14. ARCHITECTURE. Mexico was by far the most im portant of the Spanish colonies of the mother country, which lavished upon her all the care a mother bestows upon a favorite daughter. The fabulous wealth poured into Spain from over seas she dispensed with a liberal hand in beautifying the home domain and in covering the new land she had discovered with mag nificent edifices which, to-day, constitute the chief charm of the Spanish-American coun tries. The activity of the arts in Spain was coincident with the duration of that vast treas ure that kept constantly filled to overflowing her coffers for almost three centuries. Mexico, more than any of the other American colonies, reflected the activity of the mother country. Especially was this so in architecture and its allied arts, painting, decorating and sculpture. A famous art critic has justly said that, during the Spanish regime, there were more monu mental buildings erected in Mexico than in all the rest of America. This was due to several causes. The native civilization had already produced magnificent artisans while Europe was still in the dark ages. The existing ruins of the vast, highly ornate edifices erected be for Spain set foot in America compel the admiration of layman and architect alike. Of the skilled native workmen at the time of the Conquest, thousands had labored under the master builders of Montezuma and of the sovereigns of Michoacan, of Yucatan of the Zapotecas and the Mixtecas. For untold years Mexican artisans had been accustomed to de pend very greatly upon themselves in working out their plans and ornamental designs, all of which were controlled by partially convention alized mythological ideas and C:iurch polity. The European architects who arrived in Mexico from Spain almost immediately after the Con quest found these native artisans wonderfully skilful and resourceful; and they soon came to realize that the surest way to get the best re sults was to allow them to work out ideas not from a detailed plan but from rough sketches. The result was that, while Mexico adopted Spanish architecture, it did so with modifica tions introduced, consciously or unconsciously, by the native workmen who brought to their task traditions that, from time immemorial, had governed their plans and the manner of execut ing them.
Transition The Spanish conquistadores were in spirit much like the Crusaders. They fought the races of America in the name of the cross, and they smote the heathen for the greater glory of God. They demolished temples; they smashed idols throughout the length and breadth of the land with religious frenzy and they leveled gigantic pyramids that had required centuries for their erection. The priests and monks who followed
the soldiers continued the demolition of all evidence of the historic past of the native races. But this work of destruction called for a counter work of construction. Missionaries spread all over the land; architects were brought from Spain to the larger cities and towns; while native Indian master-builders were employed in the villages and country places under the direction of the Spanish priests who had generally some knowledge of architecture. Soon the passion for building churches, convents, colleges, schools and priestly. residences became as great as that for destruc tion during the first quarter of a century fol lowing the Conquest.
The architecture of this first colonial period was largely affected by native Indian ideas, as all the workmen were natives. As they did not know Spanish, and their masters and overseers were unacquainted with the native tongue, they were left very much to them selves to work out their own ideas of con struction, more or less in conformity with the general plan of the architect or master-builder. In beauty of form and grandeur of concep tion the buildings of this epoch were very much inferior to the native edifices they re placed. But it was an age of reconstruction in which the builders looked more to utilitarian ends than to beauty. While the great, Moorish like dome was the dominant feature in Spanish architecture, even at this early date, very few churches with handsome domes or vaulted roofs were built in Mexico or in any of the other American colonies in the first half of the 16th century, for these were architectural features unfamiliar to the native artisans. These early Spanish colonial edifices were a curious ad mixture of Gothic, Renaissance, Moorish and native American styles. In general the plan of the building was Spanish, modified by Moor ish. The roof was the flat American structure in use in Mexico and Yucatan before the Con quest, while the ornamentation was a curious intermingling of Christian and Indian ideog raphy and conventional European and American mythological conceptions. Compared with those that followed them, these early Spanish colonial edifices were plain and of unprepos sessing appearance. But their study is both interesting and instructive, for they point to the buildings that were to come, with their mingling of the best in the art of Old Spain and of New Spain. Spanish domination brought to Mexico a tranquillity and an undis puted authority lasting three centuries, during which the Spanish court directed the energies of the colony and led the way in that great revival of art such as no other American colony experienced.