Carmen Fernández-Salvador describes this work as “a study of the early iconographic program of the Jesuit church of Quito . . . in conversation with the society's missionary project in Amazonia” (p. 15). And indeed, a central focus of this book is the relationship between Quito, the center from which emanates military, political, and spiritual conquest, and the Amazonian subregion of Maynas (the “imperial frontier” from the title). Interpreting Jesuit artistic works from both the church and the local colegio alongside a diverse array of contemporaneous texts, the author illuminates how concepts of center/periphery and civilization/barbarism shaped the construction of local civic and religious identities.
Yet her reading of a cycle of seventeenth-century canvases depicting the Old Testament prophets offers much more than that, making the book compelling reading for scholars across the disciplines. An art historian, Fernández-Salvador offers a sophisticated analysis of the links between religious iconography, chronicles of...
