San Juan Evangelista Culhuacan: The Convento Murals 1

The Culhuacan map of 1580 by Pedro de San Agustín, with church and place glyph of sacred mountain with cave and spring.

The rugged Augustinian monastery at Culhuacan is hewn from coarse black lava. The roofless basilican church and its brooding convento convey the same timeless monumentality as the surviving Aztec structures scattered throughout the valley. The complex has undergone structural changes over the centuries—the old church collapsed and a new one built late in the colonial period.

Although some were lost to the reconstruction, neglect and ill considered, later over painting, and while many remain only fragmentary, the bleak convento is brightened by numerous 16th century frescoes in a mixture of styles and coloration. Executed al temple, or in fresco de secco— paint applied to dry instead of wet plaster—they picture a wide range of themes dear to the Augustinian Order.

Anteporteria
Beyond the L-shaped porteria, the vestibule (anteporteria) is decorated with a faded Ship of Friars mural thought to depict the arrival of the Augustinians in the New World. The murals in this room are painted in traditional warm black, with faded blue and umber details. 

The principal fresco, framed by painted baluster columns, is a triptych of a stylized St. Augustine, with crozier and miter, holding up the church, and depicted as Protector of his Order. He is flanked by black clad friars on either side beneath his spreading cloak, and in a reference to the other mendicant Orders, St Dominic stands to one side and St Francis receives the Stigmata on the right.

St Dominic

The Lower Cloister 

Thebaida with Calvary scene above arch 

The lower cloister murals are framed in the same style, but rendered in still glowing colors against an unusually bright azure background, possibly water related. 
   At least two of the walls depict the Augustinian Thebaida, or Allegory of the Eremitic Life— portrayed here as an Earthly Paradise. Against an idyllic landscape of rocks, hermits’ caves, lakes and native vegetation, groups of tiny friars pursue their tasks in a peaceable kingdom of naively drawn felines, rabbits and deer. 

More than merely decorative, the landscape mirrors the topography of the area as portrayed in the Culhuacan map, notably the distinctive local mount of Cerro de la Estrella with its cave and springs, sacred to the ancient Culhuas and the Aztecs as the site of the annual New Fire ceremony.  
   In fact, the Thebaida artist and the painter of the 1580 map (see above) may have been one and the same—possibly one Pedro de San Agustín, an elite tlacuilo from Tlatelolco and thus one of the few native muralists whose name has come down to us. 
   These large scale frescoes, which may have originally covered all of the cloister walls, are again framed by ornate, faux baluster columns and inset with medallions showing scenes from Christ’s Passion—an impressive and colorful gallery.  

Detailed and colorful grotesque friezes above the murals add to the intensity of the display. Numerous apostles, evangelists, saints and martyrs appear in large cartouches throughout— predominantly in blues, reds and earth hues— set in a matrix of foliage, angels and pegasi:

St. Augustine                                           St. Mary Magdalene 

St. James Major                                                                Martyr. Nicholas of Tolentino? 

St Lawrence                                              St Sebastian

By the stairwell, an enigmatic mural shows two friars—one reading a book and the other gazing up the stairs in an attitude of prayer. Birds fly above, with a steep hill behind. 

text ©2019 Richard D. Perry.

images by the author, Niccolo Brooker, Diana Roberts & Robert Jackson