The Indian Conquest of Catholic Art: The Mughals, the Jesuits, and Imperial Mural Painting

TLDR: The Encounter as discussed by the authors argues that the art of early colonial Latin America was often the product of a partnership between indigenous and conquest civilizations and not merely a provincial variation on European models, and that Amerindian artisans perpetuated pre-Conquest iconographies, ideals, and rituals in their Catholic art commissions.

Abstract: The EncounterRecent scholarship has acknowledged that the art of early colonial Latin America was often the product of a partnership between indigenous and conquest civilizations, and not merely a provincial variation on European models.1 Either covertly or with the tacit encouragement of their European employers, Amerindian artisans perpetuated pre-Conquest iconographies, ideals, and rituals in their Catholic art commissions. Nahua artists in sixteenth-century New Spain, for example, introduced pre-Conquest glyphs and styles into conventual mural cycles, making it possible for them not only to understand the new faith on their own terms but even to assert their own identity or resist church authority. Nevertheless, among the peoples of the former Aztec and Inka empires—along with other groups under Spanish rule from Hispaniola to Luzon—conquest was the reality. The imported civilization had the upper hand, and the art of these regions became increasingly dominated by European forms and meanings.