PATRON SAINT OF A WORLD IN CRISIS: EARLY MODERN REPRESENTATIONS OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER IN EUROPE AND ASIA by Rachel Miller BA, Kenyon College, 2005 MA, University of Pittsburgh, 2010 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2016 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH KENNETH P. DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Rachel Miller It was defended on March 28, 2016 and approved by Christopher J. Nygren, Assistant Professor, History of Art and Architecture Mrinalini Rajagopalan, Assistant Professor, History of Art and Architecture Patrick Manning, Professor, History Dissertation Advisor: Kirk Savage, Professor, History of Art and Architecture Dissertation Advisor: Ann Sutherland Harris, Professor Emerita, History of Art and Architecture ii Copyright © by Rachel Miller 2016 iii PATRON SAINT OF A WORLD IN CRISIS: EARLY MODERN REPRESENTATIONS OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER IN EUROPE AND ASIA Rachel Miller, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2016 Recent historical studies have focused on the vital role that Catholic saints played after the Council of Trent, investigating how these holy figures were utilized to alleviate all manner of problems besetting the Post-Tridentine Church, emerging European nation states, and individual Catholics. My dissertation, however, approaches this issue from an art historical perspective, considering how images of St. Francis Xavier, the sixteenth-century Jesuit missionary, exercised considerable agency in an early modern world rife with global crisis. Specifically, I investigate Xaverian prints and paintings created in border zones of early modern Catholicism or in territories of the Iberian empires, particularly Antwerp, Goa, and Naples. In these places, the image of Francis Xavier was consciously utilized to ameliorate crisis situations resulting from the tensions characteristic of cross-cultural interaction, the Jesuits’ evangelization efforts, colonialism, and religious schism. The fundamental contention of my dissertation is that early modern images of saints do not simply reflect the historical circumstances in which they were made. Instead, institutions such as the Society of Jesus, the Portuguese or Spanish empire, and the Catholic Church enlisted the image of Xavier to quell crises globally and propagate an image of the political and spiritual triumph of Latin Christendom. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ................................................................................................ IX 1.0 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................... 1 1.1 EARLY MODERN SANCTITY AND CRISIS ................................. 7 1.2 CENTER AND PERIPHERY ...................................................... 11 1.3 IMAGINED COMMUNITIES .................................................... 23 1.4 THE IMAGE OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER AS PROPAGANDA ......... 29 1.5 JESUIT ACCULTURATION ..................................................... 34 1.6 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER’S LIFE AND CULT: EARLY SOURCES ...... 40 1.7 STATE OF RESEARCH ............................................................ 53 2.0 FREEDOM AT THE EDGE: XAVERIAN IMAGES IN ROME AND LISBON BEFORE 1622 ................................................................................ 61 2.1 AN OCEAN OF SUPERSTITION AND A CRISIS OF CANONIZATION ................................................................................ 66 2.2 THE IMAGE OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER IN ROME BEFORE 1622 ... 71 2.3 ANDRÉ REINOSO’S XAVERIAN CYCLE IN LISBON ................... 91 2.4 CONCLUSION: THE IMPORTANCE OF MIRACLES IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD .............................................................................. 99 v 3.0 A FALLEN HINDU IDOL IN ANTWERP: RUBEN’S MIRACLES OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER AND THE THEME OF IDOL SMASHING........................... 103 3.1 ICONOCLASM, REVOLT, AND SPANISH RULE IN ANTWERP .. 107 3.2 JESUITS AND THE URBAN FABRIC OF ANTWERP: THE HISTORY OF THE JESUIT CHURCH IN ANTWERP ............................................. 109 3.3 PETER PAUL RUBENS’S INVOLVEMENT ................................ 117 3.4 THE THEME OF ICONOCLASM IN THE CEILING PAINTINGS .. 123 3.5 RUBENS’S SOURCES FOR THE ALTARPIECE .......................... 136 3.6 THE FALLEN GOD, IDOLATRY, AND ICONOCLASM ............. 143 4.0 THE TOMB OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER IN GOA: FROM DEFENDER OF GOA DOURADA TO UNIVERSAL SAINT ..................................................... 160 4.1 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER: HIS LIFE IN GOA, HIS DEATH, AND THE RHETORIC OF GOA DOURADA ........................................................... 