Junípero Serra’s Tastes and the Art and Architecture of the California Missions

Abstract

As art historians Clara Bargellini and Pamela Huckins show in Chapter 9, the missions, at least in Serra’s mind, were to be held together not just by violence but by a common devotion to Catholicism that was reinforced by architecture and art. Bargellini and Huckins show that Serra had a clear sense of how he wanted to adorn the missions in the Sierra Gorda and those of Alta California, and he saw architecture and liturgical art as an important tool in the conversion of Indians. Images of the Virgin, Christ’s Passion, and Franciscan saints all took center stage in the churches of the California missions, and Serra favored an older Baroque style over the emerging Neoclassicism.