Sanctuaries of Earth, Stone, and Light: The Churches of Northern New Spain, 1530-1821.

Williams, Peter W.

doi: 10.1017/S0009640709000651 Sanctuaries of Earth, Stone, and Light: The Churches of Northern New Spain, 1530-1821. By Gloria Fraser Giffords. The Southwest Center Series. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2007. xiv + 467 pp. $75.00 cloth.

This impressive volume is an extremely thorough catalog of the elements of the religious material culture of northern New Spain, which includes the southwestern portion of what is now the United States. Giffords is an art conservator who begins with a useful discussion of the geography and economics of artistic production in the Spanish colonies and the process of transmission of dictates and patterns from an already multicultural Iberian source to both the core and periphery of the northern reaches of Spain's New World empire. Most of the book consists of chapters that provide a profusion of detail--including copious black-and-white photographs and line drawings--about every imaginable aspect of colonial religious art and architecture, including church plans and designs, construction elements, furnishings, ornament, liturgical apparatus, vestments, and devotional objects. Separate chapters provide glossaries of religious symbolism and iconography. Cemeteries and death-related objects are only dealt with briefly. The author provides little analysis along the lines of religious studies per se, but practitioners of that discipline will find much useful practical information and perhaps inspiration for their own work in this cornucopia of detail.

Peter W. Williams

Miami University