The painting: 'The Destruction of Mission San Saba': Document of service to the King.

摘要

The role of art as a documentary record in the development of the cultural identities of the wealthy elite of Spanish Colonial Mexico might not be more readily examined, or clearly understood, than with an analysis of the eighteenth-century colonial painting, The Destruction of the Mission San Saba (Figure 1), and the circumstances connected to the commission of this work. The painting depicts a massacre staged by the Comanche Indians against the Spanish missionaries in the northern frontiers of New Spain. Its scenes document the beginning of the collapse of Spain's colonization efforts along with the more personal losses of the mission's patron, Don Pedro Romero de Terreros. This artwork is also the earliest known artistic recounting of an historical event in the Texas Province of New Spain by a professional artist. It is an accurate historical rendering of a sequence of events that resulted in the deaths of the mission inhabitants and the destruction of the mission. It also records the beginning of the collapse of the Spanish conquest of the Texas province.;The evidence, and conclusion, that the intention of The Destruction of Mission San Saba was to act as an insurance policy, of sorts, for the expected rewards of philanthropic actions by Don Pedro Romero de Terreros has never been published. It is only by placing the painting in the cultural context in which it was created that it becomes clear what the intent of the painting's commission was to be. This dissertation is the first in-depth academic study to present this particular interpretation. Romero de Terreros commissioned the painting not only to testify to his actions, but intended to use the painting as an instrument of documentation to procure the rewards he believed due to him by the Spanish government.