Plaza Mayor and the Engraved Re-Production of Mexico City

The Ideal City in Print: Plaza Mayor and the Engraved Re-Production of Mexico City

Asiel Sepúlveda

On the morning of December 9, 1796, thousands of people publications by Clara Bargellini, Stacie Widdifield, and Susan gathered in Mexico City’s Plaza Mayor and its surrounding Deans-Smith have offered various perspectives that take into streets to witness the unveiling of Charles IV’s equestrian account the civic importance of the equestrian statue (Figure statue. The ceremony was followed by a three-day festival 2), its place within the artistic zeitgeist of Mexico City, and composed of military parades, sermons, music, light displays, the cultural politics behind the aesthetics of buen gusto or fireworks and bull runs that sought to entertain city dwell- good taste.3 However, the scholars’ overwhelming interest ers from every stratum of society.1 Following the festivities, in Manuel Tolsá’s sculpture has greatly overshadowed other New Spain’s Viceroy, Marqués de Branciforte, commissioned productions, such as Fabregat’s View, which was circulated distinguished faculty of San Carlos Academy of the Three and seen independently from the statue. Noble Arts, painter Rafael Ximeno y Planes and engraver Kelly Donahue-Wallace has shifted the focus from the José Joaquin Fabregat, to design and produce an engraving sculpture to argue that Branciforte understood the power of of the newly erected statue and the surrounding plaza (Figure reproductive print and used Fabregat’s engraving to “imprint 1). The print presents a solemn view devoid of the spectacle his vision of the viceroyalty into Mexican and European that accompanied the unveiling of the statue. In this version, minds.”4 The present article builds on Donahue-Wallace’s the Zócalo, as the space of Plaza Mayor is most commonly study to explore the engraving’s efficacy to “imprint” an known, appears as a utopian public space cleansed of its idea of space on the viewers’ minds. The discussion begins inhabitants, odors, noises and urban maladies. The crowds by proposing that Fabregat’s View did not simply illustrate have disappeared and the Zócalo is inhabited only by a Charles IV’s equestrian statue, but rather re-produced the handful of miniature figures that provide a sense of scale, monument, and the space of Plaza Mayor, in graphical form. emphasizing the size and grandeur of the structure. Such re-production required the monumental urban space The comparison between these two different produc- to be translated and condensed into an engraved image on tions of the same space speaks to the manifold ways in paper, which in turn allowed the viewer to experience the which Mexico City’s Plaza Mayor was used, seen and rep- plaza in different terms. Lastly, this essay argues that Fab- resented. For the common festival goer, Plaza Mayor was the regat’s engraving served as a platform where Plaza Mayor, setting of a spectacle; for the viewers of Fabregat’s View of vis-à-vis Mexico City, was reassembled for a royal audience Mexico’s Plaza, the city center was a space of sobriety and whose imaginary of the space was constructed upon viewer- literal enlightenment. It is this last production of the space ship of the print.5 through printed material that is investigated here. For over two centuries, scholars have marveled at the artistic produc- Re-Producing Mexico City tion emerging out of this key historical moment.2 Recent Shortly after his arrival to Mexico City in 1794, Viceroy

1 For a detailed description of the December 9, 1796 festivities see hispano-americano (Mexico City: UNAM, 1987), 207-20; Stacie “Descripción de las fiestas celebradas en la imperial corte de México, G. Widdifield, “Manuel Tolsá’s Equestrian Portrait of Charles IV: Art con motivo de la solemne colocación de una estatua ecuestre de History, Patrimony, and the City,” in Journal X 8 No.1 (2003): 61-83; nuestro augusto soberano el señor D. Carlos IV, en la plaza mayor,” Susan Deans-Smith, “Manuel Tolsá’s Equestrian Statue of Charles IV Gazeta de Mexico, 28 December, 1796. and Buen Gusto in Late Colonial Mexico,” in Buen Gusto and Classi- cism in the Visual Cultures of Latin America, 1780-1910, ed. Paul Niell 2 Alexander von Humboldt was one of the first to praise the statue for and Stacie G. Widdifield (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico its “purity of style” and “beautiful execution.” Vues des Cordilleréres Press, 2013), 3-18. et monumens des peoples indigens de l’Amerique (Paris, 1816) 57-61. Archive.org, accessed 28 November 2015, https://archive.org/details/ 4 Kelly Donahue-Wallace, “Spinning the King: Prints, Imprinting and the vuesdescordill01humb. Also see Luis Gonzalez Obregon, La vida de Equestrian Portrait of Charles IV,” in Print Quarterly 29, No.4 (2012): 415. Mexico en 1810 (Paris: Vda. de C. Bouret, 1911), 9; Eloísa Uribe, “La estatua ecuestre de Carlos IV o la persistencia de la belleza,” in 5 The term “imaginary” is borrowed from Jacques Lacan’s theory of “The Escultura Ecuestre de México (Mexico City: SEP, 2006), 76-125. Mirror Stage.” Lacan uses “the imaginary” to describe a stage where an individual fashions a fantasy of the self, one that he/she constructs 3 Clara Bargellini, “La lealtad Americana: El significado de la estatua by projecting his/her own image into a mirror. In its socio-political equestre de de Carlos IV,” in Iconología y sociedad: Arte colonial usage, the mirror is often composed of other people (role models), athanor xxxiv asiel sepúlveda

