[
    {
        "id": 215417,
        "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": 194,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "143\n\nexploit for the decoration of the façades of some of their Indian churches of the last third of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the next. The theme would later be adapted to the more ornate decoration of the façades of the churches of their Casa Professa in Velha Goa and of the Jesuit College in Diu.\n\nMinor Basilica of Bom Jesus and the Diu Collegiate Church\n\nNot only the Bom Jesús, but, as we shall see, the façades of the collegiate churches in Diu and of Madre de Deus in Macao point to a further stylistic development of the architecture of the Society of Jesus in Asia.\n\nIt could be argued that the façade decoration of the three mentioned buildings reveals a transitional phase, one in which a Late Mannerist decorative idiom is elaborated to the utmost. Moreover, in the Church of Madre de Deus in Macao this idiom already heralds the Baroque style.\n\nIn India even before Jules Simão's appointment as chief of the cathedral works the Jesuits had begun work on what was to be their finest building project in India. This was their Casa Professa, or Profess House, begun in 1583-85, whose cloisters were also designed by Simão (Figs. 9,10).\n\nToday the church of the Profess House, originally dedicated to the Child Jesus, is better known as the Minor Basilica of Bom Jesus. It was started on the 24 November 1594 to the plans of G.B. Cairatti, an Italian architect from Milan, and completed about twelve years later. Perhaps its chief attraction today is the so-called incorrupt body of St. Francis Xavier and its magnificent 1690s funerary monument by Giovanbattista Foggini.17\n\nThe design of the front of the Bom Jesús, if not of its ground plan, indicates that the architect followed the general lines of the façade of St. Paul as reconstructed by M. Chicó (Fig. 9). There is the same division into three storeys and three bays, plus attic and pediment joined to the storeys below by gracefully curved brackets. Not only the façade but the whole building is crowned by numerous Herreresque spheres on bases placed as accents to the line of rising unifying pilasters. The Arch",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215431,
        "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": 208,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "157\n\nOther Images\n\nA salutation in St. Alfonso's Office praises the palma patientiae and the cedrus castitatis. This allusion to both cedar and palm trees derives from Ecclesiasticus, 24, 17-18. When it comes to the date palms of the second storey, it is very much a part of the stock-in-trade immaculist symbols, particularly dear to southern Spanish poets and painters and also known from early prints, all praising Mary's Immaculate Conception. But these may equally refer to the triumph of the Society of Jesus, with the canonisation of its main protagonists, Sts. Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier in 1622 and the recent beatification of Francis Borgia and Luis Gonzaga.\n\nIn the fourth storey or attic The Child Jesus raises his right hand and holds an empty left hand forward. The latter undoubtedly held the lost orb mentioned in the 1644 Annua. It is a pose and attribute typical of the kind of devotional religious image known as an infant Salvator Mundi, that is, Infant Jesus Saviour of the World. The type of \"Menino Jesus\" as Salvator Mundi was well disseminated in Portuguese colonies in the East during the seventeenth-century, as a large number of Indo-Portuguese and Chinese ivory statuettes, usually nude, tend to confirm. Here the Child Jesus is framed by reliefs of angels displaying the Arma Christi, or symbols of Christ's suffering on the Cross. According to Christian theology, the ironically named arma are the “weapons” Christ used in his earthly battle against evil in order to redeem humankind. They were profoundly mystical symbols popularised in devotional literature and images since Medieval times in Europe.\n\nThe pediment is decorated with the large bronze of the Holy Spirit, originally gilded and emerging from rays, with four stars framing it. Next to it are square slabs of the sun and moon, with which the iconography of the main image of the Assumption is finally brought to full completion.\n\nThe dove of the Holy Spirit hovers over both Mother and Child with wings far outspread in an image that seems uncannily like a visual illustration of the Holy Spirit in the opening lines of John Milton's Paradise Lost. As bronze sculpture it is impressive enough today; with its original gilding it must have appeared awe-inspiring to the citizens of Macao and to seventeenth-century and later visitors before the fire.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215461,
        "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": 238,
        "title": "RAS-2001",
        "content_text": "187\n\nFig.23 Detail of middle-bay of upper storeys, showing niches with bronzes of Virgin, Child Jesus and dove of Holy Spirit in pediment above.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g",
        "rank": 0
    }
]