Disaster Iconography. The Fire Of The Church Of The Company, Santiago (1863)

Abstract

Throughout the 19^th and 20^th centuries, Chile made great efforts to create a national identity that protects and shelters all its inhabitants under a common sign. The artistic manifestations will be used as a tangible means to achieve such an end, characterized by the acceptance of the illustrated ideas and the questioning of its Hispanic past. Although this assertion responds to the manifest intentions of the Santiago intellectual elite, the social classes, far from the former, continue to read in a colonial key. In this article we intend to address the need to generate new iconographic typologies, based on national historical landmarks, among which the burning of the Church of the Company in 1863 stands out. The Jesuit church, paradigmatic in its decoration and the greatest architectural exponent of the times. of the Captaincy, burns to its foundations in an event of global significance and that some wanted to see as the absolute end of a past denied during the Republic.