San Jerónimo, Tlacochahuaya

1575-1625

Name(s) currently unknown

Tlacochahuaya, Oaxaca, MEX

This exuberantly painted and decorated church interior in Tlacochahuaya, a town outside of the city of Oaxaca, shows the ways that paintings and sculptures added meaning to religious spaces. The church, like the town itself, is named after San Jerónimo (Saint Jerome). Like many towns in this region of Mexico, it was first evangelized by Dominican friars.

The simple, single nave structure is typical of many 16th century constructions, created when mendicant friars were engaged a massive building campaign across New Spain. The early church was decorated with paintings done directly on the plaster walls and vaults, with the retables (retablos) added later, over the 17th and 18th centuries, as church monies permitted. These elaborate gilded constructions hold paintings and sculpture and often focus upon Christian themes or saints of special importance to the church and its community of worshippers. Because churches like San Jerónimo are active places of worship, their decor is frequently restored and repainted. The painting on one of the nave spandrels depicts the Holy Trinity: Jesus, the dove, representing the Holy Spirit, and God the Father in Heaven. Spandrel paintings nearer the main altar depict the evangelists. In the near part of the nave, on the right, is a sculpture of Jesus riding on a donkey. Although probably relatively modern in date, it resembles those of the colonial period that would be taken out for processions on Palm Sunday, commemorating Jesus's entry into Jerusalem.

The Dominicans, who arrived to the thickly populated Oaxaca region in the 16th century, commissioned this church. Their monastic complex in the town of Tlacochahuaya, was constructed by native laborers in the late 16th and early 17th century and became a center for the evangelization of its native residents. Under Dominican patronage, native mural painters also won local renown.

The church is built of stone and mortar; wooden frames would have supported interior vaults as they were being constructed. In the 16th century, when the church was first under construction, the curved vaults would have represented a new building technique for native laborers who were more familiar with post-and-lintel architecture.

Tlacochahuaya is one of the hundreds of monastic foundations from 16th-century New Spain. It dates from the time monastic orders—the Dominicans, Franciscans, and Augustinians—first fanned out across recently conquered territory, seeking to evangelize its native peoples. At the time of this church’s founding, Zapotec was the indigenous language most commonly spoken in the area. The area abounds in pre-Hispanic constructions, making it likely that San Jerónimo was created of recycled stone.

In this church at Tlacochahuaya, Dominican friars initially required that their own architectural models and ideas for church decoration dominate. In time, as the church became the center for community worship, its residents were able to bring their own particular devotions to bear on its interior paintings, sculptures and retables (retablos). In this way, the church interior not only held sacred figures in sculpted and painted forms, it became a site for community rituals and prayers that, while similar to others in New Spain, were unique to the individuals in this town.

© Colección Foto Rivas.

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

Edgerton, Samuel. 2001. Theaters of Conversion: Religious Architecture and Indian Artisans in Colonial Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Espinosa Spinola, Gloria. 1999. Arquitectura de la conversión y evangelización en la Nueva España durante el siglo XVI. Almeria: Universidad de Almeria.

Kubler, George. 1948. Mexican Architecture of the Sixteenth Century. New Haven: Yale University Press.