Source: Gauvin Alexander Bailey, The Andean Hybrid Baroque; Convergent Cultures in the Churches of Colonial Peru. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010, plate 2.3.
Image: Here's the seventeenth-century façade (1698-1699) of the Church and College of Santiago (La Compañía, Jesuit; i.e., La Compañía de Jesús) in Arequipa, Perú. Originally, there were two towers, but only the one on the right exists nowadays. According to Bailey, "The Arequipa Compañía has long been recognized as one of the most important architectural monuments of viceregal Latin America" (p. 49). The style of this façade is "retablo" style because the decoration surrounding the main entrance and the upper window suggest a kind of retablo (artwork surrounding an altar). The arch over the main door is a Roman arch typical of Renaissance style, but the quarter curved shapes above the sets of columns on the extreme right and left in the center section along with the shape of the curve at the extreme top of the façade are identifying Baroque features. Here is Bailey's rich description of the ornamental aspects that mark this façade as Baroque:

"The façade incorporates almost the full repertoire of Andean Hybrid Baroque motifs. The lower story is flanked by giant carved borders composed of serpentine monsters with massive jaws—figuras parlantes—that emerge from scrolling vines that scholars have compared to centipede bodies [...]. These creatures disgorge cactus flowers, pomegranates, tobacco-like leaves, cantuta scrolls, and mustachioed monster masks with vines emerging from their mouths [...]. Just inside these serpentine cornucopias is an eight-link chain containing four- and eight-petal rosettes and crowned with a shell. Richly carved panels adorn the space between the columns [...]. At the top of each is a winged cherub with cantuta blossoms dangling from its wings and resting on cactus flowers, grapes, and pomegranates. Below is a pair of crests bearing the inscriptions "EL AÑO" on the left) and "DE 1698" (on the right). The crests are surrounded by tobacco-like leaves with triple feather plumes at the top, and they rest on the shoulders of a long-haired male caryatid holding two bunches of grapes, his upper body dissolving into leaves and a pomegranate. The lowest part of the panel frames a double-handled vase of scrolling flowers inhabited by four small songbirds. The relatively plain doorway has rosette voussoirs [truncated wedge-shaped pieces that form an arch or vault] and a scrolling, corbel-like keystone, common throughout the southern Andes" (pp. 52-53).

Humanities questions: (A) What social class built and used this church? (B) Identify four things mentioned in the quotation by Bailey that are typical of Latin American society and humanities, as distinguished from European elements. (D) In what way, in your words, is this façade an example of syncretism, or more specifically, Hybrid Baroque? (E) What other culture in Latin America featured corbel keystones?