BRITTNEY PIEPER INDIGENOUS RESILIENCE IN TIMES OF COLONIZATION, SEEN THROUGH THE "MASS OF ST. GREGORY" During the early Spanish colonial period, Indigenous people consistently negotiated their beliefs through art. Specifically, when recreating biblical stories, they often employed their own beliefs, techniques, and symbols. In the feather painting, "Mass of St. Gregory" (c. 1539) made by the School of San José de los Naturales, the Indigenous artists recreated the European print, "Mass of Saint Gregory" (c. 1490-1500) by Israhel van Meckenem. However, rather than conforming to an exact recreation, the artist was able to transform this biblical story into something else entirely. Unfortunately, at this time, there is not sufficient scholarly interrogation into Indigenous objectives with their artwork. Further, art historians often portray the Indigenous beings in a light of inability to understand European life. However, with the continual transformation of European reference-art, we have to ask ourselves, are these feather paintings evidence of Christian conversion, or are they representative of negotiation during colonization? This paper will argue that due to the independence and dedication to Indigenous culture, the feather paintings represent a negotiation of a complex colonial culture during times of colonization. To do so, the paper will first address what early colonial arts consisted of, then it will discuss the visual analysis of the piece and compare it to the "Mass of Saint Gregory" (c. 1490-1500) print. Further, it will describe the intense labor of feather painting and introduce another feather work, Jesus at the Age of Twelve and Weeping Virgin (c. 1590-1600), for comparison.
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