Image, Ruin, Fragment, Document: Vestiges in the Canvas of Saint Aloysius Gonzaga for Interdisciplinary Research

Abstract

One Sunday in 1930, an eleven-year-old boy and his mother attended mass together at the Church of Saint Ignatius of Loyola in Buenos Aires. The boy’s attention was caught by the church’s different features: the façade and its towers; the interior and the ways it was punctuated and unified by light; the high altar. The side chapels housed various altarpieces dedicated to the saints of the Jesuit Pantheon: Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, John of Nepomuk, Stanislaus Kostka, Philip Neri, Aloysius Gonzaga, and others. But what most struck the child was that some of these altarpieces changed their appearance, transformed and revealed some of their secrets. The central paintings moved—side to side, up and down—and showed the images they held within. These were freestanding sculptures whose aura was fired by their not being on daily display to the faithful. Awed by this, he learned the stories the images told and the details of each of the characters. The boy was Héctor Schenone...