In Foundational Arts: Mural Painting and Missionary Theater in New Spain, Michael K. Schuessler proposes that a “visible bridge” developed between theater and mural painting in the early years after the Spanish conquest of Mexico. To reveal the relationship between written and visual forms of expression and to create a vocabulary and methodology for describing it, Schuessler compares mural paintings in two Augustinian monasteries in the state of Hidalgo, Mexico, to a religious play; a chronicle; service codices (documenting indigenous leaders’ military service to the crown); and a description of a staged La batalla de los salvajes (Battle of the Savages) in Mexico City, performed in 1539.

The two monasteries in the towns of Actopan and Ixmiquilpan were constructed circa 1560–75 under the supervision of the Augustinian friar Andrés de Mata. While both mural cycles were painted by indigenous artists, they are strikingly dissimilar. Along the nave walls of San Miguel Arcángel, Ixmiquilpan, the indigenous artists painted friezes that reach over eight feet in height at the base and approximately two feet at ceiling level. The images that existed between the two registers have disappeared and could have represented scenes from Christ’s life, with references to themes of redemption and salvation (Jaime Lara, City, Temple, Stage: Eschatological Architecture and Liturgical Theatrics in New Spain, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004, 88) (click here for review).

The extraordinary friezes on the north and south nave walls and in the sotocoro and apse at Ixmiquilpan depict Mexica (of Central Mexico) and Otomí (of Ixmiquilpan) warriors battling the Chichimecs, the unchristianized nomadic tribesmen of Northern Mexico. The different groups are distinguished by their pre-Hispanic weapons: the Otomí and Mexica wield obsidian blade-studded clubs and the Chichimecs carry bows and arrows, a reference to a less civilized way of life (Donna L. Pierce, “Identification of the Warriors in the Frescoes of Ixmiquilpan,” Research Center for the Arts Review 4 (1981): 1–8; Elena Estrada de Gerlero, “El friso monumental de Itzmiquilpan,” in Actes du XLIIe Congrès international des américanistes: Congres du centenaire, vol. 10, Paris: Société des américanistes, 1976, 9–19; Elena Estrada de Gerlero, “Los temas escatológicos en la pintura mural novohispana del siglo XVI,” Traza y Baza 7 (1978): 71–88). The warriors are joined by giant dragons and centaurs. The scenes, while separated by piers, are unified by a giant leafy vine that envelops the creatures and warriors. According to David Charles Wright Carr, the blood that flows from severed heads and the wounded as well as the leaves of the vine are the color blue to represent sacrificial gifts to the gods in return for life-giving water (David Charles Wright Carr, “Sangre para el sol: Las pinturas murales del siglo XVI en la parroquia de Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo,” Memorias de la Academia Mexicana de la Historia 41 (1998): 73–103; Samuel Y. Edgerton, Theaters of Conversion: Religious Architecture and Indian Artisans in Colonial Mexico, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001, 167) (click here for review).

Schuessler considers the mural program in Ixmiquilpan in relation to that of San Nicolás Tolentino, Actopan, where a depiction of the Last Judgment was painted in the open chapel. This barrel-vaulted structure facing the large courtyard in front of the church allowed for open-air services when crowds gathered from outlying villages for religious festivals. Schuessler links the earliest known play in colonial Mesoamerica, El juicio final (The Last Judgment; 1531–33), to this mural. Gonzalo de las Casas’s 1571 chronicle La guerra de los Chichimecas (The Chichimec War), Otomí service codices, and the La batalla de los salvajes provide the “visible bridge” to the Ixmiquilpan paintings.

In his introduction, Schuessler writes of the recasting of the European and Amerindian traditions, resulting in new theological interpretations taken up by the evangelists and by the newly christianized congregants. The European model was primarily received through the medium of the printed book, thus Schuessler’s term “bookish architecture,” signifying the use of book images and text as inspiration for architecture and mural paintings. The evangelists adopted an approach to communication that involved pre-Hispanic forms of pictographic writing and religious performance unique to each of the congregations. For Schuessler, a significant indication of syncretism is the introduction of “the first Indo-Christian dramatis persona, a bigamous Indian named Lucía” (21), who appears in the early Franciscan play El juicio final and is associated with the pre-Hispanic goddess Cihuacoatl. Schuessler believes Lucía appears forty years later in the open chapel at Actopan. For Schuessler, this goddess, cosmic mother, and precursor of civilization is transformed into a sinner and tormented for eternity (21–23).

Schuessler argues for the existence of ritual theater before the conquest. The inheritance from the past of religious performance and visual arts allowed the Franciscans to overcome communication barriers through the merging of the two forms of expression. Schuessler states that La batalla de los salvajes incorporates pre-conquest rituals resembling those encountered in the murals at Ixmiquilpan. Gonzalo de las Casas’s chronicle contains descriptions that facilitate the interpretation of the political and religious themes in the mural cycle. Schuessler believes, though, that the murals’ themes are social as well as spiritual and political. Following the work of Olivier Debroise, he contends that the primary source is a group of sixteenth-century service codices in which Otomí nobles appeal to the Spanish crown for special privileges as reward for their services (Olivier Debroise, “Imaginario fronterizo/Identidades en tránsito: El caso de los murales de San Miguel Itzmiquilpan,” in Arte, historia e identidad en América: Visiones compartivas: Actas del XVII Coloquio Internacional de Historia del Arte, vol. 1, edited by Gustavo Curiel, Renato González Mello, and Juana Gutiérrez Haces, Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1994: 155–72). It should be noted that Pierce had considered the possibility that the mural cycle depicted Otomí captains who had fought against the Chichimecs (see Donna L. Pierce, The Sixteenth-Century Nave Frescoes in the Augustinian Mission Church of Izmiquilpan, Hidalgo, Mexico, PhD diss, University of New Mexico, 1987).

