Colonial Art

This is the term used to describe the various works of art created in the Americas from the 16th to 18th centuries.
Mediaeval in origin, it was brought from Spain to the colonies by many different artists who established workshops in the main administrative cities of the Empire. Their pupils were mixed - locally born Spaniards, Indians and half-casts. Their subjects were at once religious and didactic, dealing with different episodes in the life of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and the most popular saints.
These workshops continued to function after the original European craftsmen had vanished, conveying the glory of God through their native vision of the universe in a unique and highly expressive style. European techniques and models were adapted to the evangelical role of the Catholic Church.
Painting featured the chiaroscuro then favored by the Spanish masters - Velázquez, Murillo - and the ltalian and the Flemish schools. Outstanding were the series of pictures which served both an evangelical role and as decoration for churches and monasteries. These are collective works, painted by several assistants under the direction of one master.
The influence of the School of Seville - especially Juan Martínez Montañés -created sculptures that were a naturalist expression of the Calvary and the Crucifixion, and a gentle representation of intimate Christian scenes, such as the Nativity, Christ as a child, or cherubs.

Colonial art reached its zenith in the 18th Century when the workshops could hardly keep abreast of their commissions.
Plaster casts allowed rapid assembley of faces for sculptures; wooden frames replaced heavy carvings - frames that were also used for hollow three dimensional carvings - greatly facilitating the transport of large works of art.

In the remote Captaincy General of Chile there was little artistic development. Works of art were imported from the leading schools, particularly those of Cuzco and Quito.
As from the middle of the 18th Century the colonial aristocracy slowly began to change their orientation as a result of the ideas of the French Enlightenment. Art no longer exclusively followed Spanish fashions nor was limited to religious themes. These ideas also filtered into Chile, where there was relative peace with the Araucanian tribes and a better economic situation. A European-inspired art workshop developed at the Bavarian Jesuit mission at Calera de Tango at the beginning of the 18th Century featuring the delicate curves of the German rococo style. Ornate silverwork, clocks, sculptures, paintings were produced in the mission workshop. This ended with the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767.
Principal centers of colonial art in South America during the 17th and 18th Centuries.