Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T05:04:36.913Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Killing Images: Iconoclasm and the Art of Political Insult in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Portuguese India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 December 2018

Jorge Flores  and
Giuseppe Marcocci
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The article builds on a succession of visually disturbing events that occurred in Goa—the capital city of Portuguese India—during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. From the early years of the Portuguese conquest (1510), Goa went through a redefinition of its urban space, which implied the appropriation and re-semantization of buildings and other key sites of the old Muslim city. This process included the spread of images and symbols related to several Portuguese viceroys, soon-to-be targets of acts of political insult and even political iconoclasm performed by their Portuguese opponents in a context of growing factionalism. We speak namely of episodes of protest against places of memory associated to different clans, encompassing statues (both official and bogus), textual inscriptions, and viceroys’ portraits. These were European phenomena to a large extent, but coloured by significant local and native elements. The article engages with a grid of questions that places real statues, satirical effigies, and erased faces (and the diverse reactions they have aroused) in dialogue with current debates on popular politics; high and low vis-à-vis the colonial social fabric; the uses of public space; verbal, written, and visual insult; political languages; and disputed authority in an imperial setting.

Keywords

Portuguese EmpireGoaviceroyspolitical factionalismvisual dissentpublic mockery
Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , December 2018 , pp. 461 - 489
Copyright
© 2018 Research Institute for History, Leiden University 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Jorge Flores is professor of Early Modern Global History at the European University Institute, Florence. He specialises in the social and cultural history of the Portuguese Empire in Asia, with particular focus on a cluster of themes that speak to several other cultural zones of the early modern world. His most recent book is Unwanted Neighbours: The Mughals, the Portuguese, and Their Frontier Zones (OUP, 2018).

‡

Giuseppe Marcocci is associate professor in Iberian History (European and Extra-European, 1450–1800) at the University of Oxford and a fellow at Exeter College. His main research interests lie at the intersection of politics, culture, and religion in the early modern Iberian world. He has recently co-edited with Lucio Biasiori the volume Machiavelli, Islam and the East: Reorienting the Foundations of Modern Political Thought (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).

References

Bibliography

Unpublished Primary Sources Google Scholar
Alcalá de Henares, Archivo Histórico de la Compañia de Jesús de la Provincia de ToledoGoogle Scholar
Lisbon, Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal (hereafter BNP)Google Scholar
Lisbon, Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino (hereafter AHU)Google Scholar
Conselho Ultramarino, AHU (hereafter CU)Google Scholar
Published Primary Sources Google Scholar
A Inquisição de Goa, vol. 2: Correspondência dos Inquisidores da Índia (1569–1630), edited by António Baião. Lisbon: Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, 1930.Google Scholar
Albuquerque, Brás de. Comentários de Afonso de Albuquerque, edited by Joaquim Veríssimo Serrão, 2 toms. Lisbon: INCM, 1973.Google Scholar
Archivo da Relação de Goa, contendo vários documentos dos séculos XVII, XVIII e XIX, edited by José Ignacio Abranches de Garcia, 2 pts. Nova Goa: Imprensa Nacional, 1872–74.Google Scholar
As Gavetas da Torre do Tombo, edited by António da Silva Rego, vol 6. Lisbon: CEHU, 1967.Google Scholar
Assentos do Conselho do Estado, edited by Panduronga S. S. Pissurlencar, vol. 2. Bastorá-Goa: Tip. Rangel, 1953.Google Scholar
Correia, Gaspar. Lendas da Índia, edited by Rodrigo José de Lima Felner. 8 toms. in 4 vols. Lisbon: Typ. Academia Real da Sciencias, 1856–66.Google Scholar
Couto, Diogo do. Diogo do Couto orador—Discursos oficiais proferidos na Câmara de Goa, edited by Maria Augusta Lima Cruz, Rui Manuel Loureiro, and Nuno Vila-Santa. Lisbon: Ed. Arandis, 2017.Google Scholar
Couto, Diogo do. Dos feitos que os Portuguezes fizeram no descobrimento dos mares, e conquista das terras do Oriente. Lisbon: Liv. Sam Carlos, 1974 [1778–81].Google Scholar
Documentos remettidos da Índia ou livros das monções, edited by Raymundo António de Bulhão Pato and António da Silva Rego, toms. 3 and 7. Lisbon: Academia Real das Ciências and INCM, 1885, 1935.Google Scholar
Instrumento de testemunhas tirado em Goa a pitiçam dos procuradores do Conde Almirante Dom Francisco da Gama. Nantes: Pedro do Rio, 1646.Google Scholar
Laval, François Pyrard de. Voyage de François Pyrard de Laval: Contenant sa navigation aus Indes Orientales …, 2 pts. Paris: Samuel Thiboust and veufue Remy Dallin, 1619.Google Scholar
Ordenações Filipinas, edited by Mário Júlio de Almeida Costa. 5 books in 3 vols. Lisbon: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 1985 [1603].Google Scholar
Silva y Figueroa, Don García de, Comentarios de la Embaxada al Rey Xa Abbas de Persia (1614–1624), edited by Rui Manuel Loureiro, Ana Cristina Gomes, and Vasco Resende, vol. 2. Lisbon: CHAM, 2011.Google Scholar
Vida e Acções de Mathias de Albuquerque Capitão e Viso-Rei da Índia. edited by Antonella Vignati, Offprint of Mare Liberum 15, 17 (1998, 1999).Google Scholar

