In the intervals, in the interstices of history, the recovered piece speaks: Warburg alluded to an "iconology of the interval." This piece of cedar or sandstone that awakens among the rubble, even mutilated, emerges as a discursive whole. During the time it remained buried, it never ceased to interpellate its own ghost; it never lost its inner eyes.
An angel carved in cedar. Its drapery recalls that the missionary experience takes place within the historical arc of the Baroque. But this image escapes periodization. The carving's cheekbones are Guaraní. Its character is hieratic. The gaze reminds us that a spirit inhabits it. In the imagery of the Jesuit-Guarani missions, those vanished images (sculptures, paintings, altarpieces) interject themselves interrogatively with the voices within the images that survived; voices where Christian prayer and the daemon that inhabited the cedar coincided. The Jesuits, in pursuit of iconography, taught methods and crafts. But they were unable to lull the gods of yesteryear. They continued to throb under the Christian patronage of each saint. The survival of the Guarani language in liturgical and educational texts, and the continuation of magic and sorcery within the settlement, added layers to the images and ritual.