Branciforte petitioned the Spanish Crown to authorize the experience of the space. After all, the Spanish monarchs to construction of a monumental bronze sculpture that was whom the monument was dedicated would never set foot to embody the image and power of King Charles IV in his in Mexico City. American territories.6 On November 30 1795, he received Branciforte was well aware of the print’s effectiveness as confirmation from Spain, and construction on the Zócalo a visual tool. Almost immediately after the plate was finished, began on June 15th of the following year.7 With only six he sent four different shipments with over seventy impres- months to the inauguration date, Branciforte counted on sions to Spain’s prime minister, Manuel Godoy, whom he the resources available to him: the peninsular faculty of the asked to “present as many as you see fit to the Royal Persons recently formed San Carlos Academy of the Three Noble of Their Majesties in my name as proof of my recognition and Arts, and the local government that would eventually raise gratitude, [and] distribute the rest among the persons you the funds required for the project.8 The realization of the consider most convenient.”10 With the help of Godoy, Fab- project was contingent upon collaboration of academicians, regat’s print would carry Branciforte’s message to the King, government officials and local donors. Fabregat’s View out- and distribute an image of modern Mexico City throughout lined the work of San Carlos’ faculty. At the bottom of the Europe. Rather than made from wood and stone, this Mexico print four names appeared credited from left to right in the City was constructed using engraved lines. following order: Manuel Tolsa, Dir. de Escult, hizo el pedestal y la Estatua; Antonio Velasquez, Dir. de Archit, los adornos The Problem of Engraving de la Plaza; Rafael Ximeno, Dir. De Pint, la dibujó; J. Joaquin During the late eighteenth century, Spanish intellectuals Fabregat, Dir. del Grab, la grabó en Mexico, 1797.9 The considered engraving to be a liberal art and an esteemed four names detail the works of each faculty member: Tolsá academic discipline. Scholar of the Spanish Enlightenment sculpted the pedestal and the statue; Velásquez designed Jesusa Vega masterfully demonstrated how Spanish Enlight- the elliptical enclosure; Ximeno y Planes drew the plaza; enment thinkers and Bourbon bureaucrats, known as los and Fabregat engraved it. The credits thus provide a crucial ilustrados, perceived engraving as a universal visual language insight into the way the entire project was imagined by those that was essential to the modernization of the arts and sci- who produced it: as a joint effort between members of the ences, and in turn the state.11 She adds that engraving was academy. To these four names we must also add the local elemental in displacing a baroque apparatus of seeing with contractors, craftsmen and builders, who laid the pavement, a new one of buen gusto or good taste.12 As Vega and other constructed the water fountains (one can be seen in the scholars have articulated, buen gusto did not simply refer to lower right of the print), cast the iron gates, and carved the neoclassical taste, but to a way of seeing and behaving that decorative vases adorning the elliptical fence. promoted secular and rational thinking.13 Thus, the task of The names also imply an order of production. The sculp- engraving was not only to reproduce, as in copying, but to tor and the architect, responsible for the physical structure illustrate, in the full potential of the word, an image. This appear first, the painter who provided the drawing follows, theoretical framework, which seeks to link the medium of and, last, the engraver. This progression suggests that the engraving with the visuality of the Enlightenment, was part engraving was not simply representing the monument, but of late eighteenth-century Spanish academic discourses. In was an integral part of it. The progression from the physical a keynote address given at the San Fernando Academy of construction to its visualization in print implies that rather Art in Madrid, where Fabregat and Ximeno y Planes were than the statue or the plaza, the engraving is the finished trained, naval officer and academician of merit Joseph Vargas product. The print was tasked with carrying the image of the y Ponce posited that engraving was an “illustrious art…that plaza from Mexico City to Spain and perhaps other parts of illustrates (ilustra) [the other arts] in an extraordinary man- Europe, where it would substitute for the viewers’ physical ner.”14 The verb ilustra carries a rather dense connotation objects, institutions, political platforms, the nation, et cetera. This paper are copied verbatim from the engraving. uses “imaginary” to indicate a type of fantasy created by the Spanish royal’s projection of the self into the highly symbolic space created by 10 Quoted and translated by Kelly Donahue-Wallace, “Spinning the Fabregat’s View. See Jacques Lacan, “The Mirror Stage as Formative King,” 411-12. of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience,” trans. Alan Sheridan in Écrits (New York and London: W.W. Norton 11 Jesusa Vega, Ciencia, arte e ilusión en la España ilustrada (Madrid: & Company, 1977) 2-7. Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 2010), 217-60.

