Andean Symbolism in the Mestizo Style Architecture of Highland Peru and Bolivia, 1670-1770

FAIN: FB-51557-05

Gauvin Alexander Bailey
Clark University (Worcester, MA 01610-1400)

This book project reconsiders the carved architectural decoration of the Baroque architecture of Southern Peru and Bolivia, known as the "Mestizo" style owing to its blending of Andean and European Baroque motifs, symbols, and styles. Scholars have seen the "Mestizo" style either as a continuation of pre-Hispanic culture or as a romantic resurrection of the past by a largely Europeanized society. In contrast, this study will show that while contemporary social concerns inspired this return to indigenous symbolism—both on the part of indigenous groups and their colonial overlords—the Mestizo style is also a genuine expression of a visual culture that derived from pre-Hispanic roots but developed, changed, and flourished in the colonial era.

Associated Products

The Andean Hybrid Baroque: Convergent Cultures in the Churches of Colonial Peru (Book)
Title: The Andean Hybrid Baroque: Convergent Cultures in the Churches of Colonial Peru
Author: Gauvin Alexander Bailey
Abstract: The Andean Hybrid Baroque is the first comprehensive study of the architecture and architectural sculpture of Southern Peru in the late colonial period (1660s-1820s), an enduring and polemical subject in Latin American art history. In the southern Andes during the last century and a half of colonial rule, when the Spanish crown was losing its grip on the Americas and Amerindian groups began organizing into activist and increasingly violent political movements, a style of architectural sculpture emerged that remains one of the most vigorous and creative outcomes of the meeting of two cultures. The Andean Hybrid Baroque (also known as “Mestizo Style”), was a flourishing school of carving distinguished by its virtuoso combination of European late Renaissance and Baroque forms with Andean sacred and profane symbolism, some of it originating in the pre-Hispanic era. The Andean Hybrid Baroque found its genesis and most comprehensive iconographical expression in the architecture of Catholic churches, chapels, cloisters, and conventual buildings.
Year: 2010
Primary URL: http://undpress.nd.edu/books/P01392?keywords=andean+hybrid+baroque
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780268022228
Copy sent to NEH?: No

El barroco andino híbrido: culturas convergentes en las iglesias del Sur Andino (Book)
Title: El barroco andino híbrido: culturas convergentes en las iglesias del Sur Andino
Author: Gauvin Alexander Bailey
Editor: Fernando Rosas
Abstract: Spanish translation of "The Andean Hybrid Baroque"
Year: 2018
Publisher: Ediciones El Lector, Arequipa, Peru
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: forthcoming
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Saberes de la conversión: prácticas jesuíticas y escrituras de la alteridad en los confines coloniales (Book Section)
Title: Saberes de la conversión: prácticas jesuíticas y escrituras de la alteridad en los confines coloniales
Author: Gauvin Alexander Bailey
Editor: Guillermo Wilde
Abstract: La contribución jesuita al barroco andino hibrido. Durante el periodo colonial los jesuitas penetraron más profundamente en la América latina indígena que lo que la mayoría de las demás órdenes religiosas fue capaz de hacer o desear, trayendo con ellos un grupo más internacional de misioneros – desde polacos y bohemios hasta sicilianos y suevos – cosa que ninguna orden hizo antes de ellos. Este variopinto grupo de misioneros estableció un dialogo particularmente fructífero con las naciones nativas americanas debido a su política de adaptación a las tradiciones culturales indígenas.
Year: 2011
Publisher: Buenos Aires: Editorial SB
ISBN: 9789871256938

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