La influencia clásica en las iglesias de las Misiones franciscanas de Bolivia en el siglo XIX. Una mirada desde la comunicación visual

Abstract

Franciscans carried out two tasks in the Bolivian Chaco given their evangelical action in America and the creation of the Propaganda Fide colleges. They founded several missions among the Guaranis («Missions among the infidels»), while they did not neglect the sectors surrounding the city of Tarija, where they founded «Missions among the faithful». When they settled in these sites, the Franciscans created an architecture with its own characteristics, which is the object of the present study, focusing on the missions of Boicobo (1875) and Santa Rosa (1887), which were part of the «Missions among the infidels», and those of Tolomosa (1875-1890) and San Roque (1883-1890), which were part of the «Missions among the faithful». We can conclude that the architects who built these churches utilized criteria that coincided with the writings of Vitruvio and Alberti, since they used the proportions and harmonic schemes enunciated by both. There is no accurate data, nevertheless, to confirm that they studied them. Although the four facades studied here use classical language, they do not respond to a specific pattern. The complex reality of the linguistic variables of the architecture developed by the Order in Bolivia allows us to affirm that the Franciscans adapted to the needs of each place, the characteristics of the parishioners, and to the type of location, while granting special importance to the interior decorations.