Secondary Sources

Arnade, Peter. Beggars, Iconoclasts, and Civic Patriots: The Political Culture of the Dutch Revolt. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
As Tapeçarias de Dom João de Castro. Lisbon: CNCDP, 1995.Google Scholar
Aston, Margaret. England’s Iconoclasts: Laws Against Images. Oxford: Clarendon, 1989.Google Scholar
Azevedo, Francisco Alves de. “Retratos dos vice-reis e governadores da Índia.” Boletim da Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa 72:1 (1954): 87–100.Google Scholar
Barkan, Leonard. Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Bethencourt, Francisco. “O Estado da Índia,” in História da Expansão Portuguesa, edited by Francisco Bethencourt and Kirti Chaudhuri, vol. 2: 284–314. Lisbon: Círculo de Leitores, 1998.Google Scholar
Bouza, Fernando. Palabra e imagen en la corte: Cultura oral e visual de la nobleza en el Siglo de Oro. Madrid: Abada, 2003.Google Scholar
Bouza, Fernando. Papeles y opinión: Políticas de publicación en el Siglo de Oro. Madrid: CSIC, 2008.Google Scholar
Bouza, Fernando. “Por qué pintado: Usos intencionales de las imágenes en la Alta Edad Moderna,” in Actas de XI Reunión Científica de la Fundación Española de Historia Moderna, edited by Juan Luis Castellano and Miguel Luis López-Guadalupe Muñoz, 27–44. Granada: Universidad de Granada, 2012.Google Scholar
Bouza, Fernando. Portugal no tempo dos Filipes: Política, cultura, representações, 1580–1668. Lisbon: Cosmos, 2000.Google Scholar
Boxer, Charles R. Portuguese Society in the Tropics: The Municipal Councils of Goa, Macau, Bahia, and Luanda, 1510–1800. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965.Google Scholar
Brackett, John K. Criminal Justice and Crime in Late Renaissance Florence, 1537–1609. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Burke, Peter. “The Art of Insult in Early Modern Italy.” Culture and History 2 (1987): 68–79.Google Scholar
Cañeque, Alejandro. The King’s Living Image: The Culture and Politics of Viceregal Power in Colonial Mexico. New York: Routledge, 2004.Google Scholar
Cardim, Pedro. “Una Restauração visual? Cambio dinástico y uso politico de las imágenes en el Portugal del siglo XVII,” in La historia imaginada: Construcciones visuales del passado en el Edad Moderna, edited by Joan Lluís Palos and Diana Carrió-Invernizzi, 185–206. Madrid: CEEH, 2008.Google Scholar
Castillo Gómez, Antonio. Entre la pluma y la pared: Una historia social de la cultura escrita en los Siglos de Oro. Madrid: Akal, 2006.Google Scholar
Clunas, Craig. Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China. London: Reaktion Books, 1997.Google Scholar
Corteguera, Luis. Death by Effigy: A Case from the Mexican Inquisition. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Crew, Phyllis Mack. Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm in the Netherlands, 1544–1569. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.Google Scholar
Curto, Diogo Ramada. Cultura política no tempo dos Filipes, 1580–1640. Lisbon: Edições 70, 2011.Google Scholar
De Vivo, Filippo. Information and Communication in Venice: Rethinking Early Modern Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Dias, Pedro. “The Palace of the Viceroys of Goa,” in Goa and the Great Mughal, edited by Jorge Flores and Nuno Vassallo e Silva, 68–97. London: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and Scala Publishers, 2004.Google Scholar
