The angel with the arquebus - Baroque art in Latin America

UNESCO Courier, Sept, 1987 by Miguel Rojas Mix

The Angel with the Arquebus

ONE of the most typical figures of Latin American baroque art is that of a dandified angel with swan's wings and a broad-brimmed hat with a feather in it. He is richly clad in a garment with lace ruffles and a greatcoat with a gold and silver lining, and he holds a heavy arquebus.

Although found only in Andean painting, the "Angel with the Arquebus' is a supremely representative feature of the baroque art of Latin America, which is at once a magnificent and theatrical form of art, and also a style whose purpose was to induce the Indian to accept the power of God and the king and, through religion and force of arms, to make him part of colonial society. One of its most common themes was the system of mestizaje, or ethnic intermixture, in which people were placed in castes according to their origin and the colour of their skin.

Baroque art in Latin America has left an indelible mark on the individual and on the course of history. Even today, many writers consider themselves to be baroque writers. In fact, baroque art is the art of the New World. The mixture of Iberian (in which there was already an Arab element) with Indian and Black elements produced a distinctive style which some have called Indo-Hispanic, some creole (criollo), or mestizo. In accordance with its regional characteristics, it has also been called "Andean Baroque' and "Poblano Baroque' (after the Mexican town of Puebla).

A proselytizing art, Baroque was the "Bible of the poor', the gospel conveyed to the Indian's mind by images. While the Protestants preached simplicity and modesty, used no images and made no attempt at evangelization, the Council of Trent (1545-1563) took a stand against pagan images, extolled the Eucharist, the Virgin and the Pope, advocated evangelization and the cult of the saints, and laid down rules to the effect that the saints should be portrayed in a setting suggestive of martyrdom and ecstasy. As late as 1782, instructions were still being issued for artists which repeated the Council's resolutions concerning iconography and set forth detailed rules on the degree of nudity that was permissible for each saint, the age at which he should be depicted and the attitude in which he should be shown.

The baroque style was a perfect way of conveying to the Indians the idea that they should accept their new destiny. Classical art in an art of moderation and balance, an art that is concerned with general principles, and seeks what is universal. Its characters are rhetorical figures. Baroque art is the opposite; it expresses what order and moderation cannot express--emotion, grief, ecstasy and faith. Its representation of mystical feelings is close to everyday life, and its examples are taken from actuality. Its Christs are sacred actors in a human tragedy. Carved in wood painted the colour of flesh, with real hair, eyelashes and eyelids, with glass eyes and real clothing, they are more like characters in a waxworks exhibition than scared images. In the "Christ of Sorrows', the subject most frequently treated in Latin America, sorrow is dramatized in a paroxysm of grief. The figure is covered with blood (made of scarlet cochineal and pitch) so that the viewer almost feels the pain of the wounds, and the face and body are distorted by deep suffering. The convincing realism of the pain, which is in no sense symbolic, was intended to show the Indians that their trials were as nothing compared to the sufferings of Christ.

In its early period, Latin American baroque art was thoroughly European in character. Most of the sixteen- and seventeenth-century paintings are by European artists who worked for the New World, or copies of engravings brought from Europe. Yet even then there was a certain intermixture of styles. The plans of the cathedrals were of Roman or Spanish origin, but they were considerably modified in the course of execution. And of course the "plateresque' or Spanish Renaissance style was a product of the intermixture of the mudejar style and late Gothic.

The second period of Latin American Baroque began when local artists emerged. Although ideas and works of art continued to be imported, certain changes and the emphasis placed on certain themes reveal a growing independence. Because of the prevailing taste for pictures that told a story, a touching story, with an element of fantasy, art of this period is often called "primitive' art. The wood carvings known in the Nahuatl language as tequitqui reveal the sensibility of the Indian. The combination of realism and abstraction in these carvings shows the persistence of pre-Columbian ideas.

Iconography was also modified by the Black sensibility. Baroque art (and especially recoco art) used the Black as a decorative feature. In Europe he was a figure holding a lamp, or, in tapestries, a counterpoint to the white horse whose reins he held. In Latin America Blacks were at first depicted as sumptuously liveried servants or as figures wearing motley. In both cases they added a picturesque note. As sensibility is a form of narcissism, an African element was bound to appear in Latin America to lend dignity to the popular image. Its failure to do so would have been an act of self-abnegation by the artists themselves, who were mestizos, mulattoes or Blacks. Thus African gods slipped surreptitiously into the cult of the saints, and in many cases a darker complexion, rendered by the mixture of wax and paint used to depict the flesh of the Virgin or the angels, was enough to make them recognizable as Blacks from Brazil, Colombia or other regions with a large African population.