6 Donahue-Wallace, “Spinning the King,”412. 12 Ibid., 219.

7 “Descripción de las fiestas,” 2. 13 Also see Niell and Widdifield, Buen Gusto and Classism in the Visual Cultures of Latin America 1780-1910, xiii-18. 8 Ibid., 3. 14 Joseph Vargas y Ponce, “Discurso�� histórico sobre el principio y pro- 9 It is worth nothing that at the time the engraving was produced, a gresos del grabado” in Distribución de los premios concedidos por el gilded wood and stucco statue stood in place of Tolsá’s bronze sculp- Rey nuestro señor a los discípulos de las nobles artes (Madrid: Imprenta ture, which was not finished until 1803. The text and abbreviations de La Viuda de Ibarra, 1790), 37-38.

70 the ideal city in print: plaza mayor and the engraved re-production of mexico city

in this context. The word was closely associated with the overpopulated Zócalo of Mexico City. In 1695, a century Enlightenment rhetoric that Spaniards called ilustramiento, before Fabregat engraved his View, Crístobal de Villalpando thus the root of los ilustrados. Vargas y Ponce’s use of the captured the dynamic urban center in View of the Zócalo term implies that when engraving performed the action of of Mexico City (Figures 3 and 4). The painter presented a ilustrar, it not only represented an image but rather brought radiant metropolis composed of boulevards crowded with the visual language of Enlightenment into the reproduction; carriages, merchandise wagons, and the city’s diverse de- a language that was closely associated with state sponsored mographic (Figure 5). images and the Bourbon Reforms. Thus, Fabregat’s engraving In contrast to Villalpando’s overcrowded city center, of the Plaza Mayor performed a double function: to represent Fabregat’s View presents a nearly empty metropolis only the space for a royal audience, but also to ilustrar, as in to inhabited by a small group of figures. Here, the city’s popula- enlighten its image. tion has been replaced by an allegory of imperial leadership (Figure 6). On the lower right corner, a European figure The Problem of Space dressed in military garb asserts his authority over the group The physical renovation of the Zócalo and its subsequent behind him. Three dark-skinned figures sit on the floor; one engraved visualization in Fabregat’s View also bring to the appears to be covering her/his bare chest, while a woman fore what Henri Lefebvre termed as “the production of holds her unruly naked child who extends his/her open arms space.” Lefebvre speaks of spaces as a stage where the city to an allegorical figure dressed in classical garments. This last and urban life are pre-configured by the state. He adds that character points to the statue, inviting the group, and the the state and each of its constituent insti- viewer, to admire the magnificent structure. Standing behind tutions call for spaces—but spaces which the mother and child, another two men observe the plaza. they can then organize according to their Lastly, in the center foreground, an African child also admires specific requirements; so there is no sense the architecture while a man dressed in the cape and broad in which space can be treated solely as an hat, iconographic attributes closely associated with mixed- a priori condition of these institutions and race members of the colonial casta system, shadows the child the state which preside over them.15 with his sombrero. The racial variety outlines the subjects of In other words, states must first physically produce a empire, commonly depicted in casta paintings of the time.17 space by using raw materials and labor, and then assign a The Spanish military officer, perhaps a representation of the meaning to that space (social production of space); however Viceroy, leads the lower classes to the light–the foremost this “meaning” is not fixed but transient.16 The meaning of the agent of the Enlightenment. The group is illuminated and at space travels with the state’s rhetoric and the interpretations the same time overshadowed by the position of the European of those who participate in such rhetoric then re-produces figure who performs the role of recipient and later distributor the meaning of the space, either as experienced physically of Enlightenment. He leads the empire and its population or viewed in a printed image. Fabregat’s View functioned towards the orderly, ample, and luminous future presented as a platform where the space of the city—as an idea—is in the new Plaza Mayor. re-produced through the viewer’s encounter with the print. Such re-production, however, is contingent upon the me- The Problem of Scale dium’s ability to disseminate an already produced city. The print’s juxtaposition of monumental architecture Charles IV’s equestrian monument is a prime example and miniature bodies produces a new space by “organizing” of how the colonial state sought to modify the space of Plaza (returning to Lefebvre) a visual experience featuring the in- Mayor in order to re-define the visuality of the city. First, the teractions between the objecthood of the state (King’s statue construction of the elliptical structure altered movement and architecture), the symbolic space of the Zócalo and the through the city center. It restricted access and undesirable imperial subjects. The King rules in absentia through the traffic through Plaza Mayor. Second, the space was visual- larger-than-life statue, as does the Catholic Church through ized, and “organized” in the process, through Fabregat’s the cathedral in the background, and the local government View in order to meet Branciforte’s “specific requirements.” through the viceregal palace on the right. Here, the power Rather than a quotidian picture of the Plaza Mayor, the print relationships unfold through what Susan Stewart has dis- presents an orderly public space that existed exclusively in cussed as the narrative of the miniature and the gigantic.18 the print. This representation greatly deviated from the often Stewart suggests that while “the miniature makes the body 15 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson- later the eighteenth century, represented a great variety of interracial Smith (Oxford, UK, Cambridge, USA: Blackwell, 1991), 85. marriages and their offspring. For closer look at casta paintings see Magali M.Carrera, Imagining Identity in New Spain: Race, Lineage, and 16 See chapter 2, “Social Space” in Ibid., 69-168. the Colonial Body in Portraiture and Casta Paintings (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003). 