Walking Macao, Reading the Baroque

Chapter 3. Igreja e Seminário São José (St Joseph’s Seminary and Church)

38 Walking Macao, Reading the Baroque 39 3. Igreja e Seminário São José Igreja e Seminário São José (St Joseph’s Seminary and Church) Chapter 3 Macao becomes a library of the baroque in St Joseph’s Seminary and Church, which is the main place visited in this chapter (there is also a discussion of Santo Agostinho). It was constructed from 1728 to 1758 for the Society of Jesus, who was expelled from Macao in 1762: the Seminary was then passed to the Lazarists (1784). São José is one of Macao’s most beautiful buildings, and because it has the advantage of being outside the places which tourists are encouraged to visit, it allows people to linger. The church’s upper part is visible on walking down the sloping street (Rua da Prata) that leads down to the main entrance, but disappears from the gaze when the visitor walks through the entrance under the canopy, at the foot of the small hill where the church sits. The photograph shows a basic elegance in Macao; things work on high and low levels simultaneously. The church is on a hill, as Macau, ‘City of the Name of God in China’ as the colony was first called, was a missionary ‘city set on a hill’ (Matthew 5:14). It is approached from street level; the entrance was rendered as a pen-andink with watercolours in Gateway to the Seminary of São José, Macao by George Chinnery.1 Chinnery shows a baroque archway, seen at an angle, and with its European distinctiveness contrasted by a small Chinese figure near it, but no Europeans; the archway seems a baroque ruin, out of date. The gateway’s canopy with a scallop-shell design 18. Side view of façade 19. Distant view of São José 40 Walking Macao, Reading the Baroque overhanging the pavement has hardly changed since Chinnery. This shell’s significance was both medieval and baroque, implying initiation via baptism, for the scallop appeared in art, as used for the baptism of Christ, while, worn on the hat, it denoted a medieval pilgrim coming from the shrine of St James at Compostela. Venus comes ashore on a scallop-shell in Botticelli (1445–1510)’s painting The Birth of Venus (1484), as an allegory of the baptism of Christ.2 Ornamented shell-work, within rocaille and other forms of decoration, appears within the baroque, suggesting what unfolds. Shell formations unfold a history which has always been in place, what is already there. The shell as a series of folds implies virginity (including Mary’s virginity: the shell is symbolic of Mary because it creates a pearl without external intervention). The baptismal significance is remembered in an example of the baptism of Christ which may be seen in the artwork in another church, São Domingos, in a painting by V. Pacia of 1928. To look at Pacia’s painting, perhaps inconsiderable in itself, helps to focus on some details of colonial baroque. Four women look on to see a dark-robed John the Baptist, his body forming an S-shape from the right foot to the right hand, pouring water from a shell onto Christ, clad in a white loincloth, his head and knees bent, hands open, passive and vulnerablelooking , the posture and clothing both suggestive of the crucifixion, just as his body shows signs of emaciation, the ribs visible. Behind Jesus and the Baptist, heavenly liquid (as in Botticelli’s painting) rains down like a waterfall in the form of light, while Christ stands with feet in water. The women take up the position of the viewer in the picture; their emotions are stirred by the power of excess. The facial expression of John the Baptist is not seen, even by the women. One characteristic difference between the Renaissance and the baroque appears in the lightness and brightness of Botticelli, and the heaviness in the chiaroscuro of Pacia’s admittedly much later painting. Jesus would presumably have been baptised in the daytime, but the scene is night, with only the bright rays descending behind the central figures. The painting’s date makes it anachronistic baroque. More could be said about the dark background, following from discussions in chapter 2. Deleuze writes that essential to the baroque and Leibnizian conception of the ‘monad’ is its ‘dark background’ (27). (The monad is an object which cannot...