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From the Jordan River to Lake Titicaca: Paintings of the Baptism of Christ in Colonial Andean Churches

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2015

Ananda Cohen Suarez*
Affiliation:
Cornell UniversityIthaca, New Yorkaic42@cornell.edu

Extract

The arts of the colonial Andes bear witness to a complex and contested story of evangelization that involved a variety of actors, including priests, artists, indigenous congregations, and confraternities. Sculptures of saints, sumptuous retablos (altarpieces), canvas paintings with elaborate gilded frames, and mural cycles devoted to a variety of biblical themes were employed in the religious instruction of indigenous communities, and as catalysts for sensorial modes of communication. The visual arts provided a tangible analogue to sermons and printed catechisms, offering parishioners a lens through which to envision the sacred. Adapted from European iconographic models and infused with local references and symbolism, religious art throughout the colonial Americas introduced new visual vocabularies to indigenous congregations, who quickly became conversant in these images of conversion.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2015 

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References

1. See for instance Urteaga, Horacio Villanueva, “Los Mollinedo y el arte del Cuzco colonial,” Boletín del Instituto Riva Agüero 16 (1989), pp. 209218 Google Scholar; MacCormack, Sabine, “Art in a Missionary Context: Images from Europe and the Andes in the Church of Andahuaylillas near Cuzco,” in The Word Made Image: Religion, Art, and Architecture in Spain and Spanish America, 1500–1600, vol. 28, Brown, Jonathan, ed. (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Fenway Court series, 1998), pp. 103126 Google Scholar; Stanfield-Mazzi, Maya, “The Possessor's Agency: Private Art Collecting in the Colonial Andes,” Colonial Latin American Review 18:3 (2009), pp. 339364 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stratton-Pruitt, Suzanne L., “The King in Cuzco: Bishop Mollinedo's Portraits of Charles II,” in Art in Spain and the Hispanic World: Essays in Honor of Jonathan Brown, Schroth, Sarah, ed. (London: Paul Holberton Publishing and Center for Spain in America, 2010), pp. 304321 Google Scholar; and Stanfield-Mazzi, Maya, “Cult, Countenance, and Community: Donor Portraits from the Colonial Andes,” Religion and the Arts 15:4 (2011), pp. 429459 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. There exist, of course, many notable exceptions. For a superb analysis of indigenous painter Francisco Chihuantito's strategic interventions in a seventeenth-century painting depicting the Virgin of Montserrat at the Church of Chinchero, see Nair, Stella, “Localizing Sacredness, Difference, and Yachacuscamcani in a Colonial Andean Painting,” The Art Bulletin 89:2 (2007), pp. 211238 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. To take one example, in 1646 the master painter Tomás de Alva was commissioned to paint the Chapel of Nuestra Señora de la Purificación at the Monasterio de Santa Clara: “Tomás de Alva, maestro pintor, residente en el Cuzco, concierta con el Monasterio de Santa Clara, para aderezar y pintar cuatro capillas de su iglesia, unas frente de otras, y hacer los zaquicamios [zaquizamíes] de arriba, conforme al de la capilla de N. S. de la Purificación, aunque con diferente aderezo, conforme a los dibujos que tiene hechos, con 39 tarjas en cada uno, compasadas y niveladas y que las tarjas tendrán adornos, los cruceros y los medios con flores y las cuatro esquinas cuadradas y todo lo demás matizado con colores finos y los remates últimos de las tarjas han de estar dorados y los arcos testeros de las dichas capillas, han de ser dorados y bruñidos, todo por 800 pesos corrientes” (emphasis mine), Archivo Regional de Cuzco, Pt. 139A/592. fol. 124v. Esc.: Juan F. Bastidas, cited in Bouroncle, Jorge Cornejo, Derroteros de arte cuzqueño. Datos para una historia del arte en el Perú. (Cuzco: Editorial Garcilaso, 1960), p. 149 Google Scholar.

