"Built to bring Christianity and European civilization to the northern frontier of New Spain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ... secularized and left to decay in the nineteenth century ... and rebuilt or restored in the twentieth century, the Spanish missions still standing in Texas are really only shadows of their original selves.

The mission churches, once beautifully adorned with carvings and sculptures on their facades and furnished inside with elaborate altarpieces and paintings, today only hint at their colonial-era glory through the vestiges of art and architectural decoration that remain.".

"To paint a more complete portrait of the missions as they once were, Jacinto Quirarte here draws on decades of on-site and archival research to offer the most comprehensive reconstruction and description of the original art and architecture of the six remaining Texas missions - San Antonio de Valero (the Alamo), San Jose y San Miguel de Aguayo, Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Concepcion, San Juan Capistrano, and San Francisco de la Espada in San Antonio and Nuestra Senora del Espiritu Santo in Goliad.

Using church records and other historical accounts, as well as old photographs, drawings, and paintings, Quirarte describes the mission churches and related buildings, their decorated surfaces, and the (now missing) altarpieces. Through extensive formal and iconographic analyses of the sculptures and paintings, the uncovers the religious content and meanings that Spanish missionaries sought to convey to their Indian converts.".

"Quirarte also describes the gradual decay of the mission buildings following their abandonment in the nineteenth century and tracks the changes they have undergone during subsequent reconstructions. He sets his material within the larger context of the mission era in Texas and the Southwest, so that the book also serves as a good general introduction to the Spanish missionary program and to Indian life in Texas."--BOOK JACKET.