Content area
This dissertation examines how art functioned in the context of religious processions to allow Indigenous groups and others to negotiate Spanish hegemony across viceregal Spanish America. It concentrates on three case studies within the period 1570 to 1630: a mural painting that represents and memorializes a penitential procession celebrated at the Monastery of San Miguel in Huejotzingo c.1580 (near present-day Puebla, Mexico); the miraculous painting of the Virgin of Chiquinquirá (in present-day Colombia), carried in a procession held in 1587 to stop an epidemic; and the ephemeral triumphal arches created for a procession to celebrate the canonization of Saint Ignatius of Loyola in Potosí in 1624 (present-day Bolivia). The three case studies have essential things in common: artworks were central factors in or after each procession, they were all from the period of colonial consolidation, and each took place in an influential region of one of Spain's American viceroyalties.
As examined through the examples included in this dissertation, there were three central physical scenarios where religious processions took place in Spanish America: architectural complexes (particularly monasteries), rural landscapes, and urban townscapes. My analysis focuses on the dynamic relationship between the artworks, participants, the processions themselves, and the physical setting where all three elements came together for the events. Based on this premise, I seek to address three main questions: First, how did artworks help constitute Spanish colonial society, and how did such society help constitute artworks? In other words, what was the interplay between artworks and colonial society? Second, how did the surrounding architecture, landscapes, and urban settings impact artworks' meaning or function during processions? And third, how did Indigenous and mestizo groups use processions to their advantage? By focusing on these questions, I argue that the rituals and their specific surroundings gave the artworks deeper meaning. Furthermore, the interplay between processions and the physical space where they took place may have helped participants, particularly Indigenous groups, publicly show religious devotion and claim social positioning in the colonial society. In so doing, this dissertation highlights the role of art during religious processions in negotiating the economic, social, and political life of multi-ethnic communities in Spanish America across viceroyalties.