Rector Father Castañeda’s artistic patronage at the Jesuit College of Oaxaca as revealed in his personal correspondence

Abstract

The Jesuits carried out a noteworthy educational mission in the Viceroyalty of New Spain. For that purpose they built capable edifices and decorated them with artistic contents that facilitated that endeavor, and allowed it to thrive. One of those complexes was the College of Oaxaca, the primary educational institution in one of the most prosperous viceregal cities and third in importance among the more than thirty colleges that the Jesuits founded in New Spain, representing a clear example of the process of spiritual, intellectual, and material expansion that the Society of Jesus carried out in Spanish America. The discovery, among other documents, of a set of letters penned by one of its last rectors has revealed that it once featured a significantly rich artistic program, one that, unfortunately, has been progressively disappearing since the banishment of the Jesuits from Oaxaca in 1767.