We are here in front of murals in the cloister of the convento of San Agustin de Acolman near Mexico City
A convento was a place that was established
soon after the conquest to begin to convert the natives and the first people to come over to do that with the Franciscans
but then the Dominicans and the Augustinians. This one is an Augustinian convento
and the Augustinians first arrived in
1533. This convento was established shortly thereafter. The murals that we're seeing are made sometime between the
1560s and 1580s
and they're wonderfully preserved. The iconography that we're seeing here is connected to the concerns of the mendicant friars
who are coming over from Spain to help in the evangelization process.
These conventos were often placed atop or near to previous important sites,
and they are intended to convert these massive indigenous
populations with usually only a few friars to convert and to teach the indigenous populations about
Christianity, which is why we see in the murals or other art forms this didactic quality
It's really about teaching
individuals to
understand Christian dogma. That makes sense in this period after the Council of Trent. The Catholic Church is trying to reform
advocating a clarity of message because this was the time of the Protestant Reformation.
And I think we get a good sense of that here in these murals. They're simple in composition
They're very focused on a few key figures.
What's really remarkable about them is that they're primarily in black and white. That seems so odd,
but there's a perfectly reasonable explanation.
And that is that the artists who are here, the models that they had to work from, were black and white prints.
After the Spanish conquest in 1521 with the need for
Christians subject matter, the need for teaching Christianity, you don't have the transportation of large-scale
objects, and so what is more portable than a small lightweight print. There's this immediate need for images to teach this
Indigenous population about Christianity. As we stand and look at these really beautiful
murals one of the things that's easy to forget about is the incredible violence that's occurring at the same time because
While these are being painted, millions of people who were here before the Spanish came are being wiped out by diseases
Which would of course been traumatic as entire families are being wiped out but also of concern to the Friars who were here
Who were feeling this urgent need to convert people before they were killed because of these smallpox epidemics.
In some instances the Friars were the most sympathetic to the indigenous population,
particularly in instances where friars feel that the indigenous
population is being treated like children or not even like humans
the Pope said the indigenous population that the Spanish had encountered had Souls and therefore should be
converted and actually treated like humans versus something lesser than. We've got a whole cycle of the passion the suffering of Christ
leading up to the crucifixion. They are murals on both levels of this cloister in the convento,
and while typically this area is reserved for the friars who are living here, it is possible that on occasion
indigenous individuals or groups were being led through this area particularly because there is this inherently
didactic quality to this narrative cycle of the passion and even if the indigenous population is not being brought through here regularly
they did paint these so these are all created by indigenous artists.
To me these look like they were painted by artists who had been schooled for decades in the styles of the Renaissance and the
Northern Renaissance in northern mannerism that were typical of Europe in the 16th century
We see a careful attention to the anatomy of the body, a sense of perspective, an illusion of space,
modeling of the body; these are things that artist trained
decades to learn how to do which is remarkable because these were started sometime in the 1560s were only
40 years after the Spanish conquest and you didn't have these types of
perspectival systems or this attention to modeling.
These artistic strategies were not seen prior to the conquest. A great example of that as we stand here before the scene of the flagellation
would be the floor upon which Christ is standing is a
grid floor and it's receding into the background giving us a solution of the recession into space
and the foreshortening on the feet of christ this attention to the body and the modeling with light and shadow. It's remarkable how quickly
European Renaissance
artistic strategies were being mastered and displayed here.
Now we've moved to another corner of the second floor of the cloister, and we're looking at a beautiful image of the crucifixion and
another image caddy quarter to that of the Last Judgement. So we have a typical Last Judgement scene here
We have Christ on the orb of the earth at the top. We see angels blowing trumpets all the standard iconography.
Below this the Damned in Hell being tortured, and we can identify
specific prints that were being used here because they so closely resemble the scenes here
and so we know that a lot of the prints coming over from Europe to the Americas are coming from
northern Europe making their way to Seville in Spain and then from there across the Atlantic to
Mexico. And Last Judgement scenes were common and conventos. The Last Judgement is
frequently depicted in the 16th century and there is a reason for that with the
conquest, with the conversion, or the attempt to evangelize peoples of the Americas there were
Millenarian concerns or this belief that the indigenous populations needed to be converted in order for the Last Judgement to occur.
And so this idea that if they could convert these people, the last peoples on the earth they imagine,
this would bring the second coming and this thousand-year reign of Christ on earth.
Imagine the zeal that they felt in this mission. What they were attempting to do is actually establish a New Jerusalem in the Americas.