieve the heights of creativity”. Fuentes, Carlos. The Buried Mirror: Reflections on Spain and the New World, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston and New York, 1999, p. 169)

Used to describe Spain of the late seventeen-hundreds, Fuentes’ words might well encompass its Mexican progeny. Working overtime to furnish Spain with the vast wealth it so desperately required to cover its ever-growing national debt, Mexico pumped out literal mountains of silver so that its mother country might squander the proceeds on reckless military campaigns and ill-managed rule. As a debased Spain stumbled into ruination, its misguided Mexican child unwittingly meandered towards its own national identity with an artistic ardor whose most elaborate expression is the great ecclesiastic architecture of the eighteenth century.

"In New Spain the Baroque found fertile ground in which to flourish with an even greater richness than in Spain itself. Equaling Spain's religiosity, in New Spain it was perhaps more idealist and naïve, and comprised the only social language". (personal translation Vargaslugo, Elisa. México Barroco, vida y arte, Salvat Editores, Grolier Editores, Querétaro, 1993, págs. 9-10)

This vast building campaign represented a massive collaborative output, often funded by large scale mining operations. When one travels through colonial Mexico today, most of what one sees actually dates from the second half of the seventeen hundreds. Itinerant workshops produced staggering quantities of resplendent altarpieces,

Mexico, D.F., Museo Franz Meyer, folding screen, The Conquest of Mexico, backsideprofessional architects remodeled and expanded complexes dating from the previous two centuries, new cathedrals were erected and ordained in the northern territories, and luxuriant private residences were built to house the holders of newfound wealth. Mexico City of the eighteenth century was no doubt a wonder to behold, as Paris in the nineteenth, or New York in the twentieth.

A Radical New Style

Infusing architecture by mid-century was an irresistibly fresh signature style that propelled façade and altar building to epochal heights. Known as the Churrigueresque, it was tenuously at best attributed to the Churriguera family of Catalonia, Spain, and particularly to Benito de Churriguera (1665-1725), while in fact it was the inspiration of Andalusian architects Lorenzo Rodríguez (1704-1774) and Francisco Hurtado (1669-1725). Characterized by lavish ornamentation, intricate carving and spellbinding detail, the style bears an appropriately onomatopoeic name.

México, D.F., Catedral Metropolitana de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, churrigueresque Altar of the Kings By 1725 the Spanish architect Jerónimo de Balbás (circa 1680–1748) had largely finished his grandiose Altar de los Reyes for Mexico City’s Metropolitan Cathedral; in 1743 Francisco Martínez (circa 1692–1757/8) completed its gilding. This sculptural marvel ]became the model for future Baroque Mexican altarpieces, and introduced the estípite as the singular outstanding architectural order of the century. A non-structural, ornamental pilaster tapering downward in the form of an inverted obelisk and usually capped by an unconventional capital, the estípite became so ubiquitously recognizable and so closely associated with eighteenth century Mexican Churrigueresque that the style it spawned is also referred to as Estípite Baroque.

Just as the Altar de los Reyes engendered Churrigueresque retablo building, the estípite was first implemented in Mexico to grace the exterior of a building when, between 1749 and 1759, Lorenzo Rodríguez designed and oversaw the building of the South and East façades of Mexico City’s Sagrario, the chapel which served as the parish church to the adjoining cathedral. In fact, Rodríguez so popularized the style that a number of other similarly opulent façades, such as those at nearby La Santísima Trinidad (D.F.) and San Francisco Javier in Tepotzotlán (México state), were erroneously thought to have also been by him.

Both the Altar de los Reyes and the Sagrario’s façades (especially its more conspicuous South facing one) precipitated the diffusion of Estípite Baroque throughout the country’s urban centers. Often this exterior-to-interior, façade-retablo relationship was effectively applied at the same church, each design reaffirming the other in a dynamic rapport with neither subordinated and both participatory in achieving a sustained hallowed experience for the devotee, from the moment eyes were laid on the church’s exterior to the time the parishioner reached its sanctuary.

Along with the capital city’s Sagrario Metropolitano four other large-scale ecclesiastic foundations of archetypal, Churrigueresque status should be cited: the aforementioned San Francisco Javier in Tepoztotlán (México), Nuestra Señora de Ocotlán in the state capital city of Tlaxcala, Santa Prisca in Taxco (Guerrero), and San Cayetano in the hilltop community of La Valenciana (Guanajuato). Each is easily accessible and displays magnificent, monumental façades and retablos, all in an overall wonderful state of preservation.

A Jesuit Stronghold

Tepotzotlán, México, San Francisco Javier, churrigueresque façadeArriving in Mexico well after the first three mendicant orders (1572), in 1580 the Society of Jesus was granted the community of Tepotzotlán, just North of Mexico City, where they first built an Indian parish church. A century later, a large monetary gift by the powerful Jesuit Medina family allowed for the start of the building of the impressive complex known today. Dedicated in 1682 to St. Francis Xavier, Jesuit co-founder and famed missionary, it was not completed until the mid seventeen-hundreds. In three tiers, the façade is a dignified if somewhat restrained Churrigueresque tour-de-force. Its mixtilinear choir loft window enriches the surrounding estípites and sculpture niches. The abundant foliage which adorns the estípites and occupies the resultant intercolumniation is highly refined and serves to enliven the space, as does the mildly undulating cornice separating the second and third stories.

Overall, the façade and its single tower are balanced, modular and proportioned. In the search for origins to his theory of a 3:4:5 triangular ratio in Mexican building models, John Moffitt relates the symmetry of St. Francis Xavier’s façade to that of the great Cordoban mosque’s Puerta de Al-Hakam II of centuries earlier. In his The Islamic Design Module in Latin America: Proportionality and the Techniques of Neo-Mudéjar Architecture Moffitt proposes an Andalusian-American association between mathematically generated Islamic patterning and Christian façade and retablo building.

Awaiting the visitor within St. Francis Xavier is an awesome array of Churrigueresque retablos. The three which fill the apse, whose contiguity make for an allover auriferous splendor, were designed by Miguel Cabrera (1695-1768), foremost Mexican painter of the time, and crafted by master sculptor by Higinio de Chávez. Predictably, the central retablo is dedicated to St. Francis Javier, while the left and right ones are consecrated to the Jesuit saints SS Luis Gonzaga and Stanilaus Kostka, respectively. Their date of completion is 1755, a year before that of the formidable transept altarpieces, and three before that of the elegant nave retablos.

Incredibly, the Jesuits and their congregation were only to savor the radiant totally of these altars for about nine years. Shortly after Tepoztotlán was fully completed, in 1767 King Charles III of Spain (1759-1788) followed the footsteps of Portugal in 1759 and France in 1764 in acting against the Society of Jesus. As part of his national campaign of secular reform, Charles expelled the Jesuits from Spain, Mexico and all other Spanish dominions. With their priestcraft and political influence circumscribed to Italy and their stronghold on education broken, a near two hundred year building campaign in New Spain came to an end.

“Since the first loyalty of the Jesuits was not to their sovereign but to the Pope, they had always stood exposed to the charge of being bad citizens; and for long now the Society had been incurring a growing odium throughout Christendom, not merely in circles receptive to the liberal doctrines emanating from France but in the eyes of secular authority everywhere and of the religious orders themselves, on the general ground of an insidious and intolerant striving for power far removed from the ends of true religion”. (Atkinson, William C. A History of Spain and Portugal, Penguin Books, Inc., Baltimore, 1960, pps. 237-8)

Our Lady of Loreto in Mexico

Within the vast complex at Tepoztotlán is the Santa Casa de Loreto, built between 1669 and 1680 by the local inhabitants and those of nearby townships. All had been inspired by the enthusiastic insistence of the Italian Jesuit priest Giovanni Battista Zappa, responsible for introducing the cult of Nuestra Señora de Loreto to Mexico. The first shrine dedicated to Our Lady of Loreto (whose dimensional layout Father Zappa reproduced at Tepoztotlán) is located on Italy’s Adriatic coast near the city of Ancona, capital of the Marches state. The Italian temple venerates the house which Catholic devotion claims to be the very home of Mary in Nazareth, site of the Annunciation and the Incarnation, rescued from the Holy Land shortly after the expulsion in 1291 by the Muslims of the last of the Christian Crusader holdouts in Acre (current-day Israel).

