Paper short abstract:

The structures built in Asian cities under Iberian rule during the Early Modern Period are a prominent sample of cultural transfer. The analysis of the local interpretation of European models will lead to the evaluation of the aesthetic and symbolic input of native communities.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years, research about structures built in cities under the Iberian rule of Asia during the Early Modern Period has rediscovered the role of many local architects. The information about them is limited, but it is obvious that they knew the European tradition and sources. This analysis aims to deepen the knowledge of Western identity in Asia through the examination of structures built by Asian architects. Cultural transfer in fields such as Aesthetics or Symbolism implies several stages. The first one: the contact between Europe and Asia, and the second: the webs within European port-cities of Asia. From the construction of the Church of Saint Paul of Macao to the completion of the Cathedral of Manila, the native contribution was changing, inserting new aesthetic and symbolic parameters that until now had been forgotten in contemporary artistic analysis. Initially, the Asian work was merely overlaid on slightly modified European schemes. By the mid-seventeenth century, many native proposals were part of the whole project, as can be seen in the incorporation of the harigue in Manila. During the eighteenth century, this mestizo tradition began to spread from Goa to Manila, but also in Pondicherry and Batavia. Along with the popularization of elements such as the carepa, other sources, such as European architectural treatises, appeared in Asia. As a consequence, many of these Asian port-cities took on a similar appearance in the late eighteenth century. In some cases, even the unique adaptation of European patterns can be found in cities far apart.