Disney, Anthony. “From Viceroy of India to Viceroy of Brazil? The Count of Linhares at Court (1636–39).” Portuguese Studies 17 (2001): 114–129.Google Scholar
Disney, Anthony. “The Viceroy as Entrepreneur: The Count of Linhares at Goa in the 1630s,” in Emporia, Commodities and Entrepreneurs in Asian Maritime Trade, c. 1400–1750, edited by Roderich Ptak and Dietmar Rothermund, 427–444. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1991.Google Scholar
Disney, Anthony. “The Viceroy Count of Linhares at Goa, 1629–1635,” in Actas do II Seminário Internacional de História Indo-Portuguesa, edited by Luís de Albuquerque and Inácio Guerreiro, 301–315. Lisbon: IICT, 1985.Google Scholar
Edgerton, Samuel Y. Pictures and Punishment: Art and Criminal Prosecution During the Florentine Renaissance. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Eire, Carlos M. N. War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Ferreira, José Miguel Moura. A Restauração de 1640 e o Estado da Índia: Agentes, espaços e dinâmicas. MA thesis, New University of Lisbon, Lisbon, 2011.Google Scholar
Figueiredo, Luciano Raposo de Almeida. “O império em apuros: Notas para o estudo das alterações ultramarinas e das práticas políticas no império colonial português (séculos XVII e XVIII),” in Diálogos oceânicos: Minas Gerais e as novas abordagens para uma história do império ultramarino português, edited by Júnia Ferreira Furtado, 197–254. Belo Horizonte: UFMG, 2001.Google Scholar
Figueiredo, Luciano Raposo de Almeida. “Escritos pelas paredes: Pasquins manuscritos e as rebeliões coloniais em Minas Gerais.” Revista do Arquivo Publico Mineiro 50:1 (2014): 44–61.Google Scholar
Fitzler, M. A. H. Ceilão e Portugal: O cêrco de Columbo: Últimos dias do domínio português em Ceilão: Rompimento das hostilidades pelos holandeses atè à rendição de Columbo, 1652–1656. Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, 1928.Google Scholar
Flores, Jorge, and Cruz, Maria Augusta Lima. “A ‘Tale of Two Cities,’ a ‘Veteran Soldier,’ or the Struggle for Endangered Nobilities: The Two Jornadas de Huva (1633, 1635) Reconsidered,” in Re-exploring the Links: History and Constructed Histories Between Portugal and Sri Lanka, edited by Jorge Flores, 95–124. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2007.Google Scholar
Fonseca, José Nicolau da. An Historical and Archaeological Sketch of the City of Goa. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 2001 [1878].Google Scholar
Franco, Anísio, and Santos, Rui A.. “Escultura de madeira de D. João de Castro.” Arte Ibérica 3 (1997): 51.Google Scholar
Freedberg, David. The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Ginzburg, Carlo. Wooden Eyes: Nine Reflections on Distance. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Gonçalves, Luis da Cunha. Telas e esculpturas da cidade de Goa: Memoria historico-archeologica. Bastorá: Tip. Rangel, 1898.Google Scholar
Horodowich, Elizabeth. “The Gossiping Tongue: Oral Networks, Public Life and Political Culture in Early Modern Venice.” Renaissance Studies 19:1 (2005): 22–45.Google Scholar
Horst, Daniel. “The Duke of Alba: The Ideal Enemy.” Arte Nuevo 1 (2014): 130–154.Google Scholar
Israel, Jonathan, “Mexico and the General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century.” Past and Present 63 (1974): 33–57.Google Scholar
Johnson, Lisa. “Heritage, Renegotiating Dissonant: The Statue of J. P. Coen.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 20:6 (2014): 583–598.Google Scholar
