example of an outdoor chapel. So the priest would stand in the center and the congregation would stand facing him this way. And this is a prime example of Tikitiki art.
This is a structure that is built by the indigenous Mestizaje and it shares both touches from the indigenous past and a very strong Spanish style. Between 1530 and 1800, there are 100,000 churches built in this part of the world. Remember that less than 200 friars founded, built, and staffed 300 monastery churches in 100 years.
And they sort of developed a set of design plans for church construction in order to quickly get things built. And so take a look at this shield that's on the side. the wall and look at that lion this was made by a Takiki artisan who never saw a lion in their life but look at how beautiful and three-dimensional that is look at this shield this is an absolutely Western European shape but then look at the bear and the eagle and they're very flat and in low beveled relief that is a holdover from Takiki art So the Spanish priests are untrained as architects and they take advantage of the expertise both through stone masons and construction people, stone carvers, and people who do things like this, murals that are painted on the wall. So these are teaching tools painted by the Taquitiqui artisans.
And you can see here, these are warriors. There's a war shield. You can see the speech scrolls.
It's like a holdover. But then you see all of this kind of funny European-style foliage down below. Sometimes the themes are really shocking.
Warriors in battle. And it's like, well, how are you going to let that go? So here's a coyote warrior then who's in the middle of decapitating his enemy. But again, standing in this kind of a Western European foliage imagery.
So how are the priests going to let him get away with this? Well, the idea is that the Christian struggle is good over evil. All right.
And so this is evil. Now, look what we've got. This has got to be an emperor.
See his visor? And then here's his victim. There's that war axe. But then.
See his speech scrolls and then all of this foliated imagery. And I'm reminding you of those images from older codices that showed us how these things were done. So I think it's sort of the idea of what hill are you going to die on? What things will you allow?
What things will you not allow? Remember these guys. Priests learned the indigenous languages right away, but they didn't have a design communication.
So this is why this is such a unique form of art. So we're going to see sculptures in low relief, things that are symbolic, not realistic. Lots of Renaissance three-dimensional ideas that are kind of rendered in a very unique way. And there will often be hidden indigenous symbols, and we'll point those out as they come along.
So when you're talking about colonial architecture, this is a laundry list of the different styles that all fall in the colonial period. This is the first and this is the last. So this is the oldest, this is the newest, okay? And they follow stylistic tendencies in Western Europe, but they are significantly behind. So by the time we see Renaissance design in Mexico, it's already the Baroque period in the old world.
By the time the Mexican architects are using Baroque, that is over and it's now the time for neoclassicism in the old world. So they're always just sort of a half a step back, but it really doesn't matter because, you know, it takes so long for time and information to travel. So this is a definition of the first style that we're going to look at that's called plataresque.
And it's from the word plata which means silver. Plataresque the term is a term that is inherited from Spain and it refers to the way that the front facade of the building looks. I'm going to point that out to you in just a minute.
Whenever you look at a church, no matter where you are in the world across time and region, you always look to the doorways. You look to the portal first because that's going to give you the visual information that's going to help you understand where you are and when you are there. And this first church that we're going to look at is a perfect example of Takiki art and architecture and it's at a place called Akoman. the church of saint augustine and this is a plataresque style church now i want you to look at the dates here this church was founded in 1539 so that's right after conquest but the facade or the front of the building so every building has a facade do you see how it's spelled facade but it's pronounced facade this wasn't completed until 1560 So as I mentioned, the first thing you're going to do is build the cloister where the monks are going to live, and then you're going to start to work on the church because that takes time and resources. This church at Akoman is the perfect starting point for a couple of really good reasons, and part of it has to do with where it is, and we'll roll on from there as we move through our conversation.
So the church at Akoman is named Akoman because of the... creation story of the people from the region and literally in Nawa this Akoman translates to arm and shoulder and this is what you see on the name glyph. So this is another perfect example of Tiki-Tiki art. You've got a western European shield with a very realistic looking human arm. Look at the musculature in the hands, the tendons in the fingers and the elbow there.
But the part where the arm has been separated, and I think you can think back to Goyalchagkwe, and we see the shoulder bone sticking out, that's very cartoonish. Radiating from that bone then are these alternating shells and these little discs. Those little discs would have held some type of semi-precious stone.
And above it, a very Western European style little canopy. And so this low relief... is right here and there's a matching one right here on the front facade of the building.