“Written legend recounts that in 1294 angels transported intact from Nazareth to Dalmatia the stone house where the Virgin Mary had received the Angel Gabriel. When the Dalmatians failed to revere the miraculously transported dwelling and its carved Cedar-of Lebanon Madonna, Our Lady ordered the angelic movers to take the house to the Adriatic coast of Italy not far from Ancona”. (Lucas S.J., Thomas M. Virtual Vessels: Mystical Signs: Contemplating Mary’s Images in the Jesuit Tradition, Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 35/5, St. Louis, November, 2003, p. 17)

The current chapel, which is thought to have replaced the original Santa Casa circa 1730, includes another of Mexico’s precious eighteenth century treasures, namely its camarín de la Virgen. Built as a boudoir or chamber for the Incarnation of Mary and her sacred raiment, a camarín is found only in churches where an image of such miraculous powers is present.

Tepotzotlán, México, San Francisco Javier, camarín de la Virgin, vault lantern
These ceremonial dressing rooms for the vesturing of the image of the Virgin, located directly behind the high altar, were becoming increasingly popular in Colonial Mexico. The high arching, telescopic effect of the lantern over the harmonious octagonal flour-plan is a particularly striking feature of Tepoztotlán’s camarín.

“The moorish-style vaulting of the cupola, from which rises a five-story lantern (the dove representing the Holy Ghost floating at the top), is thronged with cherubs peering down from clouds, through which shine sun, moon and stars. All is effortlessly sustained by four archangels, who seem poised for heavenward leaps.” (Collis, John, and Jones, David M. Mexico Blue Book, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1997, p. 315)

The funding of the camarín’s construction at San Francisco Javier came from Manuel Tomás de la Canal (1701-1749) and María de Hervas y Flores (1710-1749), a couple from San Miguel de Allende (Guanajuato. In 1736 the two gave additional financial support for the building of San Miguel’s own Santa Casa de Loreto, accessed through the transept of the Oratorian church of San Felipe Neri, which also accommodates a camarín. They do not, however, appear to have been involved in the financing in the nearby sanctuary of Jesús Nazareno in Atotonilco, whose Capilla del Rosario houses is own delightful, if diminutive, camarín de la Virgen.

A Baroque Jewel in Rural Guanajuato

The remarkable complex at Atotonilco, in fact, was built at the inspiration of the priest Luis Felipe Neri de Alfano (1707-1776), who had graduated from the Real y Pontificio Seminario in Mexico City before joining the Oratorian congregation of San Felipe Neri in San Miguel de Allende. On his trips back and forth to the close by town of Dolores Hidalgo (Guanajuato), father Alfano would stop, rest, and pray at the village of Atotonilco, just 14 kilometers North of San Miguel. It was there, under the shade of a mesquite tree that Christ of the Via Crucis appeared to him in a dream and implored him to construct a church for him on that very spot.

Guanajuato, Sanctuario de Jesús Nazareno, Capilla del Calvario, Crucifixion with John the Evangelist, The Three Marys, mounted Roman soldier & penitent thief DismasFounded in 1740 but not completed until much later in the century, the sanctuary is as unique in its design as opulent in its decorations. Six chapels and additional chambers open off a single nave with no less than seven sequential vaults, culminating in the domed Camarín de los Apóstoles (or Camarín de la Gloria (1740-48) as it was called by father Alfano himself) behind a large, Neoclassical altar. The glory of God is the subject of the tall, frescoed cupola. Mary, queen of the Apostles, disciples and a vast angelic hierarchy make up the celestial Church in a swirling, upward effect of Baroque movement and light.

Upon entering the church’s main portal, to the left is the Capilla del Santo Sepulco, behind which resides the Capilla del Calvario, followed by the Capilla de Loreto, de la Soledad and del Santísimo. Off the right-hand side of the nave is the Capilla de Belén and, just before the sacristy, the Capilla de la Virgen del Rosario, whose vault displays frescos of the Italian city of Loreto, as well as the celebrated Christian naval victory over the Ottomans at the Battle of Lepanto. Its altar consists of 16 little paintings in gilded frames behind Venetian glass which fit between, above, and below two sets of slender estípites and surround an encased Virgin of the Rosary. The small camarín lies directly behind the retablo.

Over a thirty year period, nave walls, and vaults were covered in rich frescos of the life of Christ by native artist Miguel Antonio Martínez de Pocasangre, who likely also painted the wood panels of the inner doors to the main portal. Imaginative yet didactic in his style, de Pocasangre also painted both the Capilla del Rosario and the vaults of the five wide arched portería at the church of San Salvador de los Afligidos in the pueblo of El Llanito on the outskirts of Dolores Hidalgo.

A Hilltop Shrine

Another choice camarín is that behind the high altar of the sanctuary of Nuestra Señora de Ocotlán in Tlaxcala. The cupola 's total overlay of richly polychromed and gilded stucco, deeply and exuberantly carved, transform this private room into an orchestra of form and color, rivaling the Popular Baroque interiors of Santa María Tonantzintla and Santa Isabel Tepetzala, both of contemporary execution and located in nearby Puebla state. Writing about Ocotlán’s camarín , Pal Kelemen observed:

“On the ceiling, within a ring of gold, are represented Mary and the Apostles at the Pentecost, and poised above their heads against a background of bright blue is the Holy Ghost. Many of the colors have a metallic luster, which lends unusual brilliance to the scene. The Indian artist Francisco Miguel is said to have spent more than twenty years in the execution of this lavish composition, probably around mid-eighteenth century.” (Kelemen, Pál. Baroque and Rococo in Latin America, MacMillan Publishers, New York, 1951, pps. 81-82)

Tlaxcala, Tlaxcala, Nuestra Señora de Ocotlán, façade & bell-towersThe high altar is a churrigueresque masterwork in silver and gold by Antonio Fernández and José de Isunza. In the sanctuary other churrigueresque retablo rest behind a triumphal golden chancel arch with a shell motif that opens to the nave. Ocotlán’s façade, which looks out from a hilltop over Tlaxcala city, strives more vertically than that of St. Francis Xavier. Tall, narrow, frosty white and caked with fruits, cherubim, and saints, this stucco façade has a single pair of estípites bridging two stories, with an outer, bottom pair devolving into finials above the lower level cornice.

First referenced in Holy Scripture by Gregory the Great (circa 540-604), the Seven Archangels are prominently featured on Ocotlán’s façade. The massive, two storied niche pilasters or interestípites between the estípites hold two of these winged figures on each tier. Another two archangels cap the inner estípites in the gable while a seventh, St. Michael, rests on a base centered between two facing volutes above the mixtilinear choir loft window. The entire ensemble is capped by a massive shell canopy (a prelude to that of the chancel arch within) and wedged between bright, red-tiled bases supporting white bell-towers. This Churrigueresque fantasy is echoed on a smaller scale in the equally snowy-white mortar façade of the photogenic parish church of San Nicolás de Bari in the nearby hilltop pueblo of Panotla (Tlaxcala).

Sublime Sanctuaries via Merciless Mines

Two of the most argentiferous regions of Mexico have produced picturesque cities with outstanding Baroque examples of eighteenth-century ecclesiastic architecture. Overlooking the city of Guanajuato is the community of La Valenciana with the church of San Cayetano, patron saint of both Work and Prosperity. It was built between 1765 and 1788 mostly at the charges of the Conde del Rul, owner of the richest mine in the region. The remaining expenses were absorbed by the meager wages of the anonymous miners themselves, each of whom is said to have additionally and personally donated a piece of ore the size of one’s fist upon the church’s completion.

