Decoding the Gun-Wielding Angels of Bolivia
Set within the arid excessive plain about an hour and a half south of La Paz, Bolivia, the city of Calamarca is in some ways a typical colonial settlement, a grid of homes and retailers centered round a circa 1600 Baroque church that overlooks a small plaza. Inside this church, nonetheless, a outstanding gathering of angels has made the city a vacation spot.
Wearing lace, feathers, and gold brocade—finery that resembled that of the Indigenous elites who administered Spanish colonial rule—these celestial beings are androgynous, posing like dancers with their wings discretely held behind them. What startles the viewer is that also they are bristling with weaponry: Every is armed with a musket—particularly, an arquebus, a typical infantry gun of the sixteenth century—and appears ready to make use of it.
“The angeles arcabuceros don’t fail to cease individuals of their tracks,” says Gauvin Bailey, a professor of artwork historical past at Ontario’s Queen’s College and the writer of a 2010 survey, The Andean Hybrid Baroque: Convergent Cultures in the Churches of Colonial Peru.
Angels are, after all, a typical theme in Catholic artwork. They typically carry symbolic objects, corresponding to books, banners, or musical devices (consider the Archangel Gabriel along with his horn), and typically they’re even outfitted for battle—Saint Michael typically carries a sword and defend. Outdoors this a part of South America, nonetheless, religious warriors with firearms are exceptional. “They’re a extremely distinctive artwork type,” says Bailey.
Muskets should not the one factor that makes the angeles arcabuceros particular. Originating within the second half of the Seventeenth century within the space round Lake Titicaca, which spans the border between modern-day Peru and Bolivia, the gun-toting angels carry hidden Indigenous meanings. Though putatively Christian, the angeles arcabuceros additionally trace at deeper layers of Andean spirituality.
“Students have linked the angeles arcabuceros to historic Andean star and planetary venerations, in addition to to pure phenomena corresponding to hail, thunderstorms, and earthquakes,” Bailey says, noting potential connections to the native god of fireplace and lightning, Tunupa, amongst different deities. “Folks of the time definitely did proceed to worship Indigenous deities—as they proceed to do right now.”
The parallels had been no accident—as somewhere else the place Christian missionaries labored to transform a populace, evangelizing monks within the Andes used syncretism, a technique of incorporating pre-existing beliefs into a brand new faith. They made connections wherever they may between biblical figures and Indigenous beliefs. Given the breadth of the Andean pantheon, angels might have acted as helpful replacements for Indigenous deities.
On the similar time, angels is also seen as ruthlessly expelling pagan superstitions when depicted as religious warriors. “The angeles arcabuceros might consequently have referred to the militant church assuming religious management of the area,” wrote artwork historian Kelly Donahue-Wallace, in her 2008 survey, Art and Architecture of Viceregal Latin America, 1521-1821.
In brief, the gun-toting angel was a multifaceted metaphor. “It undoubtedly additionally mirrored the Catholic Counter-Reformation militaristic rhetoric,” wrote Donahue-Wallace, “which promoted the church as a military and heavenly beings as its troopers.”
Whatever the largely nameless artists’ motives or monks’ intentions in commissioning these works, the angels had been an instantaneous and lasting hit with the Andean individuals. The depictions quickly unfold all through the area—though the angel musketeers proved too peculiar, or too specific, for export to Europe.
“They owed their reputation within the Andes to their indigeneity, their relationship to Andean beliefs and tradition,” Bailey says. “The Church was by no means fully snug with them.”
The armed angels did, nonetheless, proceed their rein in Bolivia and Peru, the place artists continued portray them for almost 300 years, all of the whereas remaining trustworthy to the unique model of gown. (The angels additionally retained their Seventeenth-century weaponry, which students imagine was impressed by Dutch engravings of navy workouts which will have circulated among the many unique artists and their college students.)
Within the 18th century, angeles arcabuceros even grew to become related to Indigenous independence actions, says Bailey. “In a case of life imitating artwork, contributors dressed as angels in a non secular parade in Lima in 1750 carried loaded weapons and used them to start an armed rebellion!”
At the moment, the individuals of the area defend their angels simply as fiercely. At Calamarca, a society of parish members was fashioned in 1913 to guard the art work from looters. Anybody wishing to go to the church, generally known as the Templo de Calamarca, should first safe permission and an escort from the mayor’s workplace.
There are different angeles arcabuceros, together with the celebrated canvas Asiel Timor Dei (proven on the high of this text) by an nameless artist generally known as the Grasp of Calamarca at Bolivia’s Nationwide Museum of Artwork in La Paz. One other dozen canvases had been donated to Campion Corridor on the College of Oxford in 2015. (In keeping with Campion’s archivist, Peter Davidson, the non-public collector who made the present additionally handed alongside a word from an artwork seller in Lima, which learn, “This isn’t solely a superb portray, however he’ll kill demons within the doorway of your home.”)
Nonetheless, Bailey says, the three dozen that adorn the partitions of the Templo de Calamarca stay his favourite, if solely due to the sheer quantity of their ornamental element, which stands in shocking distinction to their martial stance.
“No star ballet dancer on the court docket of Louis XIV might even strategy these fashionable angels,” Bailey says, “with their embroidered jackets, silk stockings, lace cuffs and collars, and genteel feathered hats.”