And so this is what we call the name glyph at Aquaman. Even though we're much farther along and this is a historic culture, we do not have the names of these artisans. But we know that they are tequique artisans because the Spanish priests do not have this skill set. It's fun to look at the comparisons that you see with the the wavy lines and shells that we saw used at Teotihuacan and I think this will all fall into place for you very very quickly here so this is a long two-story colonnaded structure with kind of a rough stone facing on the facade and it is to the south of the convento so right here this is plan view right this is the cloister first thing built. This is the old cloister.
This is the new cloister over here. So the first thing that's built is over here. And this is where they're going to have that outdoor chapel, right?
And this is that outdoor chapel. This is the cloister where the monks live, the facade I just showed you, and the outdoor chapel. So this one is elevated. The priest can stand up very high and project out to those who are listening to him. Five.
arches here which are significant to the structure. The second floor is kind of sandwiched in here but this outdoor site is very important and you can see the preaching space, the outdoor chapel goes way back and I think it's very interesting to look at where there's no plaster and you can see the rough volcanic stone that was used to construct the church. And then it was smoothed over by finishing stone with plaster on top of that. That's kind of neat to get a peek at what it looked like previously. So this, the main sanctuary, was not built until much, much later.
So this comes first. All right, this comes first, outdoor chapel, and then this, the church, which is more what you're used to seeing. About 250 feet long, 56 feet wide, about 70 feet high. But that's got to come later.
It's going to take time to do this. It's going to take time to convert enough people to get everybody together to build this. So here is a close-up then of that outdoor chapel and you can see that there is a beautiful fresco in the background that is still the original work sitting there you get a sense of how thick the stone walls are and one of the most interesting moments in the Mesoamerican colonial history is the one I'm about to show you so pretend that you are the priest standing out there giving mass And I'm going to show you where the congregation stands and that is right here all right so the congregation stands here and looks towards the priest there look what's in the background that is the pyramid of the sun that is Teotihuacan it's that close and this is why I love to start with this early church at Ocoman well what are we what are we going to build this with where are we going to find building materials oh I don't know once you start taking apart that um that old pyramid over there right so they had Endless amounts of building materials for the site here at A Kulmung.
As we continue our conversations about architecture, we want to make sure that you know in your mind the difference between these three different presentations for architectural renderings. We've talked about the plan view and the section view when we were looking at ancient buildings, right? The plan or bird's eye view flying over the top, the section view like a cross-section like taking the center piece of bread out of a loaf.
We want to introduce a new term now, the elevation. An elevation shows you one wall of a structure from the floor to the ceiling and it's very helpful when you're trying to understand how a church is constructed. So here's a close-up of the front facade. This is the portal, the main doorway, all right, just one doorway. Churches soon will be bigger and have more.
Choir window, that's going to let in air. I'm going to show you where that is when we go inside. There are two flanking sculptures on either side of the doorway, Saint Peter and Saint Paul.
As Dr. Aguilar tells us, the form is European, the technique and the ornamentation are Indian. Let's see what he says. When we look at Saint Peter, Do you see how his knee pokes out there? That's what we call contrapposto weight shift and that is a big deal in western European art.
It's something that the ancient Greeks figure out. It's something that gets forgotten during the medieval period and reintroduced during the renaissance. And so contrapposto weight shift, the way people really stand, to show that, to know that this was done by a Takiki artisan who never went to Europe, who never saw...
a European sculpture, but was able to understand what the priests were communicating in making of this image. So there's Saint Peter on his little perch suspended by an angel, but then look at what happens to these columns. Now columns, you know, that's very typical for Greco-Roman structures, but you see how they're wrapped? They look like they're wrapped in cloth.
Do you remember the knot on the tilmon, on the cloak of the indigenous? That's what those knots look like. This angel right there, that's not just a regular old Christian angel.
That angel has lots of other meaning to it. And so these buildings are packed with iconography that is unique to the Tikitiki. In the center of the outdoor chapel is a structure called the atrial cross.
Now, many colonial churches had outdoor chapels with atrial crosses. So we refer to this one as the atrial cross at Alkoholmang. This is a stone sculpture and it's in the shape of the crucifix and it is a perfect example of Taquique art and of syncretism of the blending of the two religions. Right away you notice that at the crossing point you see the face of Christ and we all have an idea in our head if you say what did what did Jesus look like? Okay tall skinny guy long dark hair beard mustache big sad brown eyes.
