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THE FAÇADE OF ST. PAUL'S, MACAO: A RETABLE-FAÇADE?
Introduction
CESAR GUILLEN-NUÑEZ
This paper will look at the façade of the church of Madre de Deus, Macao, popularly known as ruinas de São Paulo (Ruins of St. Paul's), from a perspective different to that familiar to most, including scholars. For I believe the surviving frontispiece should be classified as a fachada retablo, that is, as a retable-façade.
A retable-façade is a kind of structure that has been given this appellation by modern Hispanists because of its similarities to carved Spanish altarpieces. Altarpieces, also known as retables (whence the façade's name), were as popular in Portugal as they were in Spain. Curiously, retable-façades were less frequently used in Portugal and are practically unknown in Portuguese colonies. I hope therefore that it will not seem too fanciful to start this paper by asking the question: is the surviving front of St. Paul's just such a façade? And if so, then how could such a structure have appeared in seventeenth-century Macao, Portugal's most treasured possession in Southeast Asia? (Fig. 1).
Before continuing, I must point out that part of this paper has been adapted from a thesis on the subject that I completed in 1997 for University College London. The thesis itself evolved from an unpublished youthful article written a number of decades ago, after many years' interest on the extraordinary phenomenon of the retable-façade. Eventually a few of my ideas on the façade of St. Paul appeared in a book on Macao that I wrote almost twenty years ago.
Some art historians may disagree with my identification of the façade of St. Paul's as a retable-façade, mainly because of the lack of primary sources backing up the idea. Perhaps it will not be thought too irrelevant to consider that in recent years the tourist trade in Macao has readily echoed it, as is true of a small number of Portuguese researchers steeped in Lusitanian architectural traditions. Although the latter come from outside the field of the retable-façade their writings at least imply an acceptance of the idea. Unfortunately they only include a discussion...