La Valenciana, Guanajuato, high altar second tier, St. Cajetan (center) with Our Lady of Light (above)San Cayetano's archives were ransacked during Mexico’s War of Independence, leaving no record of the architects and maestro mayores who designed the façade and. The single nave interior vaunts three period retablos, each grand and varied. The high altarpiece is named after the Italian saint to whom the church is consecrated. On the right end of the transept is the altar of the Assumption of the Virgin with particularly protuberant estípites and on the left that of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the richest of all three.

As imposing as is San Cayetano’s mighty façade, it is less vigorously worked than most of its Churrigueresque relatives. In describing its planar surface qualities in the The Story of Architecture in Mexico Trent Elwood Sanford used the suggestive expression “ultra-plateresque”. The word ‘ultra’ is commonly used to bolster Baroque terminology when describing the energy of Mexican Churrigueresque and its Anastyle outcroppings, and not the shimmering and subtle effects of sixteenth century Plateresque. Yet Ellwood’s purposely oxymoronic term deftly describes this singular Baroque façade.

“Invented by Lorenzo Rodríguez, the interestípite reached its maturity in this region of Guanajuato. The rocaille elements, along with the slenderness and refinement of its estípites, puts the Valenciana among Mexico’s greatest national treasures.” (personal translation Vargaslugo, Elisa, México Barocco, vida y arte, Salvat Editores Grolier Editores, Impreso en Querétaro, 1993, p. 103)

It was in 1717 that José de la Borda (circa 1700-1778) arrived in Taxco (Guerrero) where he eventually discovered the geological vein which made him one of the wealthiest men of his time. Borda was more eleemosynary than his Guanajuato counterpart. Between 1751 and 1758 he wholly, individually, and for more than the staggering sum of eight million pesos, financed the building of Taxco’s parish church of San Sebastián y Santa Prisca (referred to today only as Santa Prisca) which dominates the cityscape and surrounding countryside. Borda encapsulated his ecclesiastical munificence in the self-congratulatory motto, “Dios a darle a Borda y Borda a darle a Dios” {“Let God give to Borda and let Borda give to God”}.

Taxco, Guerrero, Santa Prisca, façade, second tier, central relief, Baptism of ChristDesigned by architect Cayetano de Sigüenza (1714-1778), Santa Prisca is one of Mexico’s most photographed and therefore recognizable churches. Its façade is only interpretively Churrigueresque, more Neostyle Baroque and akin to the church of Nuestra Señora del Buen Suceso (1755) in Santiago Tianguistenco (México), uncoincidentally also financed by Borda. Tuscan columns on Santa Prisca’s first level and salomónicas on its second both encase streamlined, stalactite-like niche pilasters that swell the intercolumniation with sculpture and relief work. In fact, only in the corners of the soaring towers do conventional estípites emerge.

“Interest is concentrated on the second order, where a monumental sculptured medallion depicting the baptism of Christ occupies the space usually allotted to a central window. Above it, a multifoil choir-light extends up into the arched pediment, which suggests an espadaña but does not rise beyond the roof.” (Kelemen, Pál. Baroque and Rococo in Latin America, MacMillan Publishers, New York, 1951, p. 90)

Three sets of matching retablos line the nave, while three others by Isidoro Vicente de Balbás (? -1783; deemed the son of Jerónimo de Balbás) complete the apse and transept. The high altarpiece projects forward around four detached estípites on a markedly tall lower story. Four more estípites are closely bound together on the compact upper tier. The image of St. Peter rests on a base formed by the central of three undulations in the cornice separating the first two stories, while two outstanding interestípites support niches for the statues of the church’s dedicatees, St. Prisca (left) and St. Sebastian (right).

It should be noted that as the Baroque progressed in the seventeen-hundreds and the Churrigueresque evolved, or mutated, the Estípite, once indispensable, became increasingly less relevant to the structural integrity of an altarpiece, or even façade. In the second half of the eighteenth century, the Neostyle reintroduced sobering elements to the Churrigueresque aesthetic, such as Solomonic columns and non-wavering cornices. However, these classicizing touches cannot be confused with (nor necessarily deemed precursors to) the severely imposed, unimpassioned rationalism of the Neoclassical period at the very end of viceregal Mexico.

Both Santa Prisca in Taxco and Santiago in Tianguistenco have more to do with Neostyle than with Estípite Baroque. This is evidenced by the unanticipated combination of eclectic architectural elements from different stylistic periods incorporated into the same church fronts. Also found in Neostyle facades is the pairing of an odd number of columns rather than the orthodox amount of two or four. Conceived by the arquitect Felipe Cleere (1721-94), the façade of the Santuario de la Guadalupe in the city of San Luis Potosí combines five columns, three segmented by cornices and/or capitals and two uninterrupted up to the gable. The relief work is a mix of Classical, Baroque and Moorish style motifs, with otherwise traditionally placed statues such as St. Michael in front of the choir loft window and Our Lady of Guadalupe beneath a massive crown in the top story.

Querétaro, Querétaro, San Felipe Neri, façade, main portal relief detail, St. Philip Neri protecting his OrderIn the city of Querétaro one finds another unusual, late colonial Neostyle façade, namely that of the Oratorian church of San Felipe Neri, constructed with burgundy colored tezontle stone. As at Taxco and Tianguistenco, pairs of three columns stand far forward from the church face with the middle of each column trio resting on obliquely angled bases that serve to generate additional wall separation. Above a wavering cornice, two sets of slender, doubly-paired Tuscan columns flank medallions of SS John the Baptist and Joseph on either side of the choir loft window and below a wide, curved pediment. On both stories lambrequins shadow the columns with Rococo relief, a motif repeated above the main portal directly below the central relief of St. Philip Neri protecting his Order amidst cloud sundering cherubim. Also of tezontle and effectively reflecting the main, West façade is the much more contained lateral one. In keeping with odd-numbered columns, individual ones rise to the base of a clerestory window and frame the central relief of Our Lady of Sorrows, replete with Instruments of the Passion and a single Passion angel riding into the scene aloft a cloud.

Pleated Churrigueresque

Also after 1750 is the Anastyle phase, mostly pertaining to retablo plans, in which the intercolumniation upstaged the more predictable modality of the estípite. The results include innovative and extreme examples of Baroque design and carving. This late eighteenth century anti-structuralism becomes evident upon returning to La Portada de los Arcángeles in San Luis Potosí and John Collis’ assessment of an artistic acme. Made entirely of a type of mortar known as “argamasa”, burnished white so as to resemble porcelain, Joseph Baird described the “portada” as a “proscenium retablo" for the regal access it gives to camarín de la Virgen (rebuilt) of the church of El Carmen.

San Luis Potosí, San Luis Potosí, El Carmen, Portada de los Arcángeles, second tier, cross with angels & puttiOn either side of La Portada’s mixtilinear portal, slender estípites outline wide, dense niche pilasters laden with decoration and housing six of the seven archangels. The portal’s frame supports a vast upward flow of highly intricate yet relatively planar carvings. Two niches display the Holy Sacrament and a Carmelite insignia, truncated estípites support cherubim, broken pediments overlie volutes and S-scrolls, and the seventh, seminal archangel (St. Miguel) appears top-center in a cusped arch niche just below a broad mixtilinear coping.

Impressive in its complexity, La Portada de los Arcángeles is equally so in its shallowness. A dazzling display of stepped moldings help create a scaled, nonstructural sense of depth which is heightened not by bulging columns but by a nuanced perspective of forms folded upon themselves. In Colonial Art in Mexico, Manuel Toussaint compared La Portada to the main altarpiece of the church of La Enseñanza (1772-1778) in Mexico City and added to his apt nomenclature repertoire by referring to them both as efficacious examples of “pleated churrigueresque”.