Well How did that idea get transferred to the artisan here? Look at how dimensional and lifelike that face is. And yet, look at the opposite sides of the cross.
Do you see those flowers? They're very flat. They're very beveled. They're not very realistic. Above Christ's head, his monogram then in Latin, I-N-R-I, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.
And as you move down the base... the cross there are different images that are part of the Passion of Christ part of the things that led up to his death so there's a ladder That's how he was hung on the cross. There's a pair of pliers. That's how the nails were removed from his hands and his feet. Those images are all up and down the surface of the cross.
And when you get to the very bottom, you see this fascinating image. This is interpreted as the Virgin of Sorrows. Now Mary's presented in a lot of different ways.
Mary, Queen of Heaven, Virgin of Guadalupe. Here we've got the Virgin of Sorrows, right? Because Mary knows that her son is going to die. But this doesn't look at all like this, does it? You see how naturalistic that is?
And look at this. This looks a whole lot more like Kotlikwe than it does a live human being, right? Which is what is trying to be represented here.
And you notice the skull and the bones. That comes from the hill that Christ was crucified on. So Christ was crucified on a hill called Golgotha, and Golgotha means the place of the skulls.
And so there she is down there with that skeletal imagery. And this contrast is just something that's just fascinating. There's nothing like it in the rest of art history, I don't think. And another thing I wanted to point out before we move on is that you see all this flower imagery.
Remember the Florentine Codex? As you read along in the text, there's... different bundles of flowers that show up in between passages of text. And for the uninformed, you say, oh, isn't that pretty? No, it's not pretty.
It means something very specific. It means it is alerting the reader to sacred speech. Okay. Some of you might have seen a Bible where the words of Christ are in red ink. It's the similar idea.
So it's like the next thing you're going to read is sacred speech. And so it's very easy to apply that idea to the floral imagery that you see here. There were murals added later, so we're not going to spend a lot of time talking about the murals on the inside.
You can see we've got the pulpit here where the priest would give the homily. And so here the photographer stands in the nave. faces the altar and here the photographer stands in the nave and faces the choir. So that's the loft up there where that little window was that I showed you. This is the interior of the cloister.
So every cloister is going to have a well. They might have, the priest might have kept some some chickens there. They had a little vegetable garden.
This was a place where they could theoretically be safe in case there was any kind of hostilities. And as you look around the structure, remember this is made by the hands of the mestizaje. This is to Kiki artisans, all right?
There's another monogram of Christ. So where did they get this idea? Well, one thing we know for sure is that the priests brought books with them, and those religious texts were filled with printed images.
So here from 1569, from Western Europe, is this image with a monogram of Christ. Christ. And do you see how there's ribbons that suspend it?
Looks like a shield. And then here it is carved into the front of the cloister here. So they were able to look at these images in a book and said, oh, is that what you want?
Sure, I can do that. No problem. Inside the interior cloister is a series of frescoes that are really fascinating and so very very old. So this is true wet fresco, a mural cycle. So one mural is a mural, a series of murals that go together we call a mural cycle.
This is showing us images from the Last Judgment and this is going to become of course an Augustinian church and the theme of the Last Judgment is a favorite among the Augustinian friars. This is supposed to impact the viewer, not just the priests. It's supposed to impact the neophytes that are there as well.
And so as we talk about this, I want you to think about why do we see the construction in black and white. So here we've got an image of the crucified Christ in the center here. And we've got Mary, two Marys and a Martha. And then look at what we've got back here, a sun and a moon. Remember how close we are to the pyramid of the Sun and the pyramid of the Moon?
Look at the text, the script written across the top here, and all this beautiful detail, but it's all in black and white. Can you guess why? Yep, it's because they were looking at a Western European book. So if the book had been in color, this image would have been in color.
But the text was in black and white, and that's how it gets carried through. Now, some of these are not in very great shape anymore. This is the scene of the Last Judgment, and then this is a similar text.
So we've got Christ seated, and he's going to judge. the quick and the dead he's got a sword in one hand and flowers in the other and then these are all the souls who did not make the cut they did not get into heaven so here in the print you see these little souls kind of um arising through trap doors sort of floating up to receive their verdict so this is the western european print this is a colman fresco depicting the same story