162 4.2 HISTORY OF THE SILVER SARCOPHAGUS ............................ 173 4.3 XAVIER’S SILVER SARCOPHAGUS AS A SACRED ATLAS OF PORTUGUESE ASIA.......................................................................... 179 4.4 THE CHAPEL OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER IN THE BOM JESUS AND THE CRISIS OF XAVIER’S (IN)CORRUPT CORPSE ............................... 198 4.5 THE CREATION AND DELIVERY OF THE MEDICI COMPONENT OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER’S TOMB ..................................................... 203 4.6 A MEDICI MONUMENT IN PORTUGUESE INDIA ................... 213 4.7 UNIVERSALIZING ST. FRANCIS XAVIER: THE NEGATION OF GOA DOURADA RHETORIC IN THE TOMB .......................................... 222 vi 4.8 CONCLUSION: THE BEL COMPOSTO RECONSIDERED ............. 240 5.0 THE VISUAL LANGUAGE OF RELIGIOUS CONVERSION AND THE DECORATION OF THE CHURCH OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER IN NAPLES ....... 245 5.1 THE JESUIT MISSION TO NAPLES ......................................... 248 5.2 DEVOTION TO ST. FRANCIS XAVIER IN NAPLES ................... 254 5.3 THE BUILDING OF THE COLLEGE OF ST. FRANCIS XAVIER .. 258 5.4 LUCA GIORDANO’S ALTARPIECE: A MODEL FOR FIRST AND SECOND CONVERSION .................................................................... 270 5.5 ST. FRANCIS XAVIER AS SPANISH SAINT OR APOSTLE TO THE “INDIES”......................................................................................... 278 5.6 PAOLO DE MATTEIS’S FRESCOES ......................................... 289 5.7 THE TRIBUNE VAULT: XAVIER AS A UNIVERSAL SAINT ........ 291 5.8 THE NAVE VAULT: SLAVES, TRIUMPH, AND FEAR................ 306 6.0 EPILOGUE ................................................................................ 319 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................... 321 vii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Scenes in Giacomo Lauro’s Francis Xavier Wundervita Print .............................. 83 Table 2: Scenes in André Reinoso’s São Roque Cycle in Lisbon ...................................... 95 Table 3: Typological Pairs in Gallery Ceiling Paintings Proposed by Martin ................... 105 Table 4: Mottos, Emblems, and Bronze Relief Subjects on the Medici Pedestal ............... 208 viii PREFACE Completing this project would have been impossible without the support I received from many people and institutions. I would like to thank Ann Sutherland Harris who has advised me since I began my graduate studies in 2008. I will always be grateful for her support and patience as I took on a topic with a far broader geographic scope than I initially intended when I applied to be her student. My appreciation also goes to Kirk Savage for his willingness to become a co-chair of my dissertation committee in the home stretch. His advice was invaluable throughout the most intense writing phase and he often gave me the encouragement I needed to think more broadly and make bolder claims about my ideas. I also thank Mrinalini Rajagopalan and Christopher Nygren for the many conversations that we have had about my work and the intellectual and even emotional support they so generously offered me. Additionally, I am grateful to Patrick Manning for introducing me to the methodologies of world history and for all of his advice throughout the dissertation writing process. Bruce Venarde, Karen Gerhart, and Barbara McCloskey were also instrumental in advancing my graduate career in uncountable ways. Lastly, I was given the encouragement to pursue a global topic for my dissertation by Kathleen Christian, who continued to support me, listen to my ideas, and give me excellent advice throughout the planning and writing phase of this project. ix The generous financial support of the University of Pittsburgh, the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, and the Department of History of Art and Architecture made the writing of this dissertation possible. My fieldwork in Europe was funded by various grants from the university, including a Dissertation Development Grant, a Friends of Frick Fine Arts Travel Grant, and several Dean’s Summer Travel Grants. The James and Susanne Wilkinson Research Prize for Outstanding Scholarship on Topics in Pre-Modern Art and the Italian Nationality Rooms Scholarship also provided me with funds to complete my research. A Francis Haskell Memorial Scholarship enabled me to take a necessary research trip to Goa, India in 2013, while the Kress Foundation generously paid for my language training at the Portuguese School at Middlebury College. The Fundação Oriente in Goa provided me with housing during my trip to India, for which I am also thankful. I would also like to thank the numerous libraries, museums, and archives that allowed me to use their collections and access research materials. The staff of Frick Fine Arts Library and the Interlibrary Loan Department