La Portada de los Arcángeles in San Luis Potosí lies within the church of Nuestra Señora del Carmen (1749-64), part of city’s Carmelite convent, founded with the funds of the fortune of Andalusian merchant Nicholás Fernando de Torres (1671-1732). Its façade is yet another daring piece of design and carving, an eighteenth-century original, “a novel and extravagant baroque and churrigueresque mix” (Collis, John, ibid., p. 539), whose construction was overseen by the indigenous maestro mayor José Lorenzo. Most intriguing is its lower story and main portal which include unorthodox features.

Two pairs of helicoidal columns encase the entrance. They appear to be salomónicas, although their spiral fluting is notably obstructed and divided by vertical swaths of vegetal relief resulting in a more block-like, less coiled, upward effect. Overlaying acanthus leaves within these segmented grooves one spots thick, unbroken chains, while at a distance the entire pillars have the appearance of massive sheaves. Such a sophisticated superimposing of sinuous elements, inclusive of the maritime association, is reminiscent of sixteenth century Manueline architecture, another of whose decorative devices is echoed in the outsized, spur-like protrusions inward from the intrados of the main portal’s archivolt, making for a more muscular, mixtilinear motif.

San Luis Potosí, San Luis Potosí, El Carmen, main portalBetween the columns and in niches beneath strapwork are the Old Testament prophets Elijah (left) and Elisha (right), inspirational to the Carmelite Order, while the keystone of the archivolt is in the form of the Elijah’s flaming sword. Above capitals, architrave, entablature and cornice, the self-styled salomónicas are replaced by estípites which frame SS Teresa of Avila (left) and John of the Cross (right) while more slender ones outline the choir loft window. The gable consists of abridged estípites encasing SS Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi (left) and Angelus of Jerusalem (right) to either side of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, all beneath God the Father appearing through drapery upheld by cherubim. Decorative urns line the pedimented roof and lead up to the central figure of St. Michael Archangel. St. Joseph and Christ Child preside over the lateral, North portal, of a much smaller scale but equally compelling composition.

Salamanca: A Lesser Known Masterpiece

Another extraordinary late eighteenth century retablo is that dedicated to St. Joseph in the Augustinian church at Salamanca (Guanajuato). The creation of Querétaran retablista. Pedro José de Rojas, its exceptional depth is engineered in a sui generis masterpiece of conceptual innovation and world class carving. Rojas was also responsible for the facing altarpiece dedicated to St. Anne at the other end of the transept, and that of St. Nicholas of Tolentino along the church nave. Rather than accommodating large niche pilasters, St. Joseph altarpiece employs the estípite to delimit massive sculptural groupings of biblical scenes in what, in fact, are elaborate stage settings that rest on gargantuan bases topped by crowned canopies. Of such depth and scale, these cavernous settings capture scenes of the life of St. Joseph with striking representational verisimilitude. Dynamic environments into which the viewer is lured with disarming clarity, they emit the palpable presence of sublime figures and their everlasting experiences.

On the lower level one finds the Dream of St. Joseph (left) and the Finding of the Child Jesus in the Temple (right), above both of which is a centrally projecting platform supporting a tenebrous, grotto-like scene depicting the Death of S. Joseph attended by Our Lord and Lady. High above, graced with thin ornamental pilasters, situated on tremendous capitals, and cantilevered out as though tree-top dwellings, one sees the Flight into Egypt (left) and the Marriage of Our Lady and St. Joseph (right). The ensemble merits world-wide acclaim, and a collective sigh of relief that it was spared any post-colonial “remodeling”.

Querétaro, Querétaro, Santa Clara, North nave La Guadalupe retablo, top tier left (details)In addition to the Salamanca altars, Pedro José de Rojas likely conceived the two grandiose retablos dedicated to St. Joseph and to Our Lady of Guadalupe, respectively located in the first bays adjacent to the sanctuary of the church of Santa Rosa de Viterbo (Querétaro city). Nearby, all that remains of one of New Spain’s greatest religious foundations is the church of Santa Clara, once occupying two city blocks but appallingly dismantled during 19th century secularization. Here, Ignacio Marian de las Casas is believed to be the principal retablista, his signature appearing in the elaborate latticework of the choir grille at the end of a nave spectacularly arrayed with Anastyle Baroque retablos. Such a staggering output in retablo making in the city of Querétaro in the second half of the 1700s is worth underscoring. According to Clara Bargellini, 23 professional sculptors and 19 carvers were active in the city near the end of the century, while the job of assembling and positioning the altars was that of the ensamblador, whether the retablos were delivered locally or transported long distances to their destined churches.

The most traveled and influential of Mexican born eighteenth century altarpiece designer, or retablista was Felipe de Ureña (1697-1777), whose commissions spanned the country from Oaxaca city to the Northern state of Coahuila. Many more altarpieces have been attributed to Ureña and/or to his family members, workshop and followers than can currently be substantiated. Certain extant church facades and retablos whose documentation does affirm Ureña’s personal authorship include some of the most inventive designs of the time: the high altar (1744) of San Francisco, Texcoco (México); the façade and North portal (circa 1750) of La Guadalupe in the city of Aguascalientes; the transept altar dedicated to St. Joseph in the church of Belén (México, D.F.); the façade of the church of San Francisco in Oaxaca city; and the retablo of La Pasión for the chapel of El Santísimo in Saltillo’s cathedral, relocated as the high altar to the church of San Francisco in Monclova (Coahuila).

Paragons of Popular Baroque

Jolalpan, Puebla, La Purísima Concepción, façade gableOf great significance throughout the eighteenth century is the continuation and fulfillment of the so-called “Popular Baroque ”, an aesthetic mentioned within the context of the previous century. Distinct from the urban sophistication of the Churrigueresque and the premeditated order of the estípite , the style resides mostly amid the bucolic charm of Mexico’s rural villages. In the small, rustic pueblo of Tlancualpican in Southern Puebla state, the parish church of Santa María bears sculpted on its façade a large relief of the Vica Crucis. Directly over the central portal Christ bears his weighty cross while wrenched by a Roman soldier with a rope situated in the right spandrel. The spectacle is poignant, gripping, and wholly authentic.

Not far to the Northeast is tiny Tzicatlán, on whose church façade are carved fanciful curtains which act as delightful touches of homeliness beside the choir loft window and surrounding niches. To the Southwest is soporific Jolalpan where the façade of La Purísima Concepción is a jaw-dropping gem of intrigue. Its enchanting semicircular gable displays Christ on the Cross, four archangels, the sun and moon. Each subject is apportioned its own segment of the gable around a large central niche depicting Our Lady. Above Christ crucified appears the Holy Ghost and God the Father who upholds the world and points to the Heavens. Two angels help support Jesus’ cross as a malevolent serpent winds his way around its base. The drama continues as angles display the sun and the moon while friars next to them draw curtains to reveal Our Lady in all her radiating glory. Even heraldic lions scale the outer edges of the roof's coping .

Slightly later (1759-1782) is the façade of the pilgrimage church of Jesús Nazareno in nearby Tepalcingo (Morelos). In the form of an enormous folding screen, the two sides of the façade reach outwardly at oblique angles as if to draw the visitor in towards the recessed central portion. On the top tier is the Crucifixion of Christ between that of the Two Thieves of the Gospel. On either side Jesus is attended by Our Lady and St. John the Evangelist while God the Father gazes down from above and a sorrowful Mary Magdalene embraces the base of his Christ’s Cross. On the tier below, serpentine, intertwined columns are wedged between the choir loft window which they flank and Passion scenes in the outer, oblique niches. On the first level the Four Evangelists are placed on separate columns with SS Peter and Paul in the niches within. The composition and ornamentation of Jesús Nazareno’s façade is a tour-de-force with “Gothic, Romanesque, even Plateresque, touches superimposed on a baroque mix to conjure up something almost oriental”. (Collis, John, ibid., p. 678)

San Francisco Acatepec, Puebla, San Francisco, façade, top story & gableJust to the East of the state capital city of Puebla and approximately fifteen kilometers North of Amozoc is the hamlet of Tepetzala, whose church of Santa Isabel has one of the eighteenth century’s great Popular Baroque interiors. In Puebla’s Southwestern outskirts three more glorious examples survive. San Bernardo Tlaxcalancingo, San Francisco Acatepec and Santa María Tonantzintla all bear lively façades of Poblano tilework. The façade of San Francisco Acatepec is likely the finest of its kind in all of Mexico, with estípites covered top to bottom in blue, yellow and green azulejos. That of Tonantzintla is much more subdued, leaving the visitor unprepared for what lays within.