17 The casta system was a hierarchical structure of racial classification used in the Spanish Americas during the colonial period. Casta paint- 18 Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, ings, which were largely popular in Mexico during the second half the Souvenir, the Collection (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), 37-107.

71 athanor xxxiv asiel sepúlveda

gigantic, the gigantic transforms the body into miniature, cause of the body-to-object dimensional relationship with especially pointing to the body’s ‘toylike’ and ‘insignificant’ the monument. aspects.”19 The body-to-object relationship in Fabregat’s View In addition to the massive size of the sculpture, the floor is a prime example of how scale was used to construct the of the elliptical structure was progressively raised towards imperial narrative behind Charles IV’s equestrian monument. the center imbuing the statue with panoptic power over the The miniature figures in the print become subjects of the plaza’s dwellers.23 The beholder of Fabregat’s engraving is gigantic statue and state architecture, which exert their power also endowed with such power through the act of looking. of scale and rhetoric of material permanence over Mexico Here the viewer is elevated to a second story, one fairly City’s populace.20 This relationship between pedestrian and similar to the height of the Viceroy’s balcony, where three monument leads to the creation of an imperial subject, one figures also observe the space. This mode of authoritative that is being watched by the King himself. looking, or rather experiencing the Zócalo, re-produces the In order to visualize the power dynamics invested in the space for the imperial viewership. The viewer’s idea of the monument, Fabregat’s View needed to re-produce the city city is thus modified by his or her experience of looking at space once again. The success of the print lies in its ability to the plaza. He or she is removed from the space and inserted communicate the grand magnitude of the monument and its in a position of power, becoming the overseer rather than power over the public space without diminishing the viewer pedestrian. to a “toylike” miniature. This process unfolds by inverting the size and thus power relationship between viewer and public Conclusion space. First, the print offers the viewer a unique opportunity The historiography of Charles IV’s equestrian statue often to imagine the city (the gigantic), a larger-than-life structure treats Fabregat’s View as a representation of the structure, that can never be seen in its entirety.21 Although the print is hence overlooking the importance of the print in the mak- rather large (46 x 68.7 cm), it is, in essence, a miniaturization ing of the public space occupied by the monument. Such of Mexico City into a monochrome two-dimensional image interpretation has obscured our understanding of the print’s on paper. While the gigantic can only be consumed partially function as an active participant in the visual production because of its size, the miniature on the other hand, allows of Plaza Mayor and in turn Mexico City. This paper has the viewer to experience an abstracted and condensed ver- argued that such production consisted of collaborative ef- sion of the structure.22 In addition to reducing the city for forts in which Fabregat’s engraving played an integral role. manageable consumption, the inversion of scale removes First, the print allowed Branciforte to disseminate a highly the viewer from the plaza in order to avoid the threat of idealized image of the monument, and that of Mexico City, the gigantic. internationally. Second, high quality engraving produced by Through this process of reduction and enlargement, a peninsular academician of merit imbued the image with Fabregat’s View provides a platform for seeing the city as a the rhetoric of buen gusto that was closely associated with produced idea of space. The reduction of the city as Plaza modernity and the Bourbon administrative apparatus. Finally, Mayor is a form of organization that is necessary to under- by reconfiguring the space into graphical form, reducing the stand the otherwise inscrutable structure of the metropolis. city to a few signifiers, and inverting the viewer-to-space The Spanish royals never visited Mexico City and even if they scale, the engraving provided a platform for the Spanish Royal had, they would not have experienced the same space as audience to project an imaginary of power over the space of that of Fabregat’s View. The pedestrian view of Plaza Mayor Plaza Mayor. Lastly, it is through this complex interlacing that would have been drastically different. Not only would the Fabregat’s View re-produces an ideal city in print. space be populated by its everyday inhabitants, but the Spanish royals would become victims of the gigantic be- Southern Methodist University

