• ISBN13: 9781041018933
• Binding: Hardcover
• Subject: Architecture & Interior Designs
• Publisher: T&F
• Publisher Imprint: Routledge
• Publication Date: September 15, 2024
• Pages: 180
• Original Price: INR 1295.0
• Language: N/A
• Edition: N/A
• Item Weight: 500 grams
• BISAC Subject(s): N/A

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 Goa Dourada or Golden Goa. 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 Goa Dourada, 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.