For ninety years, scholars have debated the name of a style of architectural sculpture that flourished in the southern Andes from the late seventeenth century well into the nineteenth century. Although most commonly known as the Estilo Mestizo, or Mestizo Style, dozens of terms have been coined in an attempt to label this mélange of European and Andean forms, including arte indo-criollo, indo-barroco, indo-hispanica, provincial highland art, and folk art. Traditional Christian elements like the cross, angels, and saints are juxtaposed with Andean natural imagery and symbols of Inca imperialism, resulting in a style that is difficult to name because of its hybrid nature.
Gauvin Bailey refers to the height of this dispute (1958−80) as the “Great Debate” and his book stands as both a response to and a rejection of many of the ideas that were circulated during those two decades. Bailey considers this debate parallel to nationalistic developments occurring throughout South America at the same time: while Latin American nations were attempting to carve out non-colonial identities for themselves, the scholarly field divided into the Hispanists and the indigenists. Had Bailey participated in the debate, he would have aligned himself with the indigenists, along with José de Mesa and Teresa Gisbert.
While Bailey acknowledges the “stranglehold” (15) that this nomenclatural debate has had on the historiography of Latin American colonial art, he introduces a new term into the mix himself, Andean Hybrid Baroque. Using this term, he hopes to identify the style's “geographic location and its cultural admixture [in terms that are] more useful for an art historical study because it relates more specifically to how this culture fits into an international stylistic movement” (2). Bailey organizes the book chronologically by region, beginning with the better-studied regions of Arequipa and Cotahuasi, and then moving on to the lesser-studied regions of Caylloma and Collao. In hundreds of pages of description, Bailey goes far beyond naming the style. Rather, his descriptions situate the artworks and monuments in a clear historical and cultural framework.
Bailey is clear about the place of this book within the larger body of literature dedicated to the so-called Andean Hybrid Baroque. The Andean Hybrid Baroque is an important step for the field that was largely overlooked in favor of the scholarly emphasis on naming the style. Bailey describes his work as a “comprehensive campaign of archival research combined with a systematic stylistic examination of all of the primary Andean Hybrid Baroque churches and their decoration” (42). In a single source, Bailey has brought together thorough descriptions of each monument (usually focusing on exterior decoration, but occasionally exploring interiors as well), detailed archival documentation, and related secondary literature. Seventy-five pages of high-quality photographs accompany this volume and offer an unprecedented view of each Andean Hybrid Baroque façade along with details of local flora and fauna, the sun, moon, and stars, angels, mermaids, and chunchas (wild men) among other motifs carved on the facades.
As in much of his earlier work, Bailey here continues to explore the artistic and architectural contributions of the Jesuit order, and in this case the Dominican order also takes center stage in the dissemination of the Andean Hybrid Baroque style. Bailey poses a crucial question: did clerics promote this hybrid style as a way to smooth the transition from Andean religious beliefs to Christianity, or were they largely unaware of the significance of the Andean symbolism that was being carved into their church facades? To answer this question, Bailey relies heavily on extirpation documents in which Andean ritual practices were routinely prohibited by colonial officials. In a field which has long been populated by “anonymous” or “unknown” masters, Bailey does important work bringing to light the names of indigenous, mestizo, black, criollo, and European craftsmen, artists, and architects, illustrating the complexity of the artistic and political situation during the colonial era.
Bailey takes pioneering scholar Ramón Gutiérrez's call to scour the archives for new primary documents very seriously: he includes close to 175 pages of transcriptions of sources culled from archives in Arequipa, Cuzco, La Paz, Lima, Puno, Juli, and Rome. These transcriptions, most of them previously unpublished, will be invaluable to scholars studying ecclesiastical architecture in the southern Andes. The detailed inventories of architectural and interior decoration also make the book an important resource for anyone who is interested in the intricacies of colonial artistic production.
