Preface | Robert J. Del Bontà

Arte Sacra: Roman Catholic Art from Portuguese India is an exhibition and publication project aimed at introducing this seldom-recognized and little understood material to a broader public. This catalog illustrates a selection of work from the collection of Dr. Siddharth K. Bhansali, including sculptures of various sizes, materials, and iconographies representing saints, angels, and the Holy Family (Jesus, Mary, and Joseph). These works of art provide a lens through which to briefly explore the history of Christianity in India, as well as the material legacy of the evangelization efforts that went hand-in-hand with the Portuguese colonialist enterprise in the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. When possible, the subjects of the sculptures have been identified and their significance in Portuguese India provided. Unfortunately, the names of the artists who created these works have been lost, as have their original locations. Also unknown, with one possible exception (Plate 6), are the names of those who commissioned them.

Only relatively recently has the study of Roman Catholic art from Portuguese India become the purview of specialist scholars, many of whom have focused on devotional sculptures carved from ivory, and their embodiment of cross-cultural influences.1 Much of this material may be found in the collections of institutions dedicated to the arts of the Iberian colonial empires, such as the Museu de Arte Sacra de São Paulo and the Museu Histórico Nacional in Rio de Janeiro, both in Brazil, the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon, Portugal, and The Museum of Christian Art at Velha Goa (Old Goa) in India.2

In 2020, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (formerly the Prince of Wales Museum) in Mumbai displayed Indo-Portuguese material from their collection for the first time.3 Similarly, museums in both the U.S. and abroad have begun to embrace this complex and at times problematic material, recognizing its significance and importance to a broader, more global approach to art history. Exhibitions such as those at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2013, and at the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, in 2016 have included similar works in their presentation of Iberian colonial art.4 Museums in the U.S. are beginning to bring these works into their permanent collections, as can be seen in a recent gift of ivories to the Minneapolis Institute of Art in 2019.5 It is hoped that this publication, and the exhibition it accompanies, will spur further study and engagement with this material, and open new avenues of discovery for the general visitor and scholar alike.

The Immaculate Conception 18th –19th century Ivory, h. 7 ¼ in.