Jordan-Gschwend, Annemarie. Retrato de corte em Portugal: O legado de António Moro, 1552–1572. Lisbon: Quetzal, 1994.Google Scholar
Jordan-Gschwend, Annemarie. “ Uomini Illustri: A série de retratos dos vice-reis portugueses em Goa,” in As Tapeçarias de Dom João de Castro, 73–78. Lisbon: CNCDP, 1995.Google Scholar
Kantorowicz, Ernst H. The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Thought, with a new introduction by Conrad Leyser. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2016 [1957].Google Scholar
Kim, Anna M. “Creative Iconoclasms in Renaissance Italy,” in Striking Images: Iconoclasms Past and Present, edited by Stacy Boldrick, Leslie Brubaker, and Richard Clay, 65–80. London: Routledge, 2013.Google Scholar
Kodres, Krista. “Magic of Presence: The Ceremony of Taking an Oath of Allegiance in 1690 in Tallinn (Reval),” in Images and Objects in Ritual Practices in Medieval and Early Modern Northern and Central Europe, edited by Krist Kodres and Anu Mänd, 183–204. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Kolofsky, Craig. Evening’s Empire: A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Kolrud, Kristine, and Prusac, Marina, eds. Iconoclasm from Antiquity to Modernity. London: Routledge, 2014.Google Scholar
Laitinen, Riitta, and Cohen, Thomas V., eds. Cultural History of Early Modern European Streets. Leiden: Brill, 2009.Google Scholar
Lee, Soomi. “Building Cultural Authority in Early Joseon Korea (1400–1450),” in Ming China: Courts and Contacts, 1400–1450, edited by Craig Clunas, Jessi Harisson-Hall, and Luk Yu-ping, 211–218. London: British Museum, 2016.Google Scholar
Luz, Francisco Paulo Mendes da. O Conselho da Índia: Contributo ao estudo da história da administração do comércio do ultramar português nos principios do século XVII. Lisbon: Agência Geral das Colónias, 1952.Google Scholar
Marcocci, Giuseppe, and Paiva, José Pedro. História da Inquisição Portuguesa, 1536–1821. Lisbon: A Esfera dos Livros, 2013.Google Scholar
Martins, Nuno Gomes. Império e imagem: D. João de Castro e a retórica do vice-rei (1505–1548). Ph.D. diss., University of Lisbon, Lisbon, 2014.Google Scholar
Michalski, Sergiusz. The Reformation and the Visual Arts: The Protestant Image Question in Western and Eastern Europe. London: Routledge, 1993.Google Scholar
Moreira, Marcello. “ Litterae Adsunt: Cultura escribal e os profissionais produtores do manuscrito sedicioso na Bahia do século XVIII (1798).” Politeia: História e Sociedade 4:1 (2004): 105–133.Google Scholar
Moreira, Rafael. “Goa em 1535: Uma cidade manuelina.” Revista da Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas 8 (1995): 177–222.Google Scholar
Moreira, Rafael. “A primeira comemoração: O Arco dos Vice-Reis.” Oceanos 19–20 (1994): 156–160.Google Scholar
Moschetti, Andrea. “Il Gobbo di Rialto e le sue relazioni con Pasquino.” Nuovo Archivo Veneto 5 (1893): 5–85.Google Scholar
Niccoli, Ottavia. Rinascimento anticlericale: Infamia, propaganda e satira in Italia tra Quattro e Cinquecento. Rome: Laterza, 2005.Google Scholar
Olivari, Michele. Avisos, pasquines y rumores: Los coimienzos de la opinion pública en la España del siglo XVII. Madrid: Cátedra, 2014.Google Scholar
Ortalli, Gherardo. La pittura infamante: Secoli XIII-XVI. Rome: Viella, 2015 [1979].Google Scholar
