The Casa del Deán

Description

The Casa del Deán in Puebla, Mexico, is one of few surviving sixteenth-century residences in the Americas. Built in 1580 by Tomás de la Plaza, the Dean of the Cathedral, the house was decorated with at least three magnificent murals, two of which survive. Their rediscovery in the 1950s and restoration in 2010 revealed works of art that rival European masterpieces of the early Renaissance, while incorporating indigenous elements that identify them with Amerindian visual traditions.

Extensively illustrated with new color photographs of the murals, The Casa del Deán presents a thorough iconographic analysis of the paintings and an enlightening discussion of the relationship between Tomás de la Plaza and the indigenous artists whom he commissioned. Penny Morrill skillfully traces how native painters, trained by the Franciscans, used images from Classical mythology found in Flemish and Italian prints and illustrated books from France—as well as animal images and glyphic traditions with pre-Columbian origins—to create murals that are reflective of Don Tomás’s erudition and his role in evangelizing among the Amerindians. She demonstrates how the importance given to rhetoric by both the Spaniards and the Nahuas became a bridge of communication between these two distinct and highly evolved cultures. This pioneering study of the Casa del Deán mural cycle adds an important new chapter to the study of colonial Latin American art, as it increases our understanding of the process by which imagery in the New World took on Christian meaning.

PENNY C. MORRILL, who holds a PhD in Mesoamerican colonial art history from the University of Maryland, teaches in the art history department at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. In addition to her work on sixteenth-century Mexican architecture and mural painting, she is an authority and has published extensively on the history of modern Mexican silver.

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1. Don Tomás de la Plaza

Introduction

Parish Priest

Cathedral Dean

Don Tomás and His Family

Don Tomás's Library and His Collections

Conclusion

Chapter 2. An Urban Palace

Introduction

Purism and the Casa del Deán

The Façade

The Residence’s Plan

The Designer and Builder of the Casa del Deán

Conclusion

Chapter 3. The Artist as Tlapalli: Art as Rhetoric

Introduction

Tlapalli: The Deified Heart

Form as Metaphor in Early Colonial Painting

Rhetoric and Image

Education of the Amerindian Artists

A Franciscan School in the Tlaxcala-Puebla Region

Master of the Sibyls

Conclusion

Chapter 4. Dic Tu Sibila: The Salon of the Sibyls

Introduction

The Sibyls

Tracing the Sibylline Oracles

The Sibyls in Procession: Liturgical Drama

The Sibyls in the Casa del Deán Murals

Visual Sources for the Sibyls

Conclusion

Chapter 5. The Salon of the Triumphs

Introduction

Petrarch’s Triumphs and Spectacle Literacy

The Impact on the Arts

The Triumphal Scenes

Conclusion

Chapter 6. The Wild Man in the Salon of the Triumphs

Introduction

Antecedents of the Satyr and Wild Man

The Wild Man in New Spain

Conclusion

Chapter 7. Amerindian Iconography: The Dream of a Word

Introduction

The Artist’s Antecedents

The Animals in the Salon of the Triumphs

Conclusion

Conclusion

Appendix I. Don Tomás de la Plaza’s Last Will and Testament: El Testamento de Don Tomás de la Plaza

Appendix II. Sibylline Oracles and Attributes

Appendix III. Documenting Don Tomás de la Plaza’s Capellanía

Notes

Bibliography

Index

"These images are striking, and collecting them together within the covers of a book is a contribution to colonial visual culture. Penny Morrill has done an exemplary job of tracking down primary materials that contextualize the murals and filling out our understanding of the patron, Don Tomás de la Plaza, the artist(s), and the sources and meanings of the murals’ iconography. . . . She has done a laudable job of examining the programmatic whole: that is, the way in which the murals complement one another to communicate a Christian message with humanist (neo-Platonic) imagery."
"Penny Morrill’s wonderful book The Casa del Dean is a clearly written, well-researched, and beautifully illustrated monograph that studies one of the few remaining private mural cycles of sixteenth-century Mexico. It is at once a depressing tale of the murals’ partial destruction in the twentieth century due to local disregard for Mexico’s patrimony as well as a gripping and surprising account of the history of their creation and significance."

Additional information

Dimensions	1 × 9 × 11 in