Hortus eremitarum. Las pinturas de Tebaidas en los claustros agustinos

Abstract

Since the Middle Ages, one of the most outstanding aspects of the spiritual life of the Augustinians was eremitic life. With their arrival in America and their devotion to missionary labors, it became more difficult to put this ideal into practice; it was, nonetheless, made an important element of the legitimizing and identity-conferring discourse of the order. As a result of the important changes suffered by the mendicant orders in New Spain between 1570 and 1590, the ideal of the eremitic life became fundamental in the discourse of the Augustinians, above all in their iconography. The presence of painted Thebaids on the walls of monasteries constituted a nodal element in their propaganda and their corporate identity.