Panzanelli, Roberta. “Compelling Presence: Wax Effigies in Renaissance Florence,” in Ephemeral Bodies: Wax Sculpture and the Human Figure, edited by Roberta Panzanelli, 13–39. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2008.Google Scholar
Parker, Geoffrey. Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Pereira, Belmiro Fernandes. “A fama portuguesa no ocaso do império: A divulgação europeia dos feitos de D. Luís de Ataíde.” Humanitas 43 (1991–92): 47–80.Google Scholar
Pissurlencar, Panduronga S.S. “Antigualhas II: Desacato ao vice-rei conde de Linhares.” Boletim do Instituto Vasco da Gama 42 (1939): 126–135.Google Scholar
Pissurlencar, Panduronga S.S.. “As primitivas capitais de Goa.” O Oriente Português 1 (1930): 1–20.Google Scholar
Reis, Ana Teresa Moreira Braga Teves. A galeria dos vice-reis e governadores da Índia portuguesa: Percurso para a definição de uma metodologia de intervenção. MA thesis. Catholic Portuguese University, Porto, 2014.Google Scholar
Rodríguez de la Flor, Fernando. Pasiones Frías: Secreto y disimulación en el Barroco hispano. Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2005.Google Scholar
Sá, Francisco Xavier Valeriano de. Vice-reis e governadores da Índia portuguesa. Macau: CTMCDP, 1999.Google Scholar
Saldanha, M. J. Gabriel de. História de Goa: Politica e arqueologia, 2 vols. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services, 1990 [1925–26].Google Scholar
Santos, Catarina Madeira. “Goa é a chave de toda a Índia”: Perfil político da capital do Estado da Índia, 1505–1570. Lisbon: CNCDP, 1999.Google Scholar
Santos, Catarina Madeira. “Los virreyes del Estado de la India en la formación del imaginario imperial portugués,” in El mundo de los virreyes en las monarquías de España y Portugal, edited by Pedro Cardim and Joan-Lluís Palos, 71–117. Madrid: Iberoamericana and Vervuert, 2012.Google Scholar
Snyder, Jon R. Dissimulation and the Culture of Secrecy in Early Modern Europe. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Sousa, Manuel de Faria e. Ásia Portuguesa, 3 toms. in 6 vols. Porto: Livraria Civilização, 1945–48.Google Scholar
Souza, Teotónio R. de. Medieval Goa: A Socio-Economic History. New Delhi: Concept Publishing, 1979.Google Scholar
Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. The Portuguese Empire in Asia, 1500–1700: A Political and Economic History. London: Longman, 1993.Google Scholar
Terry-Fritsch, Allie. “Execution by Image: Visual Spectacularism and Iconoclasm in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe,” in Death, Torture and the Broken Body in European Art, 1300–1650, edited by John R. Decke and Mitzi Kirkland-Ives, 191–206. Farnham: Ashgate, 2015.Google Scholar
Thomaz, Luís Filipe. “Factions, Interests and Messianism: The Politics of Portuguese Expansion in the East, 1500–1521.” Indian Economic and Social History Review 28:1 (1991): 97–109.Google Scholar
Varner, Eric R. Mutilation and Transformation: Damnatio Memoriae and Roman Imperial Portraiture. Leiden: Brill, 2004.Google Scholar
Vila-Santa, Nuno. Entre o reino e o império: A carreira político-militar de D. Luís de Ataíde, 1516–1581. Lisbon: ICS, 2015.Google Scholar
Voigt, Lisa. “Imperial Celebrations, Local Triumphs: The Rhetoric of Festival Accounts in the Portuguese Empire.” Hispanic Review 79:1 (2011): 17–41.Google Scholar
Xavier, Ângela Barreto. A invenção de Goa: Poder imperial conversões culturais nos séculos XVI e XVII. Lisbon: ICS, 2008.Google Scholar
Zanker, Paul. The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990.Google Scholar