Schuessler’s second chapter concerns techniques developed by the Franciscans in the evangelization among the peoples of Mesoamerica. The description of the processional chapels and open-air churches relies on the well-known study by John McAndrew (Schuessler, 64; John McAndrew, The Open-Air Churches of Sixteenth-Century Mexico: Atrios, Posas, Open Chapels, and Other Studies, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965). Schuessler also reviews the work of the Franciscan friar Pedro de Gante who developed the teaching and evangelizing methods that included paintings on portable screens, pictographic catechisms, and mural painting. Schuessler argues that in religious painting, syncretism was present in the pictorial programs, in the pigments that were applied, and in the approach to form: “With regard to the symbolic value attached to these images, they reveal a persistent echo of the pre-Hispanic ideological world emanating from a structurally European (con)text” (94–95).

Schuessler applies Erwin Panofsky’s model of iconographic analysis in his interpretation of the murals and written sources, comparing it to analysis in historical linguistics: morphological (pre-iconographic), semantic (iconographic), and generative (iconological). Schuessler suggests several historical events that influenced the content of the two mural cycles. The discovery of silver in Zacatecas in the mid-1540s drew Spanish settlers, leading to increased attacks by native groups. In 1569, a large ecclesiastical gathering in Mexico City discussed the Chichimec raids, and an Augustinian chapter meeting was held at San Nicolás Tolentino, Actopan, in 1572 with a similar agenda. Schuessler writes:

The images allegorize a historical event that inhabitants of the region experienced and that was possibly retransmitted orally or even through ritual dance. The Augustinians reinterpreted this original depiction through an iconographic vernacular that, due to its syncretic qualities, proved to be a better way of transmitting its dogmatic message to their Otomí neophytes. As such, Ixmiquilpan’s mural cycle is an example of a unique Indo-Christian artistic representation created in New Spain and inspired by what would appear to be a unique discursive phenomenon. (100–1)

Schuessler turns to Estrada de Gerlero’s analysis, who has attributed the European source of the Ixmiquilpan murals to marginalia in Italian printed books (111–12). The page from the Biblia Italica that Schuessler has chosen, however, does not adequately reveal the relationship of this bible to the murals. Like several of the black-and-white photographs in Foundational Arts, the image is unfortunately of poor quality and does not fully clarify the author’s arguments.

The “battle of the savages” that took place in Mexico City to celebrate an armistice between Spain and France incorporates elements found in the murals—a battle between Nahuas and Chichimecs that takes place in a dense grove. For Schuessler, the battle becomes eternal:

Itzmiquilpan warriors, themselves surrounded by a dense forest of acanthus leaves and other phytomorphic figures, undertake this war between good and evil, between the civilized and acculturated Otomí and the savage Mecos with their bows and arrows, thus merging a sociopolitical reality (that of the barbaric Chichimec raids against Christianized Indian settlements) with a perpetual struggle between good and evil that the deft supervisor of Itzmiquilpan (very likely, Fray Andrés de Mata) perpetuated through this extraordinary mural program. (123)

At the same time, Schuessler maintains that the murals’ content derives primarily from the service codices (157–58).

The idea of a mock battle staged in the courtyard at Ixmiquilpan has been raised by Lara and Pierce. Lara additionally contends that the sandals worn by the dragon indicate a costumed actor, and he and Edgerton believe the mural represents an annual procession that most likely celebrated the patron saint on Michaelmas (September 29), a psychomachia that was then depicted on the walls of the church as a battle between christianized Otomí and pagan Chichimecs (Jaime Lara, Christian Texts for Aztecs: Art and Liturgy in Colonial Mexico, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008, 138–40, 157–58, 211–12; Lara, City, Temple, Stage, 86–89; Edgerton, Theaters of Conversion, 161–70).

The last chapter is a lengthy commentary on the play El juicio final, originally written and performed in Nahuatl, based largely on the interpretation made by Fernando Horcasitas. The only copy of the play (dated 1678) resides in the U.S. Library of Congress, and Schuessler provides an unabridged English version in an appendix.

Schuessler is convincing in his argument that text and images in early colonial Mexico reflect the interweavings of European and Amerindian cultures. Apocalyptic themes pervade the mural cycle at Actopan, a direct response to the horrific plagues and famine that decimated the indigenous population during the sixteenth century. The images of hell invoke fear of the punishment for those who refuse to reject the pagan gods. Demons in the play carry implements of torture, the same that are used by demonic creatures in the mural to torture the damned. On the other hand, there still remains some question as to whether the female figure, strangled by a serpent and boiling in oil, can be identified as Lucía. One possible reference point has been proposed by Pierce that the apsidal wall behind the altar at Ixmiquilpan was filled with a rendition of the Last Judgment, a dramatic denouement in the grand cosmic struggle involving the warrior Archangel Michael (Pierce, The Sixteenth-Century Nave Frescoes in the Augustinian Mission Church at Izmiquilpan, 106–13). This interpretation could draw a parallel to the mural in Actopan’s open chapel and toward further analysis of these complex and exceptional works of art.