**1. Introduction**

When the Franciscans arrived at La Paz, they built a chapel dedicated to San Pedro and Santiago. The chapel was founded by Fr. Francisco de los Ángeles Morales and his companion Br. Francisco de la Cruz Alcocer—probably in 1549 (Privaser 1919), which makes it the first religious establishment in this city. Currently, the church is in Plaza San Francisco, the historic centre, one of the busiest, oldest, and most tourist squares of La Paz (Figure 1).

**Figure 1.** Temple and Plaza de San Francisco. Photography: Josefina Matas 2023.

**Citation:** Matas Musso, Josefina Leonor, and Fátima Matos Silva. 2023. Visual Communication and Evangelizing Art in the Temple of San Francisco of La Paz (Bolivia). *Religions* 14: 894. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/rel14070894

Academic Editors: José María Salvador-González and Marina Montesano

Received: 3 April 2023 Revised: 5 July 2023 Accepted: 6 July 2023 Published: 11 July 2023

**Copyright:** © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

Plaza San Francisco is surrounded by historic buildings and is considered an important cultural and architectural landmark. The church itself is the most significant building in the square, with its spectacular baroque façade and a solemn bell tower.

San Francisco of La Paz is one of the most important temples in Bolivia, as well as one of the best examples of the mestizo baroque in Latin America. However, the value of this building and the research carried out so far suggest that further inquiries on the impact of this heritage on evangelization should be undertaken, particularly from the perspective of visual communication, a discipline still in an early stage nowadays.

This article is noteworthy because, although there is abundant bibliography referring to Franciscan spirituality, in Bolivia, there is no existing bibliography regarding the architecture of this Order—and even less regarding architecture and visual communication. We, therefore, highlight the importance of this article, as its content is completely new, especially concerning the vision from visual communication.

Franciscan religious buildings in Charcas were not faithful copies of European architecture, nor the repetition of a model already solved. The ideas Franciscans brought from their places of origin were transformed and adjusted to new requirements, which generated different architectonic types (whose expression ended up being more American than European). This research is motivated by the questions raised by the previous observations, and it addresses issues more closely linked to semiotics.

The main objective of this paper is to explore the interior architecture of the temple: its main altarpieces, pulpits, and thrones, which communicate in their iconography the Catholic faith's values. The subsequent analysis examines how interior space is differentiated by the content and discourse of the altarpieces and highlights the role of interior architecture in communicating evangelical messages.

The article is divided into three parts. The first part recounts the arrival of the Franciscan Order to Charcas. The second one discusses the definition of the mestizo baroque style. The third part addresses the history of the construction and the description of the interior of the temple. The article finishes with a discussion.

## **2. Materials and Methods**

This research was carried out in the framework of a qualitative and exploratory methodology. Primary sources were consulted, such as the chronicles of Diego de Mendoza (1664) and those of Diego de Córdova Salinas (1651). An exhaustive examination of documents at the Franciscan Archive of La Paz and secondary sources was also carried out.<sup>1</sup>

This material and the secondary sources consulted in several libraries—both in Spain and Bolivia—constitute the documentary corpus of this work. The libraries consulted are listed below:


#### **3. The Franciscans in Charcas**

The expansion of the Franciscan Order in its evangelizing endeavour begins in America in 1500 (Abad Pérez 1992). Bartolomé de las Casas states: "The Order of St. Francis came here to populate with the purpose ( ... ) the five that arrived in 1500 were joined by the seventeen brought by Governor Ovando in 1502; thirteen were priests" (Anasagasti 1992, p. 22).

Between 1505 and 1524, a hundred friars arrived with the intention of founding convents from where to evangelize. The first constructions built were extremely poor. Diego de Mendoza does not explain what those convents were like in their physical

materiality; it is assumed that they were very simple, made of wood, and designed to receive a limited number of people. About the foundation on the mainland, the chronicler writes: "The following year of 1518, the fourteen Franciscans, who came from Burgundy, with others from Santo Domingo, left Hispaniola Island to found convents of both orders on the *Tierra Firme*" (Anasagasti 1992, p. 8).

Once the Antilles were catechized, the Catholic faith was established in Mexico and the gospel was preached in Central America; it was South America's turn (Morales 1993). The first Franciscan to arrive at High Perú, in 1532, was Fray Marcos de Niza. According to the Most Reverend Archbishop of Mantua, he was "a religious of fervent zeal for the health of the souls and in whom virtue and doctrine shone and were twinned into one, he was a native of the city of Nice, an instructed, observant and religious man" (Mendoza [1664] 1976, p. 10). The chronicler Diego de Córdova y Salinas recounts:2

*And then came from East to West twelve Franciscan friars, poor, naked, from the Province of Spain, priests and laymen from Puerto Viejo and Paita, where they landed and ran through the land on foot, preaching Christ Crucified to the city of Cuzco. They carried on like very illustrious men glowing with religiousness and sanctity (* ... *) and they fertilized the earth with their spirit and poverty in such a way that they began to call them the Twelve Apostles of St. Francis, giving that title and renown to this Province afterwards. Finally, these humble religious men, few and dead to the world, accomplished great things, gaining countless souls for God, albeit with great sweat and work*. (Córdova Salinas [1651] 1957, p. 79)

The first Franciscan to arrive in Charcas3 was Father Francisco de Aroca, who settled in a modest house in 1539 (Mesa and Gisbert 1985). In the following years, the Franciscans founded the Convent of Saint Anthony in Potosí (1547), Our Lady of the Angels in La Paz (1549), Saint Francis Convent in Cochabamba (1580), and Our Lady of the Angels of Mizque (1600). In 1600, Father Francisco Morales requested the foundation of Saint Anne of Chuquisaca, and then inaugurated Our Lady of Guadalupe of Ururu, and Saint Francis of Tarija six years afterwards. This vertiginous growth of the Order in Bolivian territory will bring about the creation of the Province of Saint Anthony of Charcas in 1565, which will have a series of ups and downs until its definite establishment into the General Chapter of Lima in 1637. Originally, in 1565, the Franciscan Province of Saint Anthony of Charcas covered the territory of the Real Audiencia de Charcas—or La Plata—at that time. Soon after, Cuzco ceased to be part of the Audiencia of Charcas and passed to that of Lima, but the Province of Saint Anthony kept the Convent Máximo del Cuzco as the seat of its Provincial Ministry (San Cristóbal 2004; Espinoza Spinola 1999).

According to Córdova and Salinas, the division was conducted in the following manner:

*(* ... *) the Custody of the New Kingdom of Granada should become a Province and it should be named the Santa Fe del New Kingdom of Granada. The Custody of San Pablo of Quito should become a province and the Province of San Francisco of Quito should be instituted in Peru. The Custody of the Holy Trinity of Chile should become a province and should be named the Province of the Holy Trinity of Chile. The City of the Kings, where there is a Royal Audience, with the entire district of the Audiencia will be the province of the Twelve Apostles and in it, the adjoining name will be kept, as she is the mother of all those Provinces. The City of Argentina, where there is also a Royal Audience, with the entire district of the Audiencia, up to and including the city of Arequipa, should become the Province of Saint Anthony of Charcas. The Kingdom of Tierra Firme, together with the city of Cartagena and Tolú will be (under) the sudden custody of the Province of the Twelve Apostles*. (Córdova Salinas [1651] 1957, p. 79)
