The Convento of Yanhuitlan and its Altarpiece: Patronage and the Making of a Colonial Iconography in 16^th-Century Mixteca Alta

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Notes

1. For a general discussion of the economic situation in the Mixteca Alta in the sixteenth century, see Romero Frizzi 1990.

2. Gonzalo de las Casas, encomendero of Yanhuitlan, claimed that his mother introduced the industry in the Mixteca Alta (Casas 1996). See also the so-called Codex Sierra, from the Mixtec-Chocho town of Tejupan, for a detailed account of silk revenues and church-related expenses (León 1933).

3. When the Dominican friars first settled in Yanhuitlan in 1527, they built a church on the same site (a pre-Hispanic platform) where the current church is found. However, they were forced to leave the town a few years later and by the mid-1540s, the structure was in ruins (Jiménez Moreno and Mateos Higuera 1940, 30).

4. See, for example, Mullen 1975.

5. Mullen primarily relied on the Actas (accounts of the Dominican chapter meetings) to assign a preeminent role to Fray Francisco Marín, as an architect, and to the friars Antonio de Serna, Juan Cabrera and Domingo de Aguiñaga for the logistical planning of the construction at these sites. It should be mentioned, however, that these friars led an almost frantic, peripatetic life, which makes it unlikely that they would have any long-standing involvement in any of these regional projects, which spanned over two generations. For a recent hypothetical reconstruction of the construction phases at Yanhuitlan, see González Leyva et al. 2009.

6. The most important document in this respect is AGI, Escribanía da Cámara 162C (Hermann 2008).

7. For references on contemporary assessments of Andrés de Concha, see Tovar de Teresa 1979, 129.

8. The text in Spanish reads: ‘Juan mulato, dorador, esclavo de Andrés de Concha.’

9. To his oeuvre should be added the paintings once attributed to the ‘Maestro de Santa Cecilia’ (Tovar de Teresa 1992, 134). They include Santa Cecilia, La Sagrada Familia con San Juan niño, El martirio de San Lorenzo, and Los Cinco Señores, all in the Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City. Interestingly, none of them is a retablo (the result of teamwork as in the Mixteca and later in Mexico City), but instead rather large single-canvas paintings (so-called ‘unified altarpiece’ derived from Italian Renaissance models).

10. For a review of the relationship between Concha and his patrons, see Sotos Serrano 2007–2008.

11. ‘un sagrario […] de la misma orden manera y traza […] de aquel que está y yo hize para el monasterio de Yanguitlan.’

12. ‘Un hombre pintor por oficio y muy aventajado que aunque no sabe cosa alguna de cantería, ha hecho obra de escultura de buen crédito y se tiene por más inteligente como arquitecto que los demás.’

13. The boy appearing on Codex Yanhuitlan, f. 8v, counting the rosary with the help of a lay Spaniard is likely don Gabriel. He is identified with his Mixtec calendrical name ‘7 Monkey’ and personal name ‘Jaguar con Antorcha’ (Jansen and Pérez Jiménez 2009, 322).

14. A transcription of the testament in Spanish is found in Paillés H. (1993, 37–42). An English translation is in Restall, Sousa, and Terraciano 2005, 106–13.

15. ‘vna joya de oro grande que tiene doce cascabeles con figura de águila. otra joya que tiene pintado un Santiago con seis caxcabeles; otra joya con las armas rreales y siete caxcabeles […] vn caiman con diez caxcabeles de oro y vnos chalchihuites …’ (AGN, Tierras 400, f. 10v) See also Paillés H. 1993, 38–39. Similar depictions are found in the Cuicatec Códice de Tepeucila (Herrera Meza and Ruiz Medrano 1997).

16. ‘Yten tengo por mis bienes un Flor sanctorum y otro librillo chico llamado Contentus Mundi’ (AGN, Tierras 400, f. 11v). These books were also best sellers in Spain and exported in large numbers to the New World. See Leonard 1949.

17. ‘yten aclaro q. estan en mi poder dos joyas q. son dos caxcabeles de oro para bailar de la comunidad de achiutla …’ (AGN, Tierras 400, f. 11v). Transcription in Paillés H. 1993, 39.

18. Francisco de Burgoa (1934, 287) relates that in the 1670s, during religious celebrations in Yanhuitlan, dances were so grand that rows of dancers stretched through the whole nave of the church. So extravagant were they in the use of their green feathers that some people had up to fifty of them hanging from their heads down to their feet.

19. See also the insightful essay by Dean and Leibsohn 2003.

20. This execution seems to be peculiar to New Spain, since Peninsular retablos in the late sixteenth century favor a fully sculptural composition, which occurred only later in New Spain. See, for example, Palomero Páramo 1987–1989.

21. This painting enjoyed continuing popularity in the city, as mentioned by the seventeenth-century painter and theoretician Francisco Pacheco and the eighteenth-century writer and collector Ceán Bermúdez. Cited in Angulo Íñiguez 1951, 244–45.

22. For studies on these murals, see Estrada de Gerlero 1983 and Webster 1997.

23. In New Spain, this paraliturgical tradition was already established by 1582 (Dávila Padilla 1955, 565–66).

24. A few sources report on the use of portable cloths (lienzos) to instruct native people in the Mixteca; they were used as prompts for sermons and public preaching (Burgoa 1934, 287; Jansen 1998).

25. Thematic and analogical pairings, rather than chronological sequencing, are quite common in Christian iconography since the Early Christianity.

26. For a discussion of the different doctrinal books that circulated in the Mixteca in the sixteenth century, see Doesburg and Swanton 2008.

27. Venetian painting was especially popular in the Iberian Peninsula due to the personal taste and patronage of Charles V and Philip II.

28. Concha painted another almost identical version in the Dominican church in Tlahuac in the Federal District (Victoria 1986).

29. The characters depicted on the right were identified as the Spanish monarchs (Charles V and Philip II with their wives) by José Guadalupe Victoria (1986, 34–35). The fact that characters with basically identical features appear in the copy of the same painting in Tlahuac seems to exclude that they may be the Spanish donors of the painting (such as, for example, the encomenderos).

30. For more references, see O'Gorman 1939a.

31. The knight refers to the Legend of the Knight of Cologne, who was miraculously saved by the Virgin of the Rosary when he was about to be killed by his opponents.

32. It was published in Mexico City by Pedro Balli in 1576. See García Icazbalceta 1954, 278–79; León 1891, 76–84.

33. Each Mystery requires the recitation of specific numbers of Pater Noster and Ave Maria prayers, usually either five or ten, leading to a total that could be up to 150 prayers.

34. The pages were cut out very carefully. Nicolás León (1902) said he found them inside the binding of a copy of Maturino Gilberti's Diálogo de Doctrina Cristiana en lengua de Michoacán (1559), but never published them.

35. I was able to examine these books, held in the Biblioteca de Catalunya, through www.books.google.com.

36. In all these texts, the only identified authors are the Dominican friars, although it is impossible that a non-native speaker could have been able to write such texts without the fundamental collaboration of a Mixtec intellectual.

37. See, for example, Frassani 2005.