4. Or, as Carolyn Dean notes, to endow local paintings with a pomp and grandeur that may not bear complete correspondence with lived reality. See “Copied Carts: Spanish Prints and Colonial Peruvian Paintings,” Art Bulletin 78:1 (1996), pp. 98–110. At the forefront of this endeavor is the Project on the Engraved Sources of Spanish Colonial Art (PESSCA), an online repository that has documented over 2,500 correspondences between colonial paintings and their source prints. See the PESSCA site at http://colonialart.org/, accessed October 14, 2014.

5. de Mesa, José and Gisbert, Teresa, Historia de la pintura cuzqueña, vol. 1 (Lima: Fundación Banco Wiese, 1982), pp. 233236 Google Scholar; Velarde, Teófilo Benavente, Pintores cusqueños de la colonia (Cuzco: Municipalidad del Qosqo, 1995), p. 106 Google Scholar; Ochoa, Jorge Flores, Arce, Elizabeth Kuon, and Argumedo, Roberto Samanez, Pintura mural en el sur andino (Lima: Banco de Crédito del Perú, 1993), pp. 8081 Google Scholar.

6. Mesa and Gisbert, Historia de la pintura cuzqueña, vol. 1, p. 236.

7. AGI, Lima, 698, n. 44, fols. 641–643. See also Gonzáles, Donato Amado, “El Alférez Real de los Incas: resistencia, cambios y comunidad de la identidad Inca,” in Élites indígenas en los Andes: nobles, caciques y cabildantes bajo el yugo colonial, Cahill, David Patrick and Tovías, Blanca, eds. (Quito: Editorial Abya-Yala, 2003), p. 75 Google Scholar. Alférez real was one of the highest titles one could attain as a member of the Indian nobility. An alférez served as official standard bearer for formal ceremonies.

8. I thank José Carlos de la Puente Luna for bringing these individuals to my attention.

9. Kubler, George and Soria, Martin, Art and Architecture in Spain and Portugal and Their American Dominions, 1500 to 1800 (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1959), p. 89 Google Scholar.

10. Wethey, Harold E., Colonial Architecture and Sculpture in Peru (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1949), p. 65 Google Scholar.

11. “Toda la yg[lesi]a esta pintada p[o]r el techo con sobrepuestos de pasta: y p[o]r el cuerpo pintada en forma de colgadura.” Archivo Arzobispal de Cuzco [hereafter AAC)], Urcos: Libro de Fábrica e Inventario, Book 1 (1788–1872), fol. 22r.

12. An extensive restoration of the church at Urcos, under the auspices of the Instituto Nacional de Cultura (INC), was completed in 2012. Unfortunately, a faulty restoration of the baptism mural has fundamentally altered the painting. When conservators attempted to liberate the mural from the wall in order to restore it, parts of the adobe crumbled, leaving large cracks throughout the composition. While I provide a recent image of the mural to show its current state, I rely on a pre-restoration photograph for visual analysis of the painting.

13. This is the first publication to my knowledge to identify the artist of the Baptism of Christ mural at the church of Pitumarca, based on research I conducted at the Archivo Arzobispal de Cuzco, whose holdings of Libros de Fábrica for Pitumarca revealed Gamarra's identity (see note 17).

14. “Yten el Bautisterio que se caio lo volvia techar compre tres palos grandes, y gruesos, a peso cada uno, en techarlo nada gaste por que lo hiso la gente, y es cosa ridicula lo que les di para su coca en embarrarlo y blanquearlo pague al Albañil ocho dias hornal de tres r[eale]s cada dia tres p[eso]s son seis p[eso]s.” AAC, Pitumarca, Libro de Fábrica e Inventario, Book 1 (1744–1784), fol. 2r.

15. I thank José Carlos de la Puente Luna for pointing this out to me. Susan Verdi Webster has conducted considerable research on the role of indigenous builders in the construction of colonial Quito, which may yield additional insights into how this played out in the context of doctrinas de indios in Cuzco's outlying provinces. See Webster, , “Masters of the Trade: Native Artisans, Guilds, and the Construction of Colonial Quito,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 68:1 (2009), pp. 1029 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “Vantage Points: Andeans and Europeans in the Construction of Colonial Quito,” Colonial Latin American Review 20:3 (2011), pp. 303–330.

