RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 134 that bore an uncanny resemblance to retables. In fact, many look like stone altarpieces carved in high relief applied to the façades of churches. Although the phrase retable-façade is not actually found in contemporary sources, a number of accounts from the seventeenth century and later supported the findings of modern specialists by alluding to retables when describing some of these façades. These rather puzzling structures had actually first appeared towards the end of the fifteenth century embellishing the front of several Late Gothic churches in Spain, and have apparently no counterpart in Europe or anywhere else. What is equally surprising is the fact that most of the artists who helped invent the type were not themselves Spanish. They often came from countries beyond the Pyrenees, such as Holland, Germany or France, and had been attracted to northern Spanish kingdoms by the patronage of kings, the church or the nobility. If they actually invented retable-façades is a mystery that has yet to be solved. Retable-façades come in all shapes and sizes. Stylistically they range from the Late Gothic to the Late Baroque and beyond. Artistically they go from the sublime to the prosaic. Some of the finest examples of the genre were created in Spanish Latin America and in Portugal, though, as mentioned, they are practically unknown in Brazil and other Portuguese colonies. In fact, Reynaldo dos Santos and R.C. Smith have argued that retable-façades in Portuguese architecture only occur due to Spanish influence. 6 Santa Maria A Grande One of the masterpieces of this type of façade is that of the church of Santa Maria A Grande (St Mary Major), in Pontevedra, Galicia, in the Northwest coast of Spain (Fig. 2). I could equally well have chosen from amongst several works to demonstrate the more distinctive features of retable-façades. But I have selected Santa Maria A Grande because I believe it has unique features in common with the façade of St. Paul in Macao. To begin with, like St. Paul's, Santa Maria a Grande's fantastically ornate façade faces the river below from an imposing promontory. Equally relevant are the economic and cultural reasons that brought ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 146 of Bragança, Philip IV of Spain ruled Portugal as Philip III during the construction of the façade. Before him two other Philips had reigned over Spain and Portugal, beginning with Philip II, crowned Philip I of Portugal in 1580. Throughout most of this highly controversial historical period very large altarpieces in a classical style were being built in Spain and Portugal. The prime instance of late sixteenth-century classical altarpieces of huge dimensions is the massive main retable of the church of the Escorial. It is rather frustrating that no known contemporary source actually establishes any sort of comparison between the frontispiece of St. Paul and these retables. Even in our days specialists have ignored the connection. The reason may be that the façade of St. Paul does not conform to known examples of retable-façades. Even in the largest surviving examples the actual retable configuration is contained within the elevation by various means, such as the large buttresses found in Santa Maria A Grande in Pontevedra. They indicate to the viewer that this is a simulated stone altarpiece cleverly applied to the front of the building for his or her admiration and astonishment. At St. Paul's there is no containment, no similar signalling to the beholder that its designer intended a metaphorical retable. Here the altarpiece simile seems to extend to the whole of the church's front. This fact would certainly make this façade unique, but would not necessarily exclude it from classification as a retable-façade. Given the lack of primary sources that would justify such a classification one must largely rely on the visual evidence. The following section shows how an analysis of the façade's structure and of its iconography can lead to reasonable conclusions supporting this hypothesis. Artists and Dates of Construction Who the architect and artists of the surviving frontispiece were and when they built it is a question that has eluded scholars due to a lack of contemporary sources. These sources plainly state that the architect of the church was the Italian Jesuit Carlo Spinola and one can surmise that he drafted the design of the elevation, but no one really knows. Spinola died a martyr's death in 1622, before the construction of the façade. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 154 most inscrutable of Roman Catholic mysteries. Of Eastern European origin, it was popularised in large numbers of altarpieces throughout Europe from the Late Gothic onwards. What made it so specific to Roman-Catholic ritual is the powerfully Eucharistic connotations given to it by Counter-Reformation theologians and retable programmers. From retables the theme passed to retable-façades, as seen in Santa Maria A Grande in Pontevedra. Today there are no angels crowning the head of the image of Mary as she soars to heaven, nor is there a half moon beneath her feet. But the impressive array of symbols carved on the bays, bases and end-volutes of the third storey show that many are attributes related not so much to the Assumption, as to a type of the Virgin known as the Tota Pulchra. Moreover, there is a closer correspondence between the latter and the image of Mary as the Immaculate Conception (Mary conceived by God without original sin, a controversial religious belief, at the time bitterly contested by the Dominicans). The name Tota Pulchra, by which this image is known to art historians is closely linked to the concept of immaculate. It is derived from a passage in the Canticle of Canticles singing the virtues of the beloved, in which King Solomon, the reputed author, proclaims: "Tota pulchra es amica mea, et macula non est in te” (“You are wholly beautiful, beloved, and there is no stain in you”), (translation mine). In all likelihood the artists of the frontispiece created their masterpiece from prints illustrating the attributes of the Tota Pulchra following a complex theological programme. Typical are the pediment reliefs of St. Paul's showing a sun and a moon, referring to the woman pulchra ut luna and electa ut sol, derived from The Canticle of Canticles and very similar to those depicted in contemporary prints (Fig. 24). A good indication that the artists copied or derived their images from such prints is the fact that not all the symbols of the Tota Pulchra originate in The Canticle of Canticles. Some evolved from the Litanies of the Virgin (including the more popular Litany of Loreto) and a number of Old Testament sources, such as Genesis, Ezekiel and the Book of Proverbs. These are also present in the decoration of the façade. What makes this supposition reasonable is that numerous ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 166 Fig.2 Façade of Santa Maria A Grande (St. Mary Major), Pontevedra, Galicia, Spain. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g Fig.3 Santa Maria A Grande, view of terrace. 167 ... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 168 Fig.4 Santa Maria A Grande, detail of carved columns and saints. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 169 Fig.5 Santa Maria A Grande, detail of upper storeys above main entrance, with central bay reliefs of Dormition of Mary in second storey, and Assumption higher up. ================================================================================