15 November 2012

Course

HISPANIC AMERICAN ART IN NAVARRA

The baroque festival in the American viceroyalties

D. Víctor Mínguez.
Jaume I University

In contrast to the ceremonies and festivals of the pre-Hispanic indigenous cultures, the Spaniards imposed during the 16th century in the New World the Renaissance festive model , brilliant and refined, based on the humanist culture that had emerged in Italy. Over the course of three hundred years, public celebrations contributed significantly to the cultural westernisation of the new cities. Through the fiesta, the Creole, mestizo and Indian subjects learned and assimilated European artistic languages, their symbolic codes, the ceremonies and rituals of the old continent, their beliefs and their worldview and, at final, they contemplated the internship of power. The metamorphosis that Ibero-American cities underwent during the 17th and 18th centuries on the occasion of each Baroque celebration, transformed by the ephemeral architecture and decorations, the different celebratory models that stood out in the two festive universes - entrances of viceroys, the establishment of ceremonial circuits in each city - as in the case of Mexico City, Puebla or Guadalajara in the viceroyalty of New Spain -, the different celebratory models that stand out in the two festive universes - royal ceremonies, the swearing-in and funeral ceremonies of monarchs among the political celebrations, and the annual Corpus Christi and extraordinary canonisations and beatifications among the religious celebrations -, the establishment of ceremonial circuits in each city - as in the case of Mexico, Puebla or Guadalajara in the viceroyalty of New Spain, or Lima, Potosí and Quito in the Viceroyalty of Peru, the deployment of symbolic elements -allegories, emblems, hieroglyphs, etc.- that support the iconographic programmes that endow the provisional architectures with ideology, the mestizaje resulting from the participation of the indigenous communities in the rituals and festive spectacles, and the decisive role played by books and engravings as literary and graphic accounts of the American Baroque festival, are essential aspects that must be contemplated for their correct research and visual reconstruction.

Manuel de Arellano: Transfer of the image and dedication of the Sanctuary of Guadalupe. 1709. Private collection.

Jura de Fernando VII en la poblacion de Bartolomé de Honda (Colombia). Watercolour. file General of the Indies