Keywords: Affordances, Viceroyalty of New Spain, emblem books, material culture, geographies
In 1629 it was published in Antwerp the Schola cordis, emblem book written by Benedictus van Haeften, with engravings by Boetius a. Bolswert. The book contains fifty-five engravings, plus the title-figure, almost all of which represent several tests and situations to which the heart is put by Anima and Amor divinus. The images of the Schola cordis entered different geographies, through diverse translations, editions, and in a multiplicity of contexts from the time of its first conception, being produced and consumed in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
The Schola cordis was used, in addition, as reference for the paintings of diverse spaces and objects in the Viceregal period, among which we find the pictorial cycle of the cancel at the Sanctuary of Jesus the Nazarene in Atotonilco, México, religious complex conceived by Luis Felipe Neri de Alfaro. Built around the third quarter of the eighteenth century, the cancel is a wooden structure composed of three large panels that conceal the entrance to the sanctuary proper. Both sides (external and internal) of the structure are ornamented with paintings, executed in tempera on wooden panels. The cancel is composed of 216 panels, of which 46 were inspired by the images and accompanying texts of the Schola cordis. These panels were painted by the self-taught creole artist Miguel Antonio Martínez de Pocasangre. These images are the main focus of this paper.
As my starting theoretical and methodological point I use the concept of affordances proposed by James J. Gibson. I argue that images are part of the affordances of the environment: as objects they afford, they provide opportunities for action. The manipulation of the object depends not only on what the person wants to do with it, but on what can be done with it; that is what the object allows by its shape, its materials, location, etc. Objects provide information that inevitably corresponds to objectives and demands within the social network of which they became part. I want to explore then what comes along with religious images: the support that contains them, the rest of the elements that shape this support, their locations, and the dynamics at work in their environment, including people and, of course, other images, their surfaces, materials, etc.
In the case of Atotonilco, I want focus on the religious affordances of the Schola cordis images in the cancel, conditioned to their (re)location (from a book produced in Antwerp to the entrance of a Sanctuary in Atotonilco, México), the material support that now contains them (from paper and ink to wood and tempera); the producers of the objects, and the consumers of the object (from an intellectual consumption by literate individuals, to a communal consumption inclined to religious teaching and experience). By utilizing the theory of affordances, I explore how these conditions transformed in the eighteenth century the religious experience of the community when consuming the cancel connected to the whole complex of the Sanctuary of Atotonilco.
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Mauricio Oviedo
PhD in Religious Studies, Rijksunversiteit Groningen, PhD in Art History, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.
Institution of affiliation: Universidad de Costa Rica.
Mauricio Gerardo Oviedo Salazar (born February 26, 1989 in San José, Costa Rica) holds both a bachelor’s and a licenciatura degree in art history from the University of Costa Rica. He has a Master’s degree in Religious Studies with emphasis on Western Esotericism from the University of Amsterdam. He holds a double doctorate between the Faculty of Religion, Culture and Society at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, and the Postgraduate Programme in Art History at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. His PhD dissertation is entitled Affordances of the heart: experiencing religious objects in eighteenth and New Spain. Among his publications, conferences, papers and lectures, he has explored various topics related to art, magic, mysticisms, astrology; philosophy of science; art theory; religious emblem books; material culture; comic studies; the motif of the heart in Christian art; and Costa Rican art between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is currently teaching at the University of Costa Rica.
https://ucr.academia.edu/MauricioSalazar
"The engravings from the Schola cordis (1629) were used as reference for the pictorial cycle of the cancel at the Sanctuary of Jesus the Nazarene in Atotonilco, built around the third quarter of the eighteenth century. The images in this object are the focus of this paper. I argue that images are part of the affordances of the environment: as objects they afford, they provide opportunities for action. Regarding Atotonilco, I want to focus on the religious affordances of the Schola cordis in the cancel, conditioned to their (re)location, the material support that now contains them, and the producers and consumers of the object."