The riotous, unrivaled interior of Santa María is an exhaustive “horror vacui” with every inch of space and interspace electrified by prolific stucco work in what is a stunning and altogether Mexican devotional undertaking. One enters what must have blissfully signified for its anonymous creator the ultimate in divine obeisance: the celestial Church, Heaven on Earth. Coating choir loft and sotocoro, nave walls and vaults, pilasters and capitals, clerestory, transept, chancel arch, cupola and its pendentives, polychromed gilded stucco takes the form of lavish foliage, floral, fruit and faunal arrangements through which surface cherubim, plumed and helmeted heads and faces, large and small.

The opposing nave Churrigueresque altarpieces, dedicated to St. John Nepucene and St. Anthony of Padua, while highly ornate in their own right, are practically absorbed by the allover effect. Less compromised is the high-rising right transept retablo dedication to The Passion. Its lower center niche is occupied by the Sacred Heart of Jesús Christ and its central top one by the Crucifixion with Mary and John the Evangelist. Just below Christ Crucified is a rendition of Our Lord of Patience, while four other versions of Christ tormented occupy the upper and lower lateral niches.

Santa María Tonantzintla, Puebla, Santa María, cupola stucco reliefLargely obstructed by the Baroque baldachin which houses the Virgin Mary, the exceptional high altar displays doubly-paired, vegetal and salomónica s which divide niches of male and female saints. While the Four Evangelists in the pendentives are readily discernable, hardly so are the four Doctors of the Western Church amongst multitiered angles grouped between the eight ribs of the vault, each of which culminates in beatific faces about the white dove of the Holy Ghost at the cupola’s vertex.

A náhuatl word, tonanzintla translates literally to mean “place inhabited by our beloved mother”, later modified to mean “place of our little mother”, in which the notion of affection in the náhuatl “tzin” is exchanged for the Spanish diminutive “ita”. Hence, in “Santa María Tonantzintla” a linguistic correlation was established early on between the love for the Aztec mother and the Christian reverence of the Virgin Mary, mother of Christ. The vitality of this conceptual syncretism helped harvest the spiritual and psychic energy that yielded this wondrous church interior.

“The church of Santa María Tonantzintla, about one kilometer beyond San Francisco Acatepec, presents a simple façade in the Puebla style, faced with a combination of glazed and unglazed tile. Its interior, cruciform like that of Acatepec, is fantastic: the whole thing is so covered over with relief ornament that it seems to be a miraculous grotto, or the sanctuary of some god.” (Toussaint, Manuel. Colonial Art in Mexico, translated and edited by Elizabeth Wilder Weismann, University of Texas Press, Austin and London, 1967, p. 206)

A tour de force of Oaxacan Baroque is the Chapel of the Rosary (1720s) in the state capital. Modeled after its Northern cousin in Puebla, it is also located within its city’s Dominican church. The Order of Friars Preachers adopted the cult of the Rosary in the fourteen hundreds and actively promoted it wherever the Black Friars evangelized and constructed. The chapel’s octagonal cupola is a masterpiece. Its pendentives showcase the Four Evangelists and the drum the Twelve Apostles. In the and ovular outlined center is Our Lady of the Rosary, whose halo emanates golden rays and stars between cherubim heads while she watches over the Dominican order in the incarnation of three nuns, St. Peter of Verona, Pope Honorius III (who approved the Order in 1216), and Dominic himself.

Oaxaca, Oaxaca, Santo Domingo, Capilla del Rosario, cupola & pendentivesBeneath the cupola and above the inner portal the East wall lunette bears a poignant Crucifixion with SS Francis & Anthony of Padua. SS Barbara & Catherine of Alexandria flank the sotocoro arch as do Sts. Bonaventure and Thomas of Aquinas the choir loft alcove where archangels guard the holy monstrance. In the vault of the compressed nave the Virgin Immaculate is centered amid music playing angels and vegetal relief strapwork banding her to roundel reliefs of five Mysteries of the Rosary. Beside two clerestory windows appear the Four Doctors of the Western Church, SSSS Jerome, Gregory, Ambrose and Augustine. The West nave wall displays a Pietà with five more Mysteries, and the East wall a Virgin & Child with yet another five. The high altar is a 1964 reconstruction, although the paintings, medallions and central sculpture of Our Lady of the Rosary are period.

One grand-scale eighteenth century Mexican religious structure has its genesis in popular as well as formal Baroque values. In many ways the most ornate of all Mexican church fronts, the main West façade of Zacatecas’ cathedral, Nuestra Señora de La Asunción, is an earnest blend of idiosyncrasy and naïveté. As with the other important Northern Mexico cathedrals, La Inmaculada Concepción (Durango), Nuestra Señora de Regla y San Francisco de Asís (Chihuahua), Santiago Apóstol (Saltillo) and La Inmaculada Concepción (Monterrey), the completion date of Zacatecas’ lies in the second half of the seventeen-hundreds, later than that of any of its aesthetically distant cousins to the South (Puebla, Morelia, even Guadalajara). Bolstered by great mining wealth, the Baroque proceeded northward and rewarded Zacatecas a cathedral of immense civic and ecclesiastic pride.

Zacatecas, Zacatecas, Catedral de Nuestra Señora de La Asunción, façade, upper two tiers with rose window The rose window alone is an extraordinary statement of delicacy and intricacy. Small cherubim playing musical instruments prance over clusters of grapes about the window. The frame’s keystone is carved in the form of an ostensory, over which peers the Holy Ghost in the usual form of a dove. In its corners are the Four Doctors of the Western Church: St. Gregory (top left), St. Jerome accompanied by a lion (top right), St. Ambrose (lower right) and St. Augustine protecting the Church (lower left). Underneath the cornice is the captivatingly carved main portal. Amidst exuberant carvings in the voussoirs, spandrels, and helicoidal columns, the archivolt’s keystone reveals an ennobling relief of the Virgin Mary.

As homage to the Last Supper, the façade houses statuary of each of the Twelve Apostles, paired in adjacent niches, four to each of the façade’s three tiers. On the lower level, two are to either side of the portal. In the middle section two more pairs flank the rose window while in the top-level SS Simon and Phillip stand to the left of a majestic Christ while SS Bartholomew and Thomas hold his right. In the gable above appears the celestial image of God the Father crowned by a protruding canopy. The Cathedral’s rich South doorway displays a lively relief of Nuestra Señora de los Zacatecos framed by columnar caryatids, while over its North portal one finds a dignified depiction of Christ on the Cross attended by the Virgin Mary and St. John the Evangelist. Grand entrances in their own right, both North and South portals are eclipsed by the sheer rigor and opulence of the main West façade.

Unique to cathedrals in Mexico, and rare among Baroque façades, is that of Santiago in Saltillo, capital of the Northern state of Coahuila. Begun in 1745 by its parish priest Felipe Suárez and completed by the end of the century, like that of El Carmen in San Luis Potosíi this bold façade pays homage both to the Solomonic column and the estípite. Two pairs of helicoidal salomónicas on the lower level convert into estípites above the cornice in the second story. Similar in proportion and restrained in design, the salomónicas and estípites interact in visual harmony rather than sow discord between these two hallmark orders of the Baroque. They are both laden with fruit, foliage and saints, as are the entrecalles and intercolumniation. The entire ensemble is framed on both sides by massive, protruding columns, albeit the one on the right is oddly truncated by the bell-tower, not completed until 1897. Above the main portal much of the entablature is occupied by a massive shell, a motif echoed above the lateral door as well as in the empty niche of the façade’s gable, capped by a delightful five-part, sinuous coping with repeating volutes.

