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Salzillo. This fact heralded the gradual decline of the sculpture workshops in Lima in the second half of the 18th Century and the subsequent predominance of religious images coming out of Quito.
The cultural climate in Cusco was not favourable to the spread of the rococo which was dominant in Lima. Two works which could be seen as weak echoes of this style were the altar of San Isidro Labrador in the Compañía, which had come from San Agustín—and the ‘transparent’ altar in Cusco cathedral a work filled with static rocaille ornamentation. The taste for altars covered with mirrors had far greater success, such as that of Santa Clara Monastic church, put together in 1776 to cover the former Salomonic style altar.
NEO-CLASSICIST “REFORMS”
With the lack of a local academic movement it fell to the Presbyterian Matías Maestro to impose Neo-classicism, a style which was opposed in essence to the colonial tradition and which, for that reason, found little response in the rest of the country except in isolated cases such as in Arequipa. Trained in Cádiz and Vitoria under the influence of Olaguíbel, Maestro took holy orders in Lima and found the protection of the archbishop González de la Reguera. His “reforms” in the churches of the capital took on iconoclastic overtones, implying as they did, the destruction of the great former altarpieces to be replaced with variations on a single classical prototype.
From the intervention of Maestro in the cathedral from 1799, there remain the high altar in the form of a pavilion and the pulpit whose academic purity served as a model for others in Lima. In the years that followed Maestro installed the altarpieces of San Pedro, La Merced and San Francisco which repeat the theme of a single structure supported by Corinthian or multiple columns, spacious higher deck and decorated with medallions and garlands. The severe correction of the designs of this reformer left its traces on local sculptors such as Jacinto Ortiz or Juan Mesía who began, so it would seem, under Maestro’s orders. Their work reveals a certain imaginative frigidity, exaggerated by the scarcity of materials during those times of general crisis and the wars of independence.
It is obvious that the many of the “renovated” altarpieces kept their former images not only due to continued devotions but because the iconography of holy sculpture had not experienced major variations. This can be seen with the contemporary sculptors who worked occasionally in the service of his decorative projects. Minor figures like Valeriano and José Voto represent the transition towards a peripheral neo-classicism which was trying to reconcile itself with the traditions of sculpture through a purer refinement of line.
THE PERSISTENCE OF THE REGIONAL ANDEAN TRADITIONS
At the same time in the Andean region there were instances of regional styles asserting themselves. An interesting case is that of Huamanga, a city halfway between Cusco and the capital which had become the centre of production of images and reliefs carved using the soft local alabaster. These pieces were made in local workshops and then exported in large quantities throughout the viceroyalty until they became one of the most characteristic manifestations of colonial sculpture. Their small dimensions and low cost helped them become the favourite domestic devotional images, be it as images of Christ or the Virgin or as one of the multitude of figures which went to make up the nativity scenes. Later the introduction of mythological themes, allegorical or profane, reflected the new tastes of the Enlightenment, and the stone of the “huamangas” made cheap substitutes for the prestigious European porcelain.
For their part the sculptors centred around the Cusco district of San Blas continued looking for formulas which corresponded more and more to popular sensibilities. The “Spaniards’” guilds could do nothing to regulate these practices though they made repeated efforts to do so. Using cheap materials such as paste and cloth the image- makers made patronal effigies for a rural clientele or nativity figures, incorporating local customs and characters. There were also “altareros” in charge of making the street altars which were filled with images for Corpus Christi. These artists are the predecessors of the popular contemporary sculptors who gather at the end of each year for the Christmas fair Santurantikuy in the main square of Cusco.
saint rosa of lima and the politics of latin american sainthood
Ramón Mújica Pinilla
Strictly speaking, the hagiographies or lives of the saints, are not true historical biographies. Apart from summarising and legitimising the process of beatification and canonisation, they were intended to “delight and instruct”—delectare et docere—the Catholic faithful with their accounts of the admirable virtues of those who, with the help of the Holy Spirit, attempted to follow the path to perfection as preached by Christ and his disciples. For the contemporary researcher, nevertheless, a hagiography is still an inexhaustible historical, sociological and anthropological source that can be critically evaluated without the need to get too deep into the thorny issue of the natural or supernatural basis for the supposed saint’s visionary powers or ability to work miracles. It is not for the historian to consider the scientific evidence for “miracles” but to investigate the various models of sainthood, how these were perceived and/or the categories of analysis used by past hagiographers. The short life of Saint Rosa of Lima (1586–1617) is a particularly illustrative example of how the quest for spiritual perfection can have a religious, political and social dimension that is difficult to separate from the cultural context of the saint’s life in this world.
According to the Franciscan chronicler Buenaventura Salinas y Córdoba, in less than a hundred years from Francisco Pizarro founding the City of the Kings, Capital of the Kingdoms (sic) of Peru, Lima had more than 40 Dominican, Franciscan, Augustine, Mercedarian and Jesuit churches, celebrating more than 300,000 masses. This is without counting the many nuns in convents—more than 10% of the city’s population wore a habit (Brading 1991, 351). The wealth of its churches led convent chroniclers to describe Lima as a new, Latin American Rome (in the sense of it as a kind of Monastery-City) whilst the famous University of San Marcos meant that the city was the “New Salamanca”. Between 1614—three years prior to the death of Saint Rosa—and 1630, the population of Lima grew by 25,454 to 40,000 inhabitants and there were so many processes of beatification being considered in Rome to evaluate the lives of these servants of God that had died in the City of the Kings or the greater Peru that Francisco Antonio Montalvo affirmed in 1683 that with so much blessedness, one could write a letania limana or Litany of Lima (Montalvo 1683, 67).
Saint Rosa herself, who was confirmed by the Spanish prelate Saint Toribio Alfonso de Mogrovejo (1538–1606)—named archbishop of Lima in 1579, was to become the friend of the Dominican mulatto from Lima, Saint Martín de Porras (1579–1639), and would closely follow the missionary work carried out in Peru by the Spanish Franciscan Saint Francisco Solano (1549–1610), famous for the sermons that he gave, crucifix held high, in Lima’s Plaza Mayor where he denounced the sins of the city, preaching that these would be punished with earthquakes and firestorms.
Paintings from the period tend to represent Saint Rosa as a nun from the order of Saint Domingo de Guzmán, and yet in fact she never entered any religious order, remaining a laywoman. This would why she always lived either with her parents or with the Maza-Uzátegui family (today, the Convent of Saint Rosa of the Nuns in Lima), where she spent the last three years of her life. Like the Begardas (Franciscan heretics) from the late Middle Ages, the beateril—loosely translatable as “saintly”—profession sought to return to the vita apostólica of the early Christian community via extreme devotional asceticism that trod a middle line between convent life and the secular world outside. (Huerga, 1978, 377). These lay sisters practiced perpetual chastity and voluntary poverty, living on the alms they were given and manual work. Aware of the dangers and temptations inherent on this spiritual path, Saint Rosa received a number of visions, after which she understood the necessity to give her sisters a fixed set of rules, and founded a Dominican convent dedicated to Saint Catherine of Sienna (1347–1380), in which she would only accept the white veil in order to help in the infirmary. Due to her youth, however, Saint Rosa was denied permission to practice officially as a Dominican tertiary, and so in 1606 she received the habit in a private and informal ceremony
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