Goa’s Bom Jesus as Visual Culture

<p>This book chronicles the visual history of the Basilica of Bom Jesus one of the longest-surviving churches from Goa’s Portuguese colonial era. In the sixteenth century this baroque church in Old Goa was constructed to house the sacred relics of St. Francis Xavier and is emblematic of <i>Goa Dourada</i> or Golden Goa.</p><p>Despite their early modern origins monuments like the Basilica continue to influence visual culture that pertains to Goa. Accordingly this book uncovers the traces of architectural images of Goa’s sixteenth- and seventeenth-century monuments and conducts a genealogical study of how uses of religious architecture shift over time. Thus even as the Basilica originally functioned to portray or recall a grand empire by evoking the notion of <i>Goa Dourada</i> its iconicity has been employed in marking Goa’s difference from the rest of India thereafter. By employing an analysis of historical texts illustrations photography film and pageantry this volume demonstrates how the image of the Basilica has been employed to create a discourse on Goan identity. In fact right from the colonial period when Goa was heralded as the Rome of the East to the post-Portuguese period when Goa became an idyllic destination for leisure tourism architectural images of Bom Jesus have been central in shaping Goa’s identity.</p><p><i>Goa’s Bom Jesus as Visual Culture</i> will be useful to students and educators in the fields of architecture history anthropology sociology history of architecture and colonial/postcolonial studies. Finally the long history of a single monument that the book documents highlights how Goans have been shaping their unique culture. At the same time as Goans imbibed Portuguese and other European influences they also domesticated and remade such colonial heritage in South Asian fashion and in turn contributed to global aesthetics.</p>