As may be gathered, Mexican ecclesiastic architecture of the eighteenth century is a vast anthology of diverse visions with no defining gestalt. Born by herculean, often brutalizing labor funded by infusions of ready capital, these Mexican churches are hardly ersatzes for European contemporaries. Rather, they reverberate with a resounding religious fervor, flaunted in their countless carvings, punctiliously chiseled and mesmerically iterated with astounding skill. They are a fitting capstone to worldwide Baroque architecture.

Regal Residences

As the eighteenth century progressed and the colonial nobility secured for itself ever-increasing wealth, secular architecture also reached its pinnacle. Hundreds of grand palaces were built in which aristocratic families enjoyed what they could not have known were the last decades of the Spain’s Viceroyalty in Mexico. Adopting the Andalusian formula, townhouses were almost always of at least two floors, designed around arcaded patios with elegant stairways leading to upstairs living quarters, over which roof gardens were sometimes installed. Although so many of these grand residences in Mexico City were recklessly razed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the capital city remains a treasure trove of such homes. As one strolls about its downtown streets, old mansions reveal themselves, many of which today are offices, shops, or tenements, usually plastered with advertisements, sadly derelict and largely forgotten.

México, D.F. Casa de los Azulejos, patio fountainOff the East end of La Alameda Central is the celebrated Casa de los Azulejos, entirely faced with glazed tiles. It was largely rebuilt between 1755 and 1758 upon the wishes of the Condesa Garciana of the prominent family Condes del Valle de Orizaba, whose male founder, Rodrígo de Vivero y Velasco (1564-1636) had arrived in Mexico in 1560 and made for himself a fortune in agriculture. The palace is a treat for the eyes as blue, yellow and cream-colored tiles flash its effervescent exterior. Since 1919 it has been the flagship of Mexico’s Sanborn restaurants, its luxurious patio with congruous arcades and delightful fountain hardly visible through the present-day prandial pleasures.

Likely designed by architect Idelfonso Iniesta Bejarano y Duran (1716-1781) and built on Avenida Ribera de San Cosme between 1766 and 1771 for the same Condes del Valle de Orizaba family, is the unusually one-storied Casa de los Mascarones (Home of the Figureheads). Estípites line its façade, framing the main portal and the windows, on which stand atlantes in the form of nautical figureheads whose arms uphold capitals which, in turn, support gargoyle waterspouts projecting out from the cornice. Contrasted with the delicacy of the Casa de los Azulejos, this bold Baroque statement is a veritable Churrigueresque application to secular architecture.

Built to the original plans of Pedro Bueno Basorí and measuring 12,000 square feet, the complex which housed the Colegio de Las Vizcaínas is perhaps the largest in Mexico City. Founded in 1732 by Jesuit Basque philanthropists for the schooling of young women, it opened its doors in 1767. Along its seemingly endless North façade, a veritable ocean of rich tezontle, are three entry portals. The grand, central one was designed by the aforementioned Lorenzo Rodríguez and gives direct access to the chapel. Above its curved pediment and amidst an assortment of volutess are three niches housing statues of St. Ignatius (top center) and SS Luis Gonzaga and Stanislaus Kostka (lower left and right, respectively).

México, D.F., Colegio de Las Vizcaínas, North façade, central portalBeyond the portal the glorious chapel within preserves five retablos by Joaquín de Sállagas. The high Churrigueresque one is dedicated to St. Ignatius of Loyola who appears before an open curtain in the altar’s center. He holds an open book and points to the words Ad Dei Maiorem Gloriam (For the Greater Kingdom of God), the motto the Saint adopted for the Society of Jesus which he founded in 1540. Above him is the Christ Crucified, flanked by statues of SS Francis and Dominic. Heading towards the choir loft are excellent Anastyle Baroque altarpieces dedicated to Our Lady of Aranzazú and Our Lady of Sorrows, followed by those of Our Lady of Loreto and Our Lady of Guadalupe, the last supporting a beautifully carved tribune.

A handful of other great palaces in the heart of Mexico City include the Casa de los Condes de Heras Soto (circa 1760), the Casa de los Condes de San Bartolomé de Xala (1763-1764), the Casa del Conde de la Torre de Cosío (1781), the Casa del Conde de la Cortina (mid-1700s), the Casa del Marqués del Prado Alegre (circa 1720), the Jesuit Colegio de San Ildefonso (1712-1749), not to mention the Palacio Nacional on the zócalo, of great historical importance but drastically altered in 1926-27.

An Architect for the Ages

The most talented and versatile architect in this genre of mansion design was Francisco Antonio Guerrero y Torres (1727-1792), whose first recorded work was the Casa del Conde de San Mateo de Valparaíso (1769-1772), commissioned by Miguel de Berrio Zaldízar (1716-?). Now a Banamex office, it remains one of the country’s finest palaces. Between 1778-1787 Guerrero y Torres oversaw the remodeling of an old townhouse in downtown Mexico City into the gracious Casa de los Condes de Calimaya (now housing the Museo de la Ciudad de México) for which he was contracted by Juan Manuel Lorenzo Gutiérrez Altamirano de Velasco y Gorráez (1721-?).

In 1779 Guerrero y Torres was again approached by Miguel de Berrio Zaldízar to design a second family dwelling, also on a grand urban scale. The result was the Casa del Marqués de Jaral de Berrio, a palace which from 1821 until his abdication in 1823 hosted the Mexican Emperor Agustín de Iturbide (1783-1824), for which reason it is referred to as Palacio Iturbide. Presently it houses an exhibition space for Banamex’s art collections and the contemporary shows which Mexico’s premier bank sponsors. The sumptuous relief in its façade is unmatched by any other palace in the capital. The magnificent main portal is flanked by two pillars that display ultra-fine, seemingly diaphanous carvings whose cream-colored chiluca stone is a dignified contrast to the bold tezontle facing. Above the door, standing on extensively rolled S-scrolls, are two identical guardian atlantes whose muscular limbs bulge as they brandish weighty clubs – a distinctive scene which recalls the dramaturgy in the façade of Merida’s Palacio de Montejo, built over two hundred years prior for the Yucatán’s conquistador.

“The symmetry does not entail simplicity. Guerrero’s interweaving of decorative motifs produced an intricacy far greater than his asymmetrical designs for the Valparaíso and Santiago houses. A feature of the design, which links it to his earlier houses which had incorporated construction of earlier centuries, is a marked evocation of the fortified houses of the conquistadors.” (Early, James. The Colonial Art of Mexico, Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, 2001, p. 159)

México, D.F., El Pocito, West faceGuerrero y Torres’ professional culmination came with his plans for the Capilla del Pocito (Chapel of the Little Well), conceived to mark and honor the very spot where the Virgin of Guadalupe had implored Juan Diego to gather flowers, from which subsequently a miraculous spring of curative water gushed forth. Torres y Guerrero offered his services gratis for this holy endeavor, creating its design in 1777 and awaiting its completion twelve years later. The architect found inspiration in an architectural treatise by Sebastiano Serlio (1475–1554) displaying designs for an ancient temple outside Rome. The Pocito’s plan is a variant of non other than Rome’s Pantheon, the very jewel of architectural antiquity, on which Torres y Guerrero further elaborated by converting the Roman rotunda into a Baroque oval with two separate, trapezoidal chapels on each end.

