ABOUT THIS BOOK

The first study of Christian murals created by indigenous artists in sixteenth and seventeenth century Yucatán.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Maya artists painted murals in churches and conventos of Yucatán using traditional techniques to depict iconography brought from Europe by Franciscan friars. The fragmentary visual remains and their placement within religious structures embed Maya conceptions of sacredness beyond the didactic imagery. Mobilizing both cutting-edge technology and tried-and-true analytical methods, art historians Amara Solari and Linda K. Williams reexamine the Maya Christian murals, centering the agency of the people who created them.

The first volume to comprehensively document the paintings, Maya Christian Murals of Early Modern Yucatán collects new research on the material composition of the works, made possible by cutting-edge imaging methods. Solari and Williams investigate pigments and other material resources, as well as the artists and historical contexts of the murals. The authors uncover numerous local innovations in form and content, including images celebrating New World saints, celestial timekeeping, and ritual processions. Solari and Williams argue that these murals were not simply vehicles of coercion, but of cultural “grafting,” that allowed Maya artists to shape a distinctive and polyvocal legacy in their communities.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Amara Solari is a professor of art history at Pennsylvania State. She is the author of Maya Ideologies of the Sacred: The Transfiguration of Space in Colonial Yucatan.

Linda K. Williams is professor emerita of art history at the University of Puget Sound.

REVIEWS

Solari and Williams offer the first comprehensive study of Maya mural cycles painted in the churches of colonial Yucatán. In this visually rich book, they bring readers into the sacred spaces of Maní, Temax, Motul, Izamal, and Dzidzantun through crisp new photography, including never-before-seen aerial views of churches, archival photographs, and clear building plans. Their chapters are enriched by a wide range of approaches, from an analysis of the chemical composition of the pigments used in the murals to a study of their iconography and historical context. In this readable book, Solari and Williams give us a glimpse into enduring ideas that Maya peoples held about the world of the divine and their place in it.

— Barbara E. Mundy, Tulane University, author of The Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, the Life of Mexico City

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations
Chapter 1. Introducing Catholic Murals in an Art Historical Context (Amara Solari and Linda K. Williams)
Chapter 2. Creating the Corpus (Amara Solari and Linda K. Williams)
Chapter 3. The Extirpation of Color at the Convento of Saint Michael Archangel, Maní (Amara Solari)
Chapter 4. The Transformation of Sacred Materials in the Sacristy of Saint Michael Archangel, Temax (Linda K. Williams and Amara Solari)
Chapter 5. Franciscan and Maya Contemplation at the Convento of Saint John the Baptist, Motul (Amara Solari)
Chapter 6. Performing Christ’s Passion at the Convento of Saint Clare, Dzidzantún (Amara Solari)
Chapter 7. Visualizing Healing at the Convento of Saint Anthony of Padua, Izamal (Linda K. Williams)
Chapter 8. Local Practice and Trans-Atlantic Theology through the Seventeenth Century (Linda K. Williams)
Epilogue. The Enduring Medium (Amara Solari and Linda K. Williams)
Appendix. Extant Murals of Early Modern Yucatán
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index