Paper short abstract:

This paper intends to examine the confluence of Christian art with the religious arts of India between the 16th and the 18th centuries, as well as the awareness of European missionaries on the artistic and religious traditions in India.

Paper long abstract:

In the sixteenth-century the Portuguese established a permanent connection between Europe and Asia giving place to an unprecedented cultural, religious and artistic exchange.

In Europe the Catholic Church saw the opportunity to spread the greatness of Christendom in all parts of the world. Therefore, the missionaries had a major role in cultural, religious and artistic exchange, regarding that they enacted as diplomatic envois to the imperial courts as well as they dealt with local communities preaching Christianity or taking care of the women, the infirm and the orphans.

Facing the lack of understanding on Catholic faith by the Asian cultures the missionaries used images as a powerful tool to illustrate the mysteries of Christianity and make easier the understanding of the Western teachings.

This paper examines the impact of Christian imagery in the context of the European missions in India as a result of the western perspective on the cultural, religious and artistic values in Asia. It will focus on the missionary's accounts about Hindu and Buddhist imagery and their resemblance with Christian iconography; how the missionaries take advantage of a considerable knowledge on the local cultural background, the religious practices and the ground rules of Hinduism and Buddhism, to replace, imitate or dissimulate local iconography introducing or 'translating' Christian symbols and narratives. Finally, I will evaluate the different levels of cultural and artistic permeability to Christian art accordingly with the political power.

Paper short abstract:

Like Portuguese Jesuit architectural projects in Goa, commissions in Kerala and Tamil Nadu reflect unusual adaptations of Renaissance devotional art. This paper will explore the ways travel between South India and the west marked the production of art in these peripheral missionary locales.

Paper long abstract:

The miraculous translation of saints' bodies—such as St. James to Compostela, or St. Mark to Venice—catalyzed the formation of important Medieval pilgrimage routes. Papal recognition of these sites confirmed the final, western resting places of these relics and solidified the visual construction of the saints' lives in pictorial terms. Unlike these well-known examples, however, the story of the relics of St. Thomas Apostle reveals an understudied chapter in cultic devotion. Seventy-two years after the death of Christ, his dubious apostle, Thomas, was martyred in Mylapore, a present-day suburb of Chennai. This event catalyzed centuries of Christian piety in the region and fostered the production of devotional objects which merge Christian and Hindu iconographies in surprising ways. The arrival of Western travelers from Italy and Portugal further complicated the indigenous hybridization of so-called Thomasan Christianity, and their accounts shed light on a little-studied chapter in the history of cultic devotion outside the conventional geographic parameters of the Renaissance. Like many of the major Jesuit missionary architectural projects in places like Goa, Thomasan commissions reflect unusual adaptations of Renaissance devotional art, but unlike their better-known counterparts in Goa, reliquaries, monumental crosses, and St. Thomas churches have not been adequately incorporated into the art historical discourse. Employing newly acquired photographic documentation from Thomas churches in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, this paper will explore the ways in which travel between South India and the west marked the production of art in these peripheral missionary locales.

Paper short abstract:

The wrongly wrote Jesuit emblem in frescos of Guia Church in Macau can not be simply interpreted as Chinese customes. To Chinese people in early modern time, the emblem is more like a pattern than a language.

Paper long abstract:

Guia Church was created no later than 1622, The walls and ceiling of Guia Church are painted with frescos, among which the Jesuit emblem is wrote in reverse order: SHI. Some may say that the painter was Chinese, who wrote these letters according to Chinese customs (from right to left), but the logic premise of this view is that the painter knew that the IHS is a kind of language, so I have reservations about this view.

The wrongly written Jesuit emblem in Guia Church is no a solitary case. In the collection of Santa Casa da Misericórdia in Macau we find many porcelain with Jesuit emblem, among which quite a few are wrongly written. Some wrote the letter "J" as "τ", some wrote the three letters in the way of mirror image, what is more, some wrote the letter "S" like "3". These Strangely written Jesuit emblems make me think about the problem: how did Chinese in early modern time make of the Jesuit emblem?

More likely, Early Chinese had no idea of western language, nor did they know the Jesuit emblem is an abbreviation of three words. To them, the emblem is more like a pattern than a language, and they use it as a decorative design. This hypothesis is supported by the truth that nothing is remained intact except the letter "H". Why? I think most likely is that "H" is in symmetric form and is in the middle place, and symmetry is the nature of pattern.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing upon the corpus of the Jesuit Giovanni Niccolo, S.J.’s workshop in Japan, this paper traces how the conscious manipulation of mimetic translation techniques for religious art changed a tool for conversion into an instrument for expulsion in the post-Tridentine context of encounter.

