Sculpture in the Kingdom of Quito. - Gabrielle G. Palmer.

Bound, cloth with original dustjacket, xviii+164pp., 18.5x26cm., illustr. in col. and b/w., in very good condition (dustjacket with slight traces of use). ISBN 0826309305.
Albuquerque, New Mexico University Press, 1987
In this book, the author has limited herself to a narrow topic--carved wooden statuary based on the human figure--to allow herself a carefully defined focus for her twofold purpose: to present the stylistic currents in sculpture in Quito from the Spanish conquest in 1534 to Ecuador's declaration of full independence in 1830, and to offer a new view of the terms Renaissance and Baroque as they relate to Spanish colonial art. Gabrielle Palmer identifies the principle Spanish statues imported to Quito in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and then traces the rise of an indigenous style in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She maintains that Quitenian sculpture cannot be viewed solely as a derivation from European prototypes. Its style and originality should be recognized as an authentic expression of creativity that both anticipated and provided the psychological foundation for the revolutionary attitude that brought Latin America dependence on Spain to an end in the nineteenth century. Thus Baroque art in Quito is seen in a new and broader context. [Sculpture in the Kingdom of Quito.]