TEXTILES IN THE CATHEDRAL OF SANTIAGO DE CHILE: COLORS AND MATERIALITIES IN EXTINCTION (19TH CENTURY)

Abstract

The preserved inventories of the Cathedral of Santiago (19th century) re- cord the presence and disappearance of different textiles. During the first half of the century, this variety of materialities and colors kept alive the sumptuousness of a colonial temple in a church that had lost all its ornaments as a result of various catastrophes. Here I describe the visual and devotional coherence of the textile apparatus that occupied the new cathedral temple, I venture the origin of this objects and I record its gradual disappearance. I argue that the causes of this disappearance would be, mainly, the new parameters of pious taste and the security demands that arose after the fire of the Company church in 1863. More generally, I propose a “chromoclast” interpretation of this new pious and aesthetic sensibility from the end of the 19th century that replaced the value of color –properly baroque or Catholic– with the sober elegance of monochrome typical of altars and marble sculptures.