Paper long abstract:

Press, pressing, pressure. Religious art, and indeed the printing press, have long relied upon mimetic imitation, and nowhere was this more true than in the forum of global encounter, where the ability to reproduce exact likeness in multiples begun in the object was intended to reach completion in the converted person. Even books and folio prints carried over the high seas by Portuguese merchant and Jesuit missionary simply followed this tried and true model of religious copying begun in acheiropoeitoi objects and fostered by workshop practice. The first results of Brother Giovanni Niccolo, S.J.'s workshop in Japan inverted the standard order of print after painting to produce eloquent devotional art after Netherlandish prints brought to Japan — Madonna and Childs, Salvator Mundis, portraits of Saints, idyllic landscapes and monumental map screens. Soon enough, however, mimetic imitation's initial positive connotations were quickly recalibrated in the face of the politics of religious encounter as Christianity came under duress. Prints and plates began to be appropriated as fumi-e, or bronze reliefs cast for inquisition and apostasy on pain of life. The brief, but high-quality output of the Jesuit workshop in Japan suggests that notions of change, chance and failure hold the promise of rethinking strategies of early modern encounter, just as considering the trials and tribulations of mimetic imitation on a global stage adds an important overlooked chapter to the role of copying in European religious art.

Paper short abstract:

Barreto’s 1591 Japanese miscellany has a “Dialogue on the Instruments of the Passion” which shows sophisticated religious (mis)understandings: poetics learned from Japanese ballads create a trance state of aesthetic engagement, while features of Japanese grammar sabotage classic Catholic tropes.

Paper long abstract:

Manoel Barreto's 1591 Japanese miscellany contains a "Dialogue on the Instruments of the Passion" which shows what sophisticated religious (mis)understandings the Jesuits and their converts had achieved after a decade of Valignano's cultural policies. Featuring the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene, the dialogue sublimates maternal and erotic energies in turn while fetishizing the usual series of violent Instruments, but it appropriates rhetoric from the martial ballads which the Jesuits were reading for language study: because Japanese grammar has no person, skillful phrasing can cause subjectivity to shift kaleidoscopically with the flow of the text, and the Virgin's opening speech shows especial skill in this regard. However, honorifics are the primary indicator of verbal subjects, so the usual double-entendre on filho "son (of God / of Mary)" misfires: Jesus is to the Virgin both superior and inferior. This failure is supplemented with Portuguese marginalia and catachresms like uaga uonco Deus "my (honored) Child, Deus". Mary Magdalene's sado-masochism is presented with less success: the rich Japanese tradition of erotic double-entendre was apparently unknown here, for excessive literalism frequently produces comedy. The second half of the piece runs through the Instruments again in clinical fashion—cataloguing them as dōgu "implements", the word used for art objects in the tea ceremony—and here, the word muchi "whip" is replaced with disciplina, as if that word meant "whip": apparently a practice of self-flagellation, a prominent feature of seventeenth-century Japanese Christian protest, was already being taught as part of this devotion.

Paper short abstract:

The ambiguity between the creatures of the grotesque and the local iconographies observable in Iberian colonial art from India to America, although often read as a form of indigenous resistance, might be instead the result of a strategy of the Church to visually associate “idolatry” with “savagery”.

Paper long abstract:

We often read that the hybrid creatures that ornate the baroque pulpits of Portuguese churches in India are inspired from Hindu iconography. Nevertheless, if many of those creatures might indeed derive from it, many others descend from the European grotesque as it was copied from prints. A similar situation is observable in the sacred art of the Iberian viceroyalties of America (16th - 18th c.), where hybrid figures inspired from the grotesque are easily mistaken for indigenous motifs.

Speaking either of India or Latin America, many historians have tended to interpret this phenomenon as a form of resistance to the Iberian colonizer by opposing whatever appeared to be "naïf" or fantastic in colonial art to the supposed "rationality "of European canons. Paradoxically, this point of view probably derives from the well-known colonialist posture that intends to depict every colonized subject as irrational and unruly.

We will ask ourselves if this situation could have been the result of a long term iconographical strategy initiated in the 16th century by the Catholic Church, who might have consciously mingled elements of the "idolatrous" religions she was fighting with the European grotesque, where references to the unbounded universe of Pan abound. One of the main goals of this strategy would have been to achieve that the religions of the conquered peoples of Asia and America under the Spanish and Portuguese Crowns would become visually associated to wantonness, bestiality and deceptiveness in order to justify the desire of the Church to subdue and abolish them.

Paper short abstract:

This paper deals with the functional transformation of Jesuit church facades built in Macao and Beijing during the early modern period. Special Attention will be paid to their hybrid architectural forms and the visual strategies of Jesuits used to enhance their reputation in certain regions.

Paper long abstract:

Concerning the visual art, it should be emphasized that the Jesuits are among the most flexible and practical patrons in the world. Indeed, observations on churches in missionary or colonial regions suggest that their search for an unique style and a corporate identity was often, compared to their desire for 'success' in the missionary work, degraded to secondary interest.

