Museum of Sacred Art
Hispano-Guaraní baroque sculpture shown in Villa Lina, a house on the Cerro Antequera.
The museum was created by the Nicolás Darío Latourrette Bo Foundation to hold a private collection of religious sculpture formed over several decades. It occupies Villa Lina, an eclectic house of the early twentieth century that stands on the Cerro Antequera, one of the hills on which Asunción was laid out. The building was restored for the purpose, and its rooms, staircase and garden terraces were adapted to display the works in low light against plain walls.
The collection is devoted to the Hispano-Guaraní baroque, the style that grew in the Jesuit and Franciscan missions of Paraguay in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when Guaraní carvers reworked European models in local timber. Polychrome and gilded figures of the Virgin, Christ and the saints are shown alongside altar fittings, silver and vestments. Displays explain workshop technique, the use of estofado gilding, and the links between mission carving and the wider art of the Río de la Plata.
Highlights
- Hispano-Guaraní baroque sculpture from the mission workshops
- Villa Lina, an eclectic house on the Cerro Antequera
- Polychrome and gilded figures with estofado decoration
- Altar fittings, silver and vestments of the colonial period