“With the contrasts of polychrome tile, rich red tezontle and gray stone trim, with the textures of glaze, of pumice, or of limestone embroidered in patterns of sun and shadow, with the spatial contours of the circular plan and its three domes, and the ornamenting of the parapet against the sky, with the somewhat reserved trabeated portal, the fantastic lintel and the deliciously explosive star window, one finds packed into this little chapel the compacted sweets of the Baroque repertory.” (Weismann, Elizabeth Wilder. Art and Time in Mexico: Architecture and Sculpture in Colonial Mexico, Harper Collins Publishers, Inc., New York, 1985, pps. 50-51)

The last of the great Baroque buildings to be erected in the capital, the Pocito was dedicated on Christmas Day, 1791. Neoclassicism had already begun its campaign of sterilization, dramatically terminating the Baroque in New Spain. New architects were ordained; old ones were discarded, and Guerrero y Torres himself relegated to designing bakeries in Mexico City. Despite his ignominious demise, for sure Bernini and Borromino would have been proud of Guerrero y Torres, a Mexican architect for the ages.

On the Rim of Christendom

San Antonio, Texas, Nuestra Señora de la Purísima ConcepciónSome three hundred and fifty kilometers North of the city of Chihuahua lies the city of El Paso and the start of that vast body of land comprising most of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada and California -- all once part of Spain, subsequently Mexico, and after 1848 the United States of America. In the momentary experience of physically crossing the Mexico / U.S. border one traverses the colossal cultural divide between Latin South and Anglo North America. Instantaneously removed from the feeling and flavor of Mexico, one nevertheless finds in the American Southwest noteworthy examples of frontier architecture, colonial in date if not in style. They have been well documented and meticulously studied.

As John Kessell points out in his informative book Spain in the Southwest: A Narrative History of Colonial New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California, Spanish expeditions took a generally three-pronged push northward through the vast, present-day Mexican states of Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Sonora, and Baja California. Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries pushed due North into Arizona and New Mexico, Northeast into Texas and Northwest into California. What remains of their building, almost all of it dating from the late eighteenth century, is usually little more than vestiges of frontier life and of the struggle to proselytize in what were remote, hostile, and under-funded territories.

As early as 1540-1542 Francisco de Vázquez de Coronado (1510-1554) led his famous expedition to the “Tierra Nueva” through Arizona, New Mexico, to present-day Kansas. The first white man to view the American West’s geological formations, and the first to see the buffalo roam, Coronado nevertheless failed to find the legendary Seven Cities of Cíbola, which lore led to believe were laden with gold. Returning home completely discredited, Coronado was subsequently relegated to a minor position in the capital’s municipal government. In 1542-1543 Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo (1499-1543) sailed his flagship the San Salvador up the Pacific coast to present-day Oregon, all in a week’s time founding today’s Californian cities of San Pedro, Santa Monica, and Santa Barbara. He lost his life from a wound received during an encounter with natives off the coast of San Miguel, present-day San Diego.

From 1539-1543 the expedition of Hernando de Soto (circa 1497-1542) battled through the mud flats and timbered marshes of Florida, then Georgia, the Carolinas, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas. At one point in 1541, in present-day Arkansas, unknowingly Soto came within three hundred miles of Colorado’s troop in Kansas. He also never made it back, dying of typhoid fever in May of 1542.

“To keep the Natives from learning of the immortal leader’s death and to prevent desecration of the corpse, his own men dug it ation of Colonial Mexico’s Northern frontier would have to wait nearly two hundred years when the five up, stuffed it into a hollow log, and sank it in the middle of the Mississippi more than a hundred miles downriver from present-day Memphis.” (Kessell, John L. Spain in the Southwest: A Narrative History of Colonial New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California, University of Oklahoma Press, 2002, p. 52)

Due to such shortcomings and disenchantment, the conquest and the evangelization of New Spain’s Northern frontier would have to wait nearly two hundred years when the five Franciscan missions of San Antonio, Texas, were established. The most famous of these and first to be built (1718) along the San Antonio River is San Antonio de Valero, commonly called the Alamo. It was built by friar Antonio de San Buenaventura Olivares (1630-1720), an intractable and zealous man who dedicated his life to missionary work. Born in Spain, once in Mexico he joined the Franciscan Colegio de Santa Cruz in Querétaro city, a site acclaimed for missionary training and embarkation. On the first of January, 1699, Olivares headed North to Coahuila where a year later he established the second mission of San Juan Bautista in Guerrero. After exploring Texas (part of Coahuila until 1824) Olivares returned to Spain where he perorated his cause for setting up missions in the Texan territory; by 1718 he was on the banks of the San Antonio River.

San Antonio, Texas, San José y San Miguel de Aguayo, South sacristy wall, mixtilinear window called "La Ventana de Rosa"Slightly earlier in construction than the Alamo is the mission of San Francisco de Tejas (1690), with its handsome horseshoe portal and façade spanning espadaña. It was renamed San Francisco de la Espada and relocated in 1731 to its present site along the San Antonio River, as were the missions of San José de los Nazonis (renamed San Juan Capistrano) and Nuestra Señora de la Concepción. Founded in 1720 by friar Antonio Margil de Jesús (1657-1726), the “Queen of the Missions” is San José y San Miguel Aguayo, largest of the San Antonio cluster and once representing a significant indigenous community consisting of some 300 Indians who both cultivated fields and grew livestock.

The façade of San José y San Miguel Aguayo bears lively vegetal and cherub relief both about its main portal and choir loft window, above which are respectively placed sculpture of Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Joseph. The South wall of the sacristy boasts a refined mixtilinear framed window (circa 1775) called the “Ventana de Rosa”. While its author and the origins of its name are speculative, tradition tells that it was the work of a certain Juan Huizar whose wife was named “Rosa”. Possibly the craftsman came to San Antonio from Zacatecas city, as the mission window bears a striking resemblance to records of the choir loft window of the earlier Churrigueresque façade to the church of San Agustín, Zacatecas. Regrettably, the interior of the Zacatecan church was gutted and its façade demolished in 1882 when the complex was sold to the United States Presbyterian Missionary Society.

From Querétaro to California

Certainly, the Southwest’s most outstanding mission is that of San Javier del Bac, just South of Tucson, Arizona. With the aforementioned expulsion of the Jesuits from New Spain in 1767, most of their establishments were taken over by the Franciscans. The San Javier de Bac of today, often referred to as the “White Dove of the Desert”, is a Franciscan rebuilding (1783-1797) of the original Jesuit site, founded in 1699 but destroyed by the Apaches around 1770. Its graceful façade with slender estípites, curtained niches with saints, shell-capped choir loft window, and lobular gable flanked by elegant volutes, gives way to a rich and prudently restored interior. The niche-lined nave leads to colorful Churrigueresque transept retablos and a luxurious high altarpiece of burned brick dedicated to Jesuit founder, St. Ignatius of Loyola.

“A singular feat of architecture, however, had arisen nearby. Two dedicated Franciscans had built at Mission San Xavier del Bac, ten miles southwest of the presidio, a soaring church meant to attract Natives from far beyond. Fray Juan Bautista de Velderrain, borrowing seven thousand pesos on the mission’s wheat futures, oversaw in the 1780s most of the construction. His successor, fray Juan Bautista Llorens, finished the job in the 1790s except for the dome of the right tower, seemingly left off intentionally.” (Kessell, John L., ibid., p. 336)

California’s famed missionary is the controversial Junípero Serra (1713-1784), a Majorcan Franciscan who arrived in the New World in 1749 and who in 2015 was canonized by Pope Francis. Yet few Californians are aware of the time this stalwart friar spent in the remote region of Northeast Querétaro state known as the Huasteca Queretana (or Sierra Gorda) before heading to Baja and Alta California. Around the middle of the fifteen hundreds Augustinian monks had penetrated the Huasteca and established a small convento at Xilitla, just over the border in the current day state of San Luis Potosí, while their settlements to the South at Jalpan and Tilaco capitulated to raids by the Chichimec indigenous (specifically the Pame). Two hundred years later, in the 1740s, soldier and expert Indian fighter José de Escandón (1700-1770) was ordered to once and for all pacify the region.

