Roma y la renovación de la imagen y el espacio sacro en Chile durante el siglo XIX

Abstract

From the fourth decade of the nineteenth century, the Chilean intellectual elite began to refer to the need to renew the space and the sacred image. The construction of the new nation required a modern church that cultivated an enlightened piety in the faithful, a purpose that required the suppression of space and the baroque image, whose forms promoted a religiosity that was considered inappropriate. This same elite installed the prestige of Rome, of its churches, altars and images, as a beacon to which the architects, sculptors and painters who would collaborate in this regeneration of space and the sacred image should refer. The activity in Chile of architects and sculptors trained in Rome, as well as the arrival of works executed in the workshops of the Eternal City, were decisive factors in making this renovation project a reality. However, the local documentation registers a passive resistance of the population to these changes conceived by the elite. The cases of the churches of the Recoleta Dominica, the Chiloé archipelago, San Ignacio, Andacollo and the chapel of the Santiago Seminary, which will be reviewed in this text, allow us to know the various forms of transfer and appropriation of these new Models.