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Franciscan Art in Peru

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Harold E. Wethey
Harold E. Wethey*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Arm Arbor, Michigan
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Extract

The Important Role of the religious orders in the evangelization and colonization of Spanish America is recognized by all historians. In both Mexico and Peru the Franciscans, Dominicans and Mercedarians were the earliest friars upon the scene. They traveled down from Panama to Tumbez and to San Miguel de Piura in Peru as early as 1531 when the conquest of that country was scarcely under way. Those were heroic days, when men braved the incalculable terrors of the unknown, the hostility of the natives and the rigors of extreme altitudes swept by angry winds and snows in the bitterness of winter.

Information

Type
In Memoriam
Information
The Americas , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , April 1953, pp. 399 - 411
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1953 

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References

1 Ruiz Naharro, Fray Pedro, Merc, O.., “Relación de los hechos de los españoles en el Perú,” Colección de libros y documentos referentes a la historia del Perú (Lima, 1917), VI, 194–197.Google Scholar

2 See “Relación de la conquista del Perú” in Colección de libros y documentos referentes a la historia del Perú (Lima, 1917), vol. V. Francisco de Jerez makes no mention of any Franciscans in his description of the capture of Cajamarca. The legend that the Franciscans were present and that they set up a church dedicated to St. Francis in the Inca Temple of the Sun seems to be apocryphal. See the traditional account in Garcia Irigoyen, Monografía de la diócesis de Trujillo (Trujillo, 1930), I, 202. Francisco de Jerez makes the simple statement that a church was set up in the plaza at Cajamarca and nothing more than that (loc. cit., p. 71). The only friar other than Vicente de Valverde who appeared in these early accounts was the Mercedarian vicar of the army, Juan de Sosa [loc. cit., pp. 113, 217).

3 de Mendoza, Diego, Crónica de la provincia de S. Antonio de los Charcas del orden de N. seráfico P. S. Francisco de las Indias occidentales (Madrid, 1664), pp. 41–42.Google Scholar

4 Chaves, Emilio Lisson, La iglesia de España en el Perú. Colección de documentos (Seville, 1943), vol. I, no. 3 Google Scholar, docs. 97, 107; vol. I, no. 4, docs. 142–146.

5 The first certain appearance of the Franciscans there. y Salinas, Córdoba, Crónica de la religiosísima provincia de los doce apóstoles del Perú (Lima, 1651), I, 546.Google Scholar

6 Wethey, H. E., Colonial Architecture and Sculpture in Peru (Cambridge, 1949)Google Scholar, ch. II; Dorta, Marco in Historia del arte hispánico (Madrid, 1945), I, chs. XV-XVI.Google Scholar

7 Diego de Mendoza, Crónica, pp. 41–44.

8 Wethey, op. cit., pp. 30–32.

9 Loc. cit.

10 de Rivera, Pedro and de Chaves y Guevara, Antonio, “Relación de la ciudad de Guamanga” (1586), Relaciones geográficas de Indias, ed. by Jiménez de la Espada, M. (Madrid, 1881), I, 134–135.Google Scholar The authors give the date 1552 for the foundation of the Franciscan monastery. It is corroborated by Córdoba y Salinas, op.. cit., I, 545.

11 Document in “Un convento franciscano,” Revista histórica, I Lima, 1906), 479.

12 Mariátegui Oliva, Ricardo, San Francisco y la Dolorosa de Cajamarca (Lima, 1947), p. 28 Google Scholar; Rubén Vargas Ugarte, S.J., Ensayo de un diccionario de artífices coloniales (Buenos Aires, 1947), pp. 232–233 Google Scholar; Villanueva, Horacio, “Hacia la ciudad de Cajamarca la grande,” Revista universitaria, XXXVI (Cuzco, 1947), 226–227.Google Scholar

13 García Irigoyen, op. cit., I, 207. For the Open Chapel in Mexico, see Angulo, Diego, Historia del arte hispano-americano (Barcelona, 1945), I, 181–192 Google Scholar; Kubler, George, Mexican Architecture of the Sixteenth Century (New Haven, 1948)Google Scholar, index.

14 Described by Diego de Mendoza, op. cit., p. 49.

15 Harth-terré, Emilio, Artífices en el virreinato del Perú (Lima, 1945), p. 27.Google Scholar

16 For Mexico see Angulo, op. cit.; Kubler, op. cit.

17 For documentation: Wethey, Harold E., “Hispanic Colonial Architecture in Bolivia,” Gazette des Beaux Arts, XL (1952), 197–200.Google Scholar The brief mention in 1551 of a vaulted church at Sucre is too inexplicit to permit inclusion here. It probably refers to San Lázaro, which may have had a vaulted apse, but there is no evidence of a vaulted nave. See Wethey, “Hispanic Colonial …,” pp. 50–51; Lisson Chaves, op. cit., vol. I, no. 4, doc. 163.

