The Art and Architecture of the Texas Missions (Jack & Doris Smothers Series in Texas History, Life, and Culture) (Jack and Doris Smothers Series in Texas History, Life, and Culture) - Hardcover

Quirarte, Jacinto

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0292769024 ISBN 13: 9780292769021

Publisher: University of Texas Press, 2002

Synopsis

Winner, Presidio La Bahia Award, Sons of the Republic of Texas Built to bring Christianity and European civilization to the northern frontier of New Spain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries...secularized and left to decay in the nineteenth century...and restored in the twentieth century, the Spanish missions still standing in Texas are really only shadows of their original selves. The mission churches, once beautifully adorned with carvings and sculptures on their facades and furnished inside with elaborate altarpieces and paintings, today only hint at their colonial-era glory through the vestiges of art and architectural decoration that remain. To paint a more complete portrait of the missions as they once were, Jacinto Quirarte here draws on decades of on-site and archival research to offer the most comprehensive reconstruction and description of the original art and architecture of the six remaining Texas missions-San Antonio de Valero (the Alamo), San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo, Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Concepcion, San Juan Capistrano, and San Francisco de la Espada in San Antonio and Nuestra Senora del Espiritu Santo in Goliad. Using church records and other historical accounts, as well as old photographs, drawings, and paintings, Quirarte describes the mission churches and related buildings, their decorated surfaces, and the (now missing) altarpieces, whose iconography he extensively analyzes. He sets his material within the context of the mission era in Texas and the Southwest, so that the book also serves as a general introduction to the Spanish missionary program and to Indian life in Texas.

About this title

Synopsis:

Built to bring Christianity and European civilisation to the northern frontier of New Spain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ...secularised and left to decay in the nineteenth century ...and restored in the twentieth century, the Spanish missions still standing in Texas are really only shadows of their original selves. The mission churches, once beautifully adorned with carvings and sculptures on their facades and furnished inside with elaborate altarpieces and paintings, today only hint at their colonial-era glory through the vestiges of art and architectural decoration that remain. To paint a more complete portrait of the missions as they once were, Jacinto Quirarte here draws on decades of on-site and archival research to offer the most comprehensive reconstruction and description of the original art and architecture of the six remaining Texas missions - San Antonio de Valero (the Alamo), San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo, Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Concepcion, San Juan Capistrano, and San Francisco de la Espada in San Antonio and Nuestra Senora del Espiritu Santo in Goliad.

Using church records and other historical accounts, as well as old photographs, drawings, and paintings, Quirarte describes the mission churches and related buildings, their decorated surfaces, and the (now missing) altarpieces, whose iconography he extensively analyzes. He sets his material within the context of the mission era in Texas and the Southwest, so that the book also serves as a general introduction to the Spanish missionary program and to Indian life in Texas.

About the Author:

Jacinto Quirarte is Professor Emeritus, History of Art and Criticism, at the University of Texas at San Antonio.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0292769024
• ISBN 13: 9780292769021
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 261