Maya Blue and Franciscan Evangelism

In the first decades of the Franciscan evangelical campaign in Yucatán, Mexico (1540–90), Maya builders and artists directed the construction and pictorial decoration of hundreds of Christian edifices, ranging from small-scale chapels to larger churches and entire monastic complexes, offering a material record of the peninsula’s religious transformation. Strategic color selection and the deployment of Maya blue pigment in particular architectural, iconographic, and liturgical contexts enabled Indigenous catechumens to reconcile post-Tridentine conceptions of divinity with precontact sacred ideologies. By weaving diverse methodologies from the study of visual sources, textual documents, and material characterization techniques, we demonstrate how colonial Maya color theory actively engineered localized Catholicism.

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Work Title Maya Blue and Franciscan Evangelism
Access
Open Access
Creators
  1. Amara Leah Solari
  2. Linda K. Williams
Keyword
  1. Catholicism
  2. Color theory
  3. Indigo
  4. Material characterization analysis
  5. Palygorskite
  6. Pigments
  7. Yucatán
  8. Maya artists
  9. New Spain
  10. Catolicismo
License In Copyright (Rights Reserved)
Work Type Article
Publisher
  1. Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture
Publication Date October 1, 2021
Publisher Identifier (DOI)
  1. https://doi.org/10.1525/lavc.2021.3.4.49
Deposited January 30, 2023

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Version 1
published

  • Created
  • Added Solari_Williams_2021.pdf
  • Added Creator Amara Leah Solari
  • Added Creator Linda K. Williams
  • Published
  • Updated Keyword, Description, Publication Date Show Changes
    Keyword
    • Catholicism, Color theory, Indigo, Material characterization analysis, Palygorskite, Pigments, Yucatán, Maya artists, New Spain, Catolicismo
    Description
    • Analysis of Maya Blue pigment used in early modern Yucatecan churches
    • In the first decades of the Franciscan evangelical campaign in Yucatán, Mexico (1540–90), Maya builders and artists directed the construction and pictorial decoration of hundreds of Christian edifices, ranging from small-scale chapels to larger churches and entire monastic complexes, offering a material record of the peninsula’s religious transformation. Strategic color selection and the deployment of Maya blue pigment in particular architectural, iconographic, and liturgical contexts enabled Indigenous catechumens to reconcile post-Tridentine conceptions of divinity with precontact sacred ideologies. By weaving diverse methodologies from the study of visual sources, textual documents, and material characterization techniques, we demonstrate how colonial Maya color theory actively engineered localized Catholicism.
    Publication Date
    • 2021-09-01
    • 2021-10-01
  • Updated