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.