Frames for conversion

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The final case centers on the idiosyncratic grotesque friezes that run along the nave of the Augustinian church at Ixmiquilpan. By appealing to chivalric values crucial for the Spanish expansion project, the grotesque friezes at Ixmiquilpan provide a heraldic frame to reconstruct Aztec antiquity and to negotiate the colonial identity of the indigenous warrior communities.The second case study features the mural paintings at the lower cloister of the Augustinian convent in Malinalco, which simulate a continuous millefleurs tapestry containing native hieroglyphs along with European and local plants and animals. This time the paradise imagery worked as a decorative frame to enhance the cloister's learning environment, reframing the New World singularities within a Christian cosmology.This dissertation presents an alternative model to discuss the assimilation of native motifs in the monastic decoration of sixteenth-century New Spain. In contrast to former approaches that have considered indigenous elements either as innocuous infiltrations or as active signs of native resistance, this study shows how lavish decoration served as an arena of negotiation between Christian and native ritual practices. By "framing" indigenous elements within European master discourses, colonial monastic culture found accommodation for the native presence within the Western worldview.Each case study, moreover, discusses those different quotations within the larger philosophical context of the Spiritual Conquest. First, the atrium cross at the Franciscan monastery of Tepeyac presents an example in which a pre-Columbian calendrical glyph has been adapted to the decoration of a Christian object. In this case, I argue, the assimilation of the native hieroglyphic system was meant to convey the idea of imitatio Christi by reminding the new converted Indians of the need for physical mortification.Equally, in the process of creating a new colonial identity, Mesoamerican communities preserved crucial elements from their past under the form of idiosyncratic ornamental repertories. Far from being a uniform process, however, the reconciliation of divergent artistic practices within the New Spanish monastic milieu has proved to be multifaceted. Thus, this dissertation presents three different case studies that explore some of the tactics by which specific native signs were "quoted" within Renaissance ornamental repertories.

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