19 Ibid., 71. creates “a denser expression” of reality. Douglass W. Bailey, Prehistoric Figurines: Representation and Corporeality in the Neolithic (London: 20 According to Stewart “the gigantic is appropriated by the state and Routledge, 2005), 30-32. its institutions and put on a parade with great seriousness, not as a representative of the material life of the body, but as a symbol of the 23 For a description of the architectural project that progressively raised abstract social formations making up life in the city.” Ibid., 81. the ground where the king statue was installed, see “Descripción de las fiestas,” 4-5. Paul Niell has argued that the Bourbon urban reforms 21 See Stewart’s discussion of the city as it relates to theories of the project used public spaces such as geometrically organized plazas to gigantic in Ibid., 78-86. gain panoptic vision over the city’s populace. Paul Niell, Urban Space as Heritage in Late Colonial Cuba: Classicism and Dissonance on the 22 In his study of miniature figures Douglass W. Bailey suggests that Plaza de Armas of Havana, 1754-1828 (Austin: University of Texas miniaturization demands a selective process of reduction, one that Press, 2015), 27-54.

72 the ideal city in print: plaza mayor and the engraved re-production of mexico city

Figure 1. Rafael Jimeno y Planes and José Joaquin Fabregat, Vista de la Plaza de México, nuevamente adornada para la estatua equestre de nuestro augusto monarca reynante Carlos IV, 1797, engraving, 46 x 68.7 cm (platemark). Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.

Figure 2. Rafael Jimeno y Planes and José Joaquin Fabregat, Detail of Vista de la Plaza de México, nuevamente adornada para la estatua equestre de nuestro augusto monarca reynante Carlos IV, 1797, engraving, 49 x 68.7 cm (platemark). Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University.

73 athanor xxxiv asiel sepúlveda

Figure 3. Cristobal de Villalpando, View of the Zócalo of Mexico City, 1695, oil on canvas. Corsham Court, Wiltshire / Bridgeman Images.

Figure 4. Cristobal de Villalpando, Detail of View of the Zócalo of Mexico City, 1695, oil on canvas. Corsham Court, Wiltshire / Bridgeman Images.

u Figure 5. [facing page, top] Cristobal de Vil- lalpando, Detail of View of the Zócalo of Mexico City, 1695, oil on canvas. Corsham Court, Wiltshire / Bridgeman Images.

u Figure 6. [facing page, bottom] Rafael Jimeno y Planes and José Joaquin Fabregat, Detail of Vista de la Plaza de México, nuevamente adornada para la estatua equestre de nuestro augusto monarca reynante Carlos IV, 1797, engraving, 49 x 68.7 cm (platemark). Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. 74 the ideal city in print: plaza mayor and the engraved re-production of mexico city