Tilaco, Querétaro, San Francisco, façade, lower story left, San Pedro, choir loft windowAccompanying Escandón were Franciscans from the Colegio de San Fernando, established in Mexico City in 1733. Much like the missionary colleges of La Guadalupe, Zacatecas, and the aforementioned Santa Cruz, Querétaro, San Fernando’s mandate was to train and dispatch friars to frontier territories where they were to organize the Amerindians into prosperous, agriculture producing settlements around newly founded parish churches. Leaving Mexico City for the Sierra Gorda in 1750, Serra took charge of the Franciscan efforts in the area. Over the next decade his unwavering dedication yielded limited and temporary success, as the Pame succumbed in large numbers to disease all the while resisting both conversion and the communal agricultural system being imposed onto them. The greatest legacy of Serra’s undertaking is found in the design and execution of the façades of the five churches whose construction (or reconstruction) Serra oversaw: Santiago at Jalpan; SS Domingo & Francisco at Landa de Matamoros; Santiago at Concá; San Francisco de Asís at Tilaco; and Nuestra Señora de la Luz at Tancoyol.

Considering the lack of architectural expertise among the Spanish friars and garrison soldiers and the rudimentary skills of the Pame, a crew of first-rate craftsmen must have followed Serra up the mountains either from Mexico City or Querétaro. It is otherwise inconceivable how these five iconic churches could otherwise have come into being. While each of the Sierra Gorda mission façades has distinguishing features, all were clearly executed by the same hand(s) to constitute a distinctive body of work richly steeped in Francican iconography. Repeated elements include main portals in the form of a puerta abocinada with shell-like archivolts, deeply concave choir loft windows, interrupted entablatures yielding wide central bays for relief work and sculpture, and vigorously carved floral and vegetal motifs painted in vibrant colors. Serra and future biographer friar Francisco Palóu (1723-1789) rebuilt the church at Jalpan, while friars José Antonio de Murguía, Juan Crespí (1721-1782), Juan Ramos de Lora, and Miguel de la Campa supervised construction at the missions of Concá, Tilaco, Tancoyol, and Landa de Matamoros, respectively.

Tancoyol, Querétaro, Nuestra Señora de la Luz, façade & bell-towerOverseeing the third story of Tilaco’s façade is St. Francis with music playing angels by his side. He stands above a wide balcony supported by diminutive estípites above decorative trimming. At Concá, smallest and most compact of the missions, a tasseled Franciscan cord (particular to the habits of the Friars Minor and capuchins) frames a large escutcheon showcasing sword and scepter beneath the famed Franciscan insignia of the Crossed Arms, i.e. one of Christ, the other of Francis, with both hands bearing the Stigmata. The actual receiving of the Stigmata by St. Francis is shown at Tancoyol in the form of the Seraphic Vision wedged between the choir loft window and the upper tier cornice, a scene in Franciscan typology meant to illustrate the Lord’s approval of the founding of the Order. A volitant seraph emits and transposes the Five Wounds of Christ on the Cross from his own feet, hands and heart to the awaiting Francis, below whom brother Leo kneels and prays.

More esoteric is the iconography at Landa de Matamoros where the choir loft window is centered between representations of the Crossed Arms and Five Wounds, beneath which are depictions of Franciscan saints Duns Scotus (circa 1266-1308) and María de Agreda (1602-1665). Both have pen in hand and uphold books, de Agreda portrayed in the process of writing her six-volume Mística ciudad de Dios and Scotus drafting any number of his exhaustive essays which made him one of the greatest theological minds of the Middle Ages. In common is that both saints are especially revered by their Order for advocating the Franciscan dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, whereby from the moment of her miraculous conception the mother of Christ is deemed free from the stain of Original Sin.

Landa de Matamoros, Querétaro, SS Domingo y Francisco, façade, second story, Virgin Immaculate (lower center); above, choir loft window with reliefs: Duns Scotus (left) & Mary of Jesus of Agreda (right) with Franciscan emblems (above, respectively)Rediscovered by Mexican archeologists in the 1940s, the five missions of the Sierra Gorda were named a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 2003. For those drawn by the heroic hand of man in remote settings -- let alone interested in missionary ventures by the Franciscans and the visual didactics they emblazoned on their churches – these churches are surely worth the travel. In the end, however, all of Junípero Serra’s efforts in the Huasteca Queretana were in vain. After the missions were secularized in 1770 they were deserted by indigenous and priests alike, eventually becoming home to the wild animals of the Sierra.

“These churches survived, which was in itself important; they were and remain exemplars of frontier baroque design. But they were also symbols of the one brief period in the more than two hundred years of Spanish rule in the Sierra Gorda that the Pames – largely as a result of Serra’s efforts – were incorporated, however reluctantly, into the Spanish colonial order.” (Hackel. Steven H. Junípero Serra: California’s Founding Father, Hill and Wang, a Division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2013, pps. 112-3).

Called upon to occupy the missions abandoned by the Jesuits after their expulsion, Franciscan authority at the Colegio de San Fernando had Serra lead an expedition to Baja California. In 1769 Serra founded the Misión San Fernando Rey de España de Velicatá, located about two hundred miles South of present-day Enseñada (now in total ruins). Later that year Serra reached “Nueva” or “Alta” California and established the Misión de San Diego de Alcalá (near today’s San Diego), the first of a chain of twenty-one Franciscan missions which would dot California’s near-coastline up to Sonoma, some thirty miles North of San Francisco. In 1771 Fray Serra relocated mission San Carlos de Borromeo de Carmelo (which he had founded in Monterey) to Carmel, using it as his headquarters for the supervision of the Alta California missions. He died at the age of seventy and was interred in his beloved San Carlos mission beneath the floor of its sanctuary.

Sonoma, California, San Francisco SolanoSerra’s surrogate, fray Fermín Francisco Lasuén de Arasqueta (1736-1803), continued to found missions, including that of Santa Bárbara (1786), San Luis Rey de Francia (1798) just inland from Oceanside, and La Purísima Concepción (1787) near Lompoc, the only mission in California’s chain not to have been laid out along a quadrangle and the only one no longer in use today as a church. Lasuén also founded Misión San Miguel Arcángel (1797), eight miles North of Paso Robles. Badly damaged by the December, 2003, San Simeon earthquake, its thoughtful and painstaking restoration has been completed.

On what was the most Northern fringe of Spain’s new-world empire is the simple church of San Francisco Solano in today’s town of Sonoma, California. Founded in 1823, this last mission actually postdates Mexican independence. Signed on August 24, 1821 by the revolutionary Agustín Iturbide (1783-1824) and by the last of the Spanish viceroys Juan de O'Donojú O'Rian (1762-1821), the Treaty of Córdoba (Veracruz) finally determined Mexican autonomy eleven bloody years after father Miguel Hidalgo (1753-1811) uttered his incendiary “grito de independencia” from the steps of the church of Nuestra Señora de los Dolores, in the Guanajuatan town known today as Dolores Hidalgo.

Conclusion

The youthful, independent Mexico of the nineteenth century was quick to lose half of its territory to its politically belligerent, militarily superior, and aggressively expanding Northern neighbor. The ideologies and idiosyncrasies of Anglo Protestantism introduced a new set of legislative precepts, social sensibility, and religious temperament to what once was Spanish mission territory. Today, back on those very steps of the parish church of Dolores Hidalgo, one faces the lovely zócalo, or town square, largely shaded from the intense sun of the Bajío basin by a giant jacaranda tree. Behind is the church’s façade, an opulent and high-rising Churrigueresque, terminating in the gable with Our Lady of Sorrows beneath the Crucifixion. Passion angels by his side, Christ’s head tilts, his eyes mournfully shut. He was just expired. And here ends the Baroque in New Spain, in the tranquil town of Dolores Hidalgo, where modern Mexico began.