Piety, Plata, and Place: Civic Development and Devotion in Colonial Zacatecas

This dissertation provides the most comprehensive study to date of the eighteenth-century Templo de la Compa��a de Jes�s, the only well-preserved colonial church in Zacatecas, Mexico, an important silver mining center. The templo retains eight of its original eleven baroque altarpieces and seventeen paintings. The building is not ostentatious, yet clarity of design and sophistication mark its two-story elevation and simple configuration consisting of a single nave and two side aisles. I argue that by studying the monument, we can better understand how a community of laborers, believers, and miners coalesced to produce a civic and spiritual landscape particular to the silver mining city. For the first time, I bring together previously distinct histories and fields of knowledge—art historical, economic, religious, and literary, in the service of a wholistic view of the socio-cultural milieu that gave rise to the monument. In preparing this work, I grappled with existing frameworks for classifying and understanding colonial art. In response, I theorize that colonial art can best be understood as a chimera; I trace this methodological approach in the introduction and enact it throughout the dissertation. Zacatecas has been historically excluded from the art historical canon; part of the contribution I make in this work is bringing together the impressive collection of paintings that still adorns the templo’s walls or have been dispersed into museum collections. I perform an iconographic analysis of these works and suggest a nuanced view of the program of religious imagery at the site. I further analysis already begun on its retablos by putting their imagery into conversation with the previously unknown sacristy paintings. Finally, I consider how the site acted as a locus of communal engagement by evaluating three contemporaneous descriptions of festivals memorialized in large part by the Jesuit fathers who lived and worshipped there. Together, these descriptions paint a vivid picture of life in the silver city and demonstrate the important role the church played in civic culture