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Foundational Arts: Mural Painting and Missionary Theater in New Spain by Michael K. Schuessler (review)

In Schuessler’s ambitious book, a modified translation of a work originally published in Spanish in 2010, he opens a broad lens onto creative works, both dramatic and pictorial, that were undertaken to evangelize Mexico’s indigenous peoples in the sixteenth century. He argues that dogmatic plays with Christian themes, written by friars in Nahuatl, as well as woodcut and engraved images in printed books imported from Europe, inspired the great mural programs that indigenous artists were called upon to create in monastery complexes built during the course of the century. The result Schuessler terms “bookish architecture” (p. 3). These plays and paintings were, in his view, “syncretic expressions,” (p. 31) drawn from pre-Hispanic religious practice and late medieval Christianity, which together formed a new synthesis. Dramas, in particular, provided the narratives that were then represented on monastic walls, in “a communicative practice that combines plastic and dramatic elements” (p. 55).