[
    {
        "id": 215421,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2001",
        "page_number": 198,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "147\n\nWork on it could only have started after the beatification of St. Francis Borgia at the end of 1624. His statue and that of St. Luís Gonzaga appear in niches on the second storey of the façade with pedestals only bearing the title beatus, not saints. Francis Borgia was only canonised in 1670 but had been beatified by Pope Urban VIII on the 23rd November 1624. Luis Gonzaga had already been beatified in 1605 (Figs 14.15).\n\nThe statues of Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier also appear in the second storey and on their pedestals are given the correct title of saints. Both had been declared saints in 1622 with spectacular canonisation ceremonies in Rome, Spain and Portugal. We know from a 1644 Annual Letter written from the college in Macao that the façade was completed the year that this letter was dated. It seems therefore very probable that the frontispiece was constructed between 1625 and 1644 and that the impulse for its construction or reconstruction was very likely the canonisation of Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier.\n\nThe initiative for founding the Macao College as the seat of the Japan missions, later expanded to include China, was due to Alessandro Valignano, the Father Superior and Father Visitor of the Jesuits in the East. As stated, the architect of the church was Father Carlo Spinola, an Italian from Naples. The reputed decoration of the façade at the hands of Chinese and Christian Japanese craftsmen was very likely carried out under the direction of Giovanni Nicolao, an Italian Jesuit painter from Nola. From this it is only too obvious that Italian Jesuits with a Late Renaissance mentality were highly influential in its creation, something characteristic of the historical period in question.\n\nJ.E. McCall, whose pioneering research is fundamental to the subject, has studied the activities of Giovanni Nicolao. Yoshitomo Okamoto, in his Namban Bijutsu, also gives important insights on Father Nicolao, who had actually opened a school of fine arts for young Japanese seminarians as apprentices in Western painting, printmaking and sculpture in various missionary colleges in Japan.19 But apart from Giacomo Niva, a Chinese-Japanese painter and the most brilliant of Nicolao's pupils, we hardly know the names of the other Chinese and Japanese artists who may have formed Nicolao's team in Macao. Unfortunately, this was apparently Jesuit practice at the time. Their famous annual letters sent from China or their Macao College, today",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215437,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-2001",
        "page_number": 214,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "163\n\n- Mario T. Chico. \"Algumas observações acerca da arquitectura da Companhia de Jesus no distrito de Goa: igrejas, fachada, planta e espaço interior\", Garcia de Orta. Lisboa, número especial 1956, pp.257-72.\n\nSee Professor Giorgio Bonsanti's elucidating article dealing mainly with St. Francis Xavier's mausoleum in the Bom Jesus, published in Velha Goa, exhibition catalogue of A. Martinelli's photos. Fundação Oriente, Macao. September 15, 2000. (Unnumbered). However, vid. D.Kowal, op. cit., p. 488, who states the Jesuit Domingo Fernandes, aided by J. Simão were architects of Bom Jesus.\n\nAlso Documenta Indica,\n\n**For Charles Borromeo's Instructions, see E.C. Voelker, “Charles Borromeo's Instructiones Fabricae et Supellectilis Ecclesiasticae, 1577. A Translation with Commentary and Analysis\". Ph.D. dissertation, Syracuse University, 1977.\n\n\"L.E. McCall. \"Early Jesuit Art in the Far East\". Artibus Asiae, XI. Ancona, 1948. pp. 62-9. Y. Okamoto, The Namban Art of Japan, (translation by R.K. Jones of Namban Bijutsu. Tokyo, 1965), Weatherhill/Heibonsha, New York-Tokyo, 1972, pp. 99-103. See also more recently, Gauvin Bailey. \"The Art of the Jesuit Missions in Japan in the Age of St. Francis Xavier and Alessandro Valignano”. lecture in the 450th Anniversary of St. Francis Xavier's Arrival in Japan. International Symposium '98, Sophia University 1998, pp.7-22.\n\n\"Guillen-Nuñez, C., \"Retablo and Imafronte: A Study of the Influence of the Retable on the Church-façade in Mexico and Peru\", (unpublished M.A. dissertation), University of Penn., 1973.\n\n\"H. Rodriguez-Camilloni. \"The Retablo-Façade as Transparency: A Study of the Frontispiece of San Francisco, Lima\", in Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Esteticas, 62, Mexico, 1991, pp. 111-22.\n\nSylvie Deswarte, \"Francisco de Hollanda et les Etudes Vitruviennes en Italie”, in A Introdução da Arte da Renascenca na Península Iberica, Coimbra, 1981, pp. 254-80.\n\n* Hugo-Brunt, op. cit., p. 11.\n\nKubler and Soria, op. cit., p. 24.\n\nSee Hugo-Brunt, op. cit., p.13, note 24.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    }
]