Exploring Colonial Mexico©
Exploring Colonial Mexico©
San Diego del PitiquitoOne day in 1966, during divine service, the outlines of a grinning skeleton mysteriously appeared on one of the pilasters inside this little mission church in northwestern Sonora. Other images then began to materialize on the walls, including grotesque animal heads and the figures of the Devil and the Virgin Mary, causing consternation and even dread among the worshippers.
To everyone's relief, however, these fearsome apparitions were soon explained. A series of larger than lifesize murals that had once decorated the church walls were later covered by layers of whitewash at some time in the past. These layers had been progressively removed during recent cleaning of the church using modern detergents, gradually exposing the long forgotten frescoes.
San Diego del Pitiquito was founded by the Jesuits in the early 1700s as part of their missionization of the Pimería Alta region of northern New Spain. Humble early structures were eventually replaced by the present mission church, a stark but sturdy brick building, erected by the Franciscans* in the late 1770s as a visita of nearby Caborca.
It was at about this time that the long hidden frescoes were painted.
While some of these fresco seco murals portray fairly conventional late colonial subjects such as the Virgin Mary, angels bearing the Instruments of Christ's Passion, and the symbols of the Four Evangelists (only three remain), other images surprisingly hark back to apocalyptic themes favored by the Franciscans during the "spiritual conquest" of 16th century Mexico.
As Mardith Schuetz-Miller has pointed out, the striking images of Lucifer encircled by a serpent, and the skeletal figure pointing to the words mane thekel phares - the biblical injunction that appeared on the wall at Belshazzar's feast - conjure up the medieval world of millenarian prophecies that obsessed the early Franciscan friars.
The grand scale, skilled draftsmanship and distinctive coloration of the murals** - the figures are finely detailed in a warm grisaille, accented with red, blue and earth colors - recall the superb 16th century frescoes found in the monasteries of central Mexico. The image of Mary, shown here as the Woman of the Apocalypse or Virgin of the Immaculate Conception (La Purísima), and crowned as Queen of Heaven, is especially striking.
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