UC Berkeley

Colonial mural paintings are part of many convents across Latin America, serving as a reminder of their historical past and the women who inhabited these spaces. This study delves into the mural layers of three convents in present-day Ecuador and Colombia that were painted between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries: the choir in the Convents of Santa Clara in Santafé (1647), Santa Clara la Real in Tunja (1571), and the living quarters of the Convent of San José in Quito (1653). It examines the painting remnants, which include religious scenes and figures, landscapes, and ornate patterns that span from comprehensible visual scenes to unintelligible, overlapping, and disjointed fragments, thus creating a palimpsest of paint layers, devotional practices, and memories. Located in the northern Andes, these convents were relatively autonomous from Spanish colonial control, unlike the viceregal metropoles of New Spain (Mexico) and Peru. This geographical isolation fostered a secluded artistic development, where books and images imported from Europe interacted with local Indigenous visual and musical cultures. The comparison of the choir spaces of Santa Clara in Santafé and Tunja provides an overview of the development of conventual institutions in Nueva Granada to meet the increasing need for a uniquely female space to accommodate unmarried women of Spanish origin (criollas). The mural paintings in the choirs and the decoration of the church beyond the nuns’ enclosure were part of a multisensorial space, where sound and sight indicated the cloistered nuns’ presence in the church during ceremonies open to the lay public. Their voices permeated the space, reverberating from the painted walls. The Convent of Santa Clara la Real in Tunja exemplifies the use of ornament as a site of meaning, while the Convent of Santa Clara in Santafé represents Santafé’s preeminence in Nueva Granada and the economic and social power of the convent through the combination of gilded ornaments with animal and saintly figures. In contrast, the Convent of San José in Quito represents a different approach; its living quarters were covered with scenes from The Life of St. Teresa, a printed book engraved by Adrien Collaert and Cornelius Galle in 1613. The paintings symbolize the continuation of sanctity in the convent, from Mariana de Jesús, who was the first Ecuadorian saint, to the arrival of the Carmelite Order in Quito, represented by the image of St. Teresa of Avilá. In this mural program, colonial subjects did not passively copy European prints. Instead, painting was a dynamic artistic and devotional expression, where the nuns, through collective and anonymous manual labor and curatorial decisions, were active participants in Quito’s cultural development. The mural paintings in these convents and the human interactions that took place within them created a unique space where the past and present have come together. These murals are layered upon each other, creating a physical and conceptual palimpsest. The mural paintings in the convents of Santa Clara in Santafé and Tunja, as well as the convent of San José in Quito, represent the different stages in the lives of the women who once inhabited them. The mural paintings embed the memory of these women through their contemplation, interventions, and devotional practices.