Title: ¡A esta santa Bárbara jamás me encomendé!
Description: In the development of the process of colonization of Hispanic America, the Crown directed its batteries through the propagation of the faith. An instrument of persuasion that used the rhetoric of the images of the saints of the early times as a model to follow to achieve salvation, mainly aimed at the illiterate people of the new territories. In this context, the legend of Saint Barbara was highlighted as one of the most important in the consolidation of Christianity. However, the image with its traditional attributes of the tower, the chalice and the sword, of common figuration in Medieval Europe, underwent a substantial transformation in some temples of the current Region of Cundiboyacense where it was represented both in painting and sculpture, at the time of the ordeal of cutting her breasts. A fact not recorded in the primitive hagiography of the defender of thunder and patroness of the good death and hard work. Through a chronological and iconographic analysis of 220 images of Saint Barbara made between the 15th and 18th centuries, it was sought, in the first place, to establish the conventional representation and its variations, in addition to its distribution in Europe and America. Then, hypotheses were formulated about the conditions that accompanied the Neo-Granada artist Gaspar de Figueroa, his descendants, and almost a century later, the sculptor Pedro Laboria in the execution of the image of the so-called Baroque saint Barbara.
Subjects: Art, History, Cult, Christian art and symbolism
Places: Colombia, Latin America, Europe
People: Barbara Saint