Santo Domingo, Yanhuitlan, Detail of Façade

1550-1600

Name(s) currently unknown

Yanhuitlan, Oaxaca, MEX

This carved emblem appears above the door of the Dominican church in Yanhuitlan, Mexico.

Here, the Virgin Mary appears as Queen of Heaven. Her elaborate crown has has discolored and eroded with time. She holds the Christ Child and shelters supplicants under her cloak. This conventional arrangement symbolizes her role as the special intercessor between human beings and God. At the Virgin’s right is Saint Dominic, the founder of the Dominican order, his tonsure visible. At her left is Saint Catherine of Siena. This pair stands for mankind in general, under the protection of the Virgin. The carving’s frame is filled with angels, whose size overwhelms the central figures. They are flat, uniform images, appearing as if stamped out, visual qualities that suggest the artist was inspired by a European print.

At the time Santo Domingo was built, the environs were densely-populated, mostly with Mixtec speakers, and Yanhuitlan was a thriving town. The wealth of the region was reflected in the size and costliness of the church. But 16th century epidemic diseases and environmental degradation brought about by overgrazing left the region a shadow of what it once was.

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

Early, James. 1994. The Colonial Architecture of Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Frassani, Alessia. 2013. "The Convento of Yanhuitlan and its Altarpiece: Patronage and the Making of a Colonial Iconography in 16th-century Mixteca Alta." Colonial Latin American Review 22 (1): 67-97.

Ibarra-Sevilla, Benjamin. 2013. "The First Ribbed Vaults in the Americas: Craft Skills and Construction Processes in the Mixtec Region of Southern Mexico." Construction History 28 (1): 1-25.

Piazza, Rosalba. 2005. Los Procesos de Yanhuitlán: algunas nuevas preguntas. Colonial Latin American Review 14 (2): 205-229.

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