18 Wethey, “Hispanic Colonial …,” pp. 53–54; de Mendoza, Diego, op. cit., p. 45.Google Scholar

19 Wethey, Colonial Architecture …, pp. 11, 29–38.

20 Ibid., p. 11.

21 Córdoba y Salinas, op. cit., p. 557; Bernabé Cobo, “Historia de la fundación de Lima,” Monografías históricas sobre la ciudad de Lima (Lima, 1935), I, 240–242.

22 Wethey, Colonial Architecture …, pp. 49–50.

23 Villanueva, Horacio, “El terremoto de 1950 en el Cuzco,” Arte en América y Filipinas, II (1952), 226–227.Google Scholar

24 Wethey, Colonial Architecture …, p. 124.

25 Kubler, op. cit., Il, 341–359.

26 For the Mexican churches: Angulo, Diego, Historia del arte hispano-americano, I, 172, 278.Google Scholar San Agustín and Santo Domingo are dated in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. See Wethey, “Hispanic Colonial …,” pp. 57–58, 194.

27 See Wethey, , Colonial Architecture …, pp. 57–58, 62.Google Scholar The principal façade of the famous Jesuit church in Cuzco has recently been shown to be the work of Diego Martínez de Oviedo, as proved by the original contract of 1664. See Revista del Archivo Histórico del Cuzco, II (1951), 279–281.

28 San Francisco de Lima (Lima, 1945).

29 lbid., pp. 135–149.

30 Harth-terré’s claim that this method of construction was introduced in Santo Domingo at Lima in 1665 (op. cit., p. 77) is difficult to accept. Meléndez, Juan (Tesoros verdaderos de las Indias [Rome, 1681], I, 58)Google Scholar subsequently described the mudejar ceiling of wood. See also Wethey, Colonial Architecture …, p. 268.

31 Enrique Romero de Torres, Provincia de Cádiz (Madrid, 1934), p. 415, figs. 354, 364, 404–406. Recent discoveries date the redecoration of San Lucas at Jerez in 1715–1730. See Corbacho, Antonio Sancho, Arquitectura barroca sevillana (Seville, 1952), p. 173.Google Scholar

32 The glazed tiles used in the cloisters of limeño monasteries, and later the trefoil arches. Wethey, Colonial Architecture …, see mudejar in the index.

33 Loc. cit. The identical chain motive, used decoratively upon the pilasters and vaults of La Merced in Lima at the end of the seventeenth century (1688–1706), appeared on the façade of the library at Jerez de la Frontera (1575) and upon the arches adjoining the Renaissance choir in the mosque at Córdoba as well as in the chapel of the Holy Spirit there (dated by inscription 1569). The Cordoban work seems to date from the mid-sixteenth century. The same chain motive was widely used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in southern Spain, for example: the portal and the vaults of chapels and choir of La Compañía at Granada, the vaults of the Carmelitas Descalzas at Granada, and the chapel of the archiepiscopal palace at La Zubia (Granada).

34 See note 27 above for the document. Wethey, Colonial Architecture …, index, for Diego Martinez’s activity as a sculptor and retablero.

35 For the churches and monasteries of Arequipa, Ayacucho, Trujillo, etc., see Wethey, Colonial Architecture …, and Marco Dorta in Angulo’s Historia de arte hispano-americano, vol. II.

36 Wethey, Colonial Architecture …, p. 129.

37 Ibid., p. 84.

38 The ugly polygonal tower at the left and the stone work at the top of the right wall were added in 1941.

39 Se hizo año de 1628 siendo guardián El P. F. Pedro Gómez Lector Jubilado.” Padre Gómez was guardian in 1627–1630. See Wethey, Colonial Architecture …, p. 196.

40 Diego de Mendoza, Crónica, p. 45.

41 Other fine pulpits in Franciscan churches are those in Arequipa and Trujillo. A work of historic interest is the early seventeenth-century pulpit in San Francisco, Trujillo, in which San Francisco Solano preached. In the same church is a rare baptismal font of bronze, dated 1670, which originally stood in Trujillo Cathedral. See Wethey, Colonial Architecture ….

42 A notarial contract of 1631 names the sculptor as Sebastián Martínez. Padre Mendoza’s attribution of the choir stalls in his chronicle of 1664 to a Franciscan, Padre Luis Montes, is somewhat contradictory. The solution seems to be that Padre Montes repaired them circa 1650–1651. See Wethey, Colonial Architecture …, pp. 186–187.

43 Ibid., pp. 190–193.

44 A modern inscription in the choir reads: “Se acabó esta sillería el año de 1679 y se rehizo para esta iglesia en 1875.” Reproduced in Documentos de arte colonial sudamericano. El arte religioso y suntuario en Chuquisaca (Buenos Aires, 1948). Introduction by Martín Noël, pp. xix-xx, pis. 17–22.

45 Wethey, Colonial Architecture …, p. 185, figs. 259–264. Certain motives by themselves, the swags of fruit, the half-length female figures and arabesques are used on most of the Peruvian choir stalls.

46 Gento Sanz, op. cit., pp. 159–167.