Object and Apparition: Envisioning the Christian Divine in the Colonial Andes by Maya Stanfield-Mazzi (review)

This book investigates the role of religious images in conversion to Christianity in the Andes. Although Spanish missionaries thought that Catholicism should exclude all traces of native belief, the need to make the new religion visible, tangible, and believable allowed for an increasing incorporation of local references and, crucially, local materials in the dissemination of Christian ideas and practices. Maya Stanfield-Mazzi argues that, “metals, pigments and fibers that were sacred within the Andean world-view to represent key Christian subjects” were “crucial to the future of Christianity in the region” (p. 2). To demonstrate this interesting idea, the author focuses on two types of images: statues (three-dimensional) and paintings (two-dimensional) of Mary and Christ. Stanfield-Mazzi maintains that the two were the “visual representatives” of Catholicism and that the introduction and influence of statues and paintings followed a chronological order that exerted a distinctive ascendancy over indigenous Andeans and their perception and acceptance of the Christian divine.

The work is divided into two parts. The first part, “The Christian Divine in Three Dimensions” focuses on statues of Marian devotions in the area surrounding Lake Titicaca in the Peruvian Altiplano, and on the Christ of the Earthquakes, a much-revered image housed in the cathedral of Cuzco. The second part, “The Christian Divine in Two Dimensions,” studies a number of paintings of statues representing the two aforementioned devotions that proliferated in the Southern Andes particularly in the late eighteenth century.

Focusing in particular, although not exclusively, on the Virgin of Pomata, a Marian cult introduced by the Dominicans, the first missionaries to settle in the Altiplano, Stan-field-Mazzi investigates the beginnings of Christian devotion to Mary in the region, along with its materialization as a statue. While the Virgin of Copacabana’s story is reasonably documented, that is not the case of Pomata’s. In the absence of written evidence, by way of a detailed study of the image, the author maintains that the origins of the devotion are rooted in the sixteenth century. The author argues that key characteristics of indigenous Andean religion allowed for the popularity Marian devotions came to hold among the local population. She suggests, for example, that huacas (diverse material representations of the sacred), mummies, and gold figurines, as well as the textiles and fine garments with which Andeans usually dressed these sacred objects, facilitated the transition between old (pagan) and new (Christian) forms of seeing and experiencing the divine. In turn, the use of local materials in the making of Christian images (among which color is particularly significant) contributed to the attraction they exerted over new Andean converts.

A similar reasoning is applied to the study of the Christ of the Earthquakes. The author discusses in length the uncertain beginnings of both image and devotion. The image’s obscure story is deepened by the almost complete absence of early written evidence and the many layers of oral traditions that surround it. The results of recent investigations of the image cited by the author disprove the widely accepted idea that this popular image was made in Spain and donated to the city of Cuzco by King Charles V. Other studies and personal observations reveal intriguing attitudes of its guardians and devotees about how it was kept.

The production and circulation of paintings of the statues discussed so far is the subject of the second and final part of the book. Stanfield-Mazzi writes extensively about interesting features such as the alluring effects that light and iridescence in several paintings might have had on the viewers.

Object and Apparition makes interesting remarks, although many of them are not necessarily grounded on evidence, but on the author’s assumptions. The effect religious images had on indigenous conversion in the Andes was indeed important, but the this book seems to suggest that such effect was produced by the images themselves, somehow...