Hide Paintings.

Although New Mexican mission churches were eminently simple in design and decoration, most churches were decorated with paintings and sculptures. In addition to wall frescoes, fragments of which have been detected by archeologists, most churches were adorned with animal-hide paintings, a syncretic Indo-Christian art form unique to New Mexico. Scholars have identified close to sixty extant colonial New Mexican hide paintings. These paintings, executed by Native Americans under the direction of Franciscan missionaries, employed natural pigments on tanned buffalo, elk, and deer skins. They combined Christian iconography with Native American form and technique. These portable paintings, which rolled up easily to transport, played a central role in missionary activities. Friars used them to instruct native catechumens and to adorn the simple churches. Recent research indicates that Spanish settlers also purchased hide paintings. Although the earliest extant hide paintings date from the...