Exploring
Colonial Mexico©
Exploring
Colonial Mexico©
Mexico's Fortress Monasteries: a series
The grand Augustinian priory of Actopan, in the state of Hidalgo, is a living museum of the superlative colonial arts of early colonial Mexico: its monumental buildings, its architectural sculpture and, above all, its awesome variety of 16th century murals.
Frescoes are everywhere. Awe-inspiring multicolored panels line the great open chapel, biblical scenes and polychrome friezes line the porteria and the cloister walks, while rows of saints look down from the great convento staircase.
But perhaps the most intriguing mural at Actopan is the didactic Allegory of the Eremitic Life (above), located in the former Sala de Profundis, or friars chapel - now the entry vestibule to the convento. This complex allegorical fresco explores a favorite Augustinian theme: the origins of the monastic order in the caves and hermitages of the Egyptian desert.
Here in Actopan,
this mythic vision has been transported to the pristine landscape
of the New World -in this case the surrounding region of the Mesquital
- where the Augustinians hoped to create their utopian City of
God, an idyllic paradise of docile Indians living in Christian
tranquility under the paternal guidance of the friars. But...
Enter the Devil ...
Just as the New World could be seen as the Christian New Eden, it could also be threatened by Satan in the form of resurgent pagan beliefs and practices. This cautionary detail from the mural (red ring - center) shows the horned and taloned Devil, literally portrayed with his many hideous faces, stealing up the pathway into the friars' paradise, in the guise of a tameme, or pre-hispanic porter with a tumpline across his forehead.
As Jeanette Peterson, the distinguished art historian, has suggested, the Devil figure also carries the traditional attributes of the early Fathers of the Church - a quill pen, inkwell and, on his back, a bound volume of sacred scripture - attributes also shown in the portraits of the Fathers in the convento stairwell at Actopan (below).
This sinister but ambiguous figure may have been intended by the artist - ironically a native tlacuilo, or painter/scribe - not only as a warning to the native neophytes to reject the false and insidious beliefs of the prehispanic world, but also as a reminder to the Augustinian friars of the need for constant vigilance against the schemes of Satan that threatened the Christian utopia in the New World.
This warning, and the penalties for transgression or apostasy were made even more graphic in the apocalyptic Last Judgment mural of the famous open chapel at Actopan.
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Actopan. Facade  |
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