La Santísima Trinidad, Tower and Houses of Indians

1731-1768

Prímoli, Juan Bautista, S.J. (architect) (1673-1747)

Trinidad, PAR

This stone building forms part of an enormous mission complex in Paraguay, in the basin of the Río de la Plata. Designed by Jesuits and built by the Guaraní, the complex of La Santísima Trinidad (The Holy Trinity) once housed several thousand indigenous people. One of many buildings at the site, this structure provided living and working quarters for the indigenous inhabitants of La Santísma Trinidad.

This is one of several buildings erected to house indigenous people at La Santísima Trinidad and there may have been as many nine other housing structures. Known as the “Indian Houses,” these structures sometimes included workshops amidst living quarters. At left is the sole tower at the complex of La Santísma Trinidad, as the church had vaults but no towers. Beyond it, the long set of rooms built of ashlar blocks of sandstone would have been roofed in the 18th century.

The Jesuit builder, Juan Bautista Primoli is thought to have been the chief designer of La Santísima Trinidad. He came from Milan to South America, and in the 1730s and 1740s, also designed churches for Córdoba and Buenos Aires in present-day Argentina.

Sandstone, worked into blocks, and wood were the primary building materials. The workmen would have been indigenous Guaraní people, working under the supervision of Jesuit priests.

Of the thirty Jesuit missions built in the Río de la Plata basin, this one, La Santísima Trinidad, is the best preserved. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Jesuits were the primary religious organization to settle among indigenous people in the basin of the Río de la Plata, in what is today Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil. La Santísima Trinidad once covered eight hectares (about 20 acres), and included a main plaza and church, cemeteries, houses for thousands of Guaraní, workshops, and kitchen gardens. The houses seen here suggest the ambition of those Jesuits who sought to gather native peoples into complexes to live, work and pray.

Tom Cummins

Dana Leibsohn and Barbara E. Mundy.
Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520-1820. http://www.fordham.edu/vistas, 2015.

Jesuit Missions of Paraguay

Bailey, Gauvin. 1999. Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America, 1542-1773. Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press.

Bayón, Damián and Murillo Marx. 1989. Historia del arte colonial sudamericano: Sudamérica Hispana y el Brasil. Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafa.

Bayón, Damián and Murillo Marx. 1992. History of South American Colonial Art and Architecture. Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafa.

Plá, Josefina. 1976. El barroco hispano-guaraní. Washington, D.C.: Organization of American States.

Plá, Josefina. 1976. The Hispano-Guaraní Baroque. Washington, D.C.: Organization of American States.

UNESCO. 1992. Jesuit Missions of Paraguay.World Heritage Advisory Body Documentation.