The Art and Architecture of the Texas Missions (Jack and Doris Smothers Series in Texas History, Life, and Culture) - Hardcover

Quirarte, Jacinto

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0292769024 ISBN 13: 9780292769021

Publisher: University of Texas Press, 2002

Synopsis

Winner, Presidio La Bahia Award, Sons of the Republic of Texas

Built to bring Christianity and European civilization to the northern frontier of New Spain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries...secularized and left to decay in the nineteenth century...and restored in the twentieth century, the Spanish missions still standing in Texas are really only shadows of their original selves. The mission churches, once beautifully adorned with carvings and sculptures on their façades and furnished inside with elaborate altarpieces and paintings, today only hint at their colonial-era glory through the vestiges of art and architectural decoration that remain.

To paint a more complete portrait of the missions as they once were, Jacinto Quirarte here draws on decades of on-site and archival research to offer the most comprehensive reconstruction and description of the original art and architecture of the six remaining Texas missions—San Antonio de Valero (the Alamo), San José y San Miguel de Aguayo, Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción, San Juan Capistrano, and San Francisco de la Espada in San Antonio and Nuestra Señora del Espíritu Santo in Goliad. Using church records and other historical accounts, as well as old photographs, drawings, and paintings, Quirarte describes the mission churches and related buildings, their decorated surfaces, and the (now missing) altarpieces, whose iconography he extensively analyzes. He sets his material within the context of the mission era in Texas and the Southwest, so that the book also serves as a general introduction to the Spanish missionary program and to Indian life in Texas.

About this title

About the Author:

Jacinto Quirarte is Professor Emeritus, History of Art and Criticism, at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

From Library Journal:

As important elements of New Spain's colonial enterprise, Franciscan missions were meant to bring the gospel to the Indians on the northern frontiers and forge them into useful subjects of the Crown. Building upon earlier research for the San Antonio Missions National Historic Park, Quirarte (art history, emeritus, Univ. of Texas, San Antonio) reconstitutes what six extant mission complexes were like from the 1740s to the 1820s. Informative analysis and discussion span the periods when they were constructed, then abandoned, and finally restored or reconstructed. The work draws heavily upon archival records, historic photos (not always crisply reproduced), and drawings. The text recaptures original mission art and architecture, including iconographic schemes, decorations, and the arrangement of sacred images, titular saints, and altarpieces. Appendixes provide a census of Texas missions founded from 1680 to 1793, colonial mission documents and sources, and a glossary of architectural and religious terms. Recommended for academic and regional collections, this book is also of value for its broader historical, religious, and cultural contexts and insights. Russell T. Clement, Northwestern Univ. Lib., Evanston, IL
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0292769024
• ISBN 13: 9780292769021
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 261