Renaissance Church Facades of Kerala: Seeds of Cross Cultural Alliances

The dissemination of the Renaissance ideas from Italy to other parts of the world including India happened through wars, colonization, evangelization, missionary works and immigration of artists. The classical style was seen as exotic and used tremendously after colonization of India by Portuguese. We find a significant number of classical European architecture in the coastal as well as the interiors of Kerala which resulted from Portuguese influence in which the Jesuit missionaries played an important role. The resulting architecture adapted to the climate as well as the aesthetics of the region. The paper tries to understand the dissemination of Renaissance church facades to Kerala by missionaries and artists. The missionaries conceived church facades as special architectural theaters to carry out their proselytizing. The paper studies the facade of few Renaissance churches of Kerala and tries to draw parallels from the Renaissance churches of Europe.