Primary focus of this paper will be paid to the comprehensive comparison of the façade of St. Paul in Macao and that of Nantang (Portuguese College Church) in Beijing, which represented the heyday of Jesuit ecclesiastical art in both regions, while the political circumstances and artistic conditions of both differed to a large extent from each other. Following Evonne Levy's (2004) argument that Jesuit art was de facto an art of propaganda, I will first investigate the structural transformation of façade in both regions, and on the base of that, try to provide reasonable answers to the relevant questions such as how could separated architectural and ornamental components originated from different missionary and colonial regions be integrated into a whole by applying Lothar Ledderose's (1999) theory of modules and modular production.

Besides this, in the context of Western and Chinese cultural and artistic encounters I will raise question of how Jesuits flexibly transformed the function of their church façades from 'propaganda' to 'representation' and modified them by appropriating the local culture.

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to discuss the way that The Historic and Artistic National Heritage Institute - IPHAN -, in Brazil, had taken the work of Frei Agostinho de Santa Maria - 'Santuário Mariano' - as an kind of visual source to the Brazilian Heritage.

Paper long abstract:

The Historic and Artistic National Heritage Institute was created in 1937, during the 'Estado Novo', a in Brazil. Monuments, buildings, collections and objects started do be catalogued, classified and, at the same time, some of the most important federal museums was established and had started their collections.

In this context, this paper aims to present some of the IPHAN's restoration strategies dealing with a visual culture that was toking place by the official Brazilian culture. At this perspective, some collections in the interior of these federal museums were taken by IPHAN to establish and place a natural and crystalized reference about the past. As the same, 'Santuário Mariano e história das imagens milagrosas de Nossa Senhora', wroted by Frei Agostinho de Santa Maria during 1707 and 1723, was taken as an important reference not only to the research, catalogation and classification of the monuments but also important to the restoration of the monuments.

This paper is about to discuss the work of Frei Agostinho, placing the problem of (mis-) understanding. A problem that author had advised, saying that some misunderstandings were inevitable because, as he explains, he hadn't visited all the sanctuaries. In other perspective, Santuário Mariano' was taken by IPHAN as a kind first 'visual' source of the Brazilian heritage or as the proto-geneses of this kind of source. Thus, trough the reading of this work, some (mis-)understandings could be taking place in the interior of the IPHAN.

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Paper short abstract:

This communication will analyse the existing theories on the problematic of the origins of elliptical plans in Portuguese religious architecture. By analysing several case studies, it is expected the recognition of eventual misunderstandings, strengthening other aspects and pointing new directions.

Paper long abstract:

The elliptical plan used in several religious buildings in the 17th and 18th centuries is considered one of the great exponents of Baroque architecture. Churches and chapels with these characteristics indeed exist in the space of Portuguese cultural influence, having been studied by several scholars under multiple aspects. In fact, this kind of planimetry in some Brazilian churches is still subject of numerous studies. Despite these studies, the question on the origins of elliptical plan in Portuguese religious architecture remains notoriously inconclusive: from the influences directly suffered from the Papal basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican until the affiliations in the (frequently mentioned) images of Augsburg representing churches with elliptical plans, and still mentioning the important role of architect Nicolau Nasoni, several theories have been carefully followed, promoting a vast debate in academic world.

This communication intends to analyse existing theories on the problematic of the origins of elliptical plan in Portuguese religious architecture, pointing also some new directions by analysing several case studies in Brazil and Portugal, as well as in Italy, Spain and Central-Europe. By comparing the existing theories along with other topics - like for instance the use of polygonal oblong plans in religious buildings -, it is expected to accomplish a step forward in the knowledge on this thematic, by recognizing some eventual misunderstandings, by strengthening some specific aspects, and by pointing new directions of investigation.

Paper short abstract:

This paper proposes the new idea of the space of correlation as an analytical tool to study the cross-cultural encounter between early modern central African and European religious thought, visual forms, and political systems, from which emerged Kongo Christianity.

Paper long abstract:

Focusing on the advent and evolution of Kongo Christian visual culture between the sixteenth and eighteenth century, this paper explores the idea of the space of correlation as a new tool to approach and analyze cross-cultural religious and artistic encounters. It argues that the elite of the kingdom used narratives, artworks, and visual culture at large as conceptual spaces of correlation within which they recast heterogeneous local and foreign ideas and forms into newly interrelated parts of the evolving worldview that was Kongo Christianity. I use the idea of the space of correlation to outline how the newly minted Kongo Christian discourse did not merely combine disparate elements, but possessed the transformative power to redefine them into the constitutive and intimately correlated parts of a new system of religious thought, artistic expression, and political organization.

Finally, this paper examines how the new idea may allow us to examine a range of phenomena that have defied the analytical potential of otherwise useful notions such as transculturation, third-space, or the once-favored term of hybridity.