Art historians have recently been at the forefront of colonial Latin-American religious historiography. They have produced innovative studies of architecture, images, prints, and paintings that deepen our understandings of the religious sensibilities of the region's multi-racial populace. Stanfield-Mazzi breaks new ground in this literature by examining cloth, particularly the many forms of cloth used to adorn churches, altars, and clergy. To my knowledge, she has produced the only monograph to date on this topic for colonial Latin America.

Sandfield-Mazzi reminds us that cloth played a prominent role in the liturgy. Not only did priests and their assistants don several layers of liturgical garments, but tapestries hung on church walls, various cloths covered altars and liturgical instruments, and carpets adorned chapel floors. In fact, in some churches, decorative cloths probably composed most of their adornment, and, for all churches, these items required significant expenditures.

Stanfield-Mazzi organizes her investigation by material: one chapter each on silks, embroidery, featherwork, tapestries, and painted cotton. Silks and embroidery were used throughout the Americas and Europe, whereas the other media were produced within particular regions and periods of colonial Spanish America. These latter three chapters allow the author to examine “the hybrid or mestizo qualities of church cloths” (3). Cloth's fragility, however, renders a comprehensive analysis impossible. Nonetheless, Stanfield-Mazzi closely examines the few examples that remain (mostly housed in museums) and, when possible, contextualizes their use and production with archival documentation.

Silk was the liturgical cloth par excellence. This stemmed from its luminosity and association with luxury. Churches in Europe had preferred silk since late antiquity, and Spanish clergy carried this preference to the Americas. This propensity for silk only increased over the colonial period as clergy adopted standards of liturgical decency promoted in the Tridentine era by European Church leaders such as Charles Borromeo. In fact, most liturgical cloths used in colonial Spanish America were silks. Despite an attempt to produce silk in sixteenth-century southern Mexico, silk production never developed locally. Therefore, almost all silks used in the Spanish Americas came from Spain and, after Spain conquered the Philippines and thus facilitated trade with Asia, from China.

Like silks, embroidery had a long history in the European Church, and Spanish clergy transferred this practice to the Americas. But unlike silks, embroidery was produced locally. An embroiders’ guild began in Mexico City within twenty-five years of the Aztec Empire's fall. This association was open to both Spanish and Indigenous men, though the latter at a subordinate status. These local embroiders mostly worked on imported silks. Stanfield-Mazzi traces four developments in style over the colonial period. The al romano style of the sixteenth century featured figurative designs. A Baroque style from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries used high relief work in gold and silver thread. At more or less the same time, a floral style worked with silk thread flourished. Finally, in the last third of the eighteenth century, a sparer neo-classical style emerged.

Featherworks were produced exclusively in Mexico and seem to have been concentrated in the sixteenth century. Mesoamerican artists had produced featherworks for centuries before European contact, and their works were destined for noble warrior costumes and religious ceremonies. Soon after the conquest and under the tutelage of Franciscan and Augustinian friars, native artisans began to produce Christian feather paintings and liturgical vestments. Stanfield-Mazzi dedicates much of this chapter to a careful analysis of the famous Mass of St. Gregory featherwork painting produced in 1539 for Pope Paul III and seven bishops’ mitres produced in the sixteenth century. The existence of one featherwork mitre and chasuble from the eighteenth century, however, indicates that this art form continued, though likely at a reduced scale, in late-colonial Mexico.

The tapestries Stanfield-Mazzi analyzes all come from sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Peru. Andean weavers had created elaborate designs for centuries before European contact, but they produced apparel and mostly woven geometric patterns rather than figurative representations. The elaborate tunics they produced were luxury items destined for Inca nobles. Their techniques and the luxurious associations of their tunics were transferred to the liturgical cloths they created after the conquest. Unlike European tapestry work, Andean cloths generally did not decorate church walls. Rather, they were used as altar coverings and carpets. This art form, however, declined by 1625 as the Indigenous population plummeted due to Old World diseases and as Chinese silks became more available.

Painted cotton also was exclusive to Peru, but all the surviving examples come from the eighteenth century. Because this type of cotton work reflects pre-contact practices, the author suspects that Andean artisans—and in this artform, Indigenous women were prominent—produced them before the eighteenth century. The Andean cottons resemble European Lenten hangings, or large cloth screens depicting scenes from Christ's Passion used to conceal altars during Holy Week. But unlike European cloths, which were painted, Andean cottons were dyed, a pre-contact technique. Also, Andean cloths featured borders with curvilinear designs that Stanfield-Mazzi argues hark back to pre-contact conceptions of sami, or a sacred, life-giving energy that flowed through the cosmos. In this way, the eighteenth-century Andean cottons framed the Passion within Andean ideas of the numinous.

Stanfield-Mazzi analysis shines when she closely examines individual pieces—gorgeously reproduced in full color—carefully elaborating on their production and iconography. I do wish, however, that the author had more often broadened the focus to place this detailed analysis of individual examples into a larger historiographical context. This lack of engagement with a broader historiography and the book's highly compartmentalized organization make it read more like a collection of essays or an exhibit catalog than a monograph building toward an overarching argument. Nonetheless, its original subject matter and detailed analysis make it valuable to scholars interested in material culture and the liturgy.