16. “Yt, en bolberlo a pintar por colores, y manos llevó el Pintor veinte y sinco pesos.” AAC, Pitumarca, Libro de Fábrica e Inventario, Book 1 (1744–1784), fol. 1v.

17. In this entry, Villavicencio does not describe the nature of the project, simply stating “Yt. El Pintor D.n Pablo Gamarra llevó por colores, y manos ciento sincuenta p[eso]s” (. . . the Painter Don Pablo Gamarra brought colors and extra hands [which cost] 150 pesos”), AAC, Pitumarca, Libro de Fábrica e Inventario, Book 1 (1744–1784), fol. 1r. We can assume that it is the same painter because the entry notes that he “returned” to paint the baptistery after his previous project.

18. In the colonial period, Canas and Canchis were lumped together into a single province known interchangeably as Canas y Canchis and Tinta.

19. The church of Pitumarca contains extensive mural decorations along the nave, ceiling, interior arches, lateral chapels, and baptistery. The mural program as a whole has received little scholarly attention; the principal publications on painting and architecture of the colonial Andes grant it only passing reference, if any. Perhaps given its isolated location, Pitumarca does not make it to any of the early surveys on the art and architecture of colonial Latin America by Kelemen (1951), Kubler and Martin Soria (1959), or Bayón and Murillo Marx (1992). Even books focusing specifically on Andean architecture such as Harold Wethey's Colonial Architecture and Sculpture in Peru (1949) and Gisbert and Mesa's Arquitectura andina (1997) do not include references to the church.

20. Witcombe, Christopher L. C. E., Copyright in the Renaissance: Prints and the Privilegio in Sixteenth-Century Venice and Rome (Leiden: Brill, 2004), p. 231 Google Scholar.

21. José de Mesa and Teresa Gisbert originally cited Bernardo Bitti's Baptism of Christ located at the church of St. John in Juli as the source image for Diego Cusi Guaman's mural in their 1962 edition of Historia de la pintura cuzqueña (p. 234). In the intervening years, however, Pablo Macera suggested in his 1975 article “El arte mural cuzqueño” that the Urcos mural actually derived from Pérez de Alesio's composition in Malta (p. 78). See Pablo Macera, “El arte mural cuzqueño, siglos XVI–XX,” Apuntes 2 (1975), pp. 59–113. Interestingly, Macera formed his hypothesis around a low-quality black-and-white image that had been inadvertently reversed in Mesa and Gisbert's 1972 book, El pintor Mateo Pérez de Alesio (p. 38, fig. 10). Mesa and Gisbert modified their suppositions in light of Macera's suggestion in their second edition of Historia de la pintura cuzqueña (1982). Both sets of authors, however, remained unaware of Perret's print of the baptism of Christ. This is the first publication, to my knowledge, to correctly identify the source print for Diego Cusi Guaman's Baptism of Christ. Antonio Palesati and Nicoletta Lepri manage to associate Perret's print with the Pitumarca mural, although they erroneously attribute it to the church of Catca with a seventeenth-century date. For further discussion of Perret's print, see Palesati, Antonio and Lepri, Nicoletta, Matteo da Leccia. Manierista Toscano dall’Europa al Perú (Pomarance, Italy: Associazione Turistica Pro Pomerance, 1999), pp. 7879, 126–129Google Scholar.

22. Witcombe, Copyright in the Renaissance, p. 232; Palesati and Lepri, Matteo da Leccia, p. 78.

23. Harth-Terré, Emilio and Abanto, Alberto Márquez, Pinturas y pintores en Lima virreinal (Lima: Librería e Imprenta Gil, 1964), p. 127 Google Scholar.

24. See Mesa and Gisbert, Historia de la pintura cuzqueña, vol. 1; and more recently, Pruitt, Suzanne Stratton, ed., The Virgin, Saints, and Angels: South American Paintings 1600–1825 from the Thoma Collection (Milan: Skira, 2006)Google Scholar; and Stratton-Pruitt, , “Origins of the Art of Painting in Colonial Peru and Bolivia,” in Journeys to New Worlds: Spanish and Portuguese Colonial Art in the Roberta and Richard Hubler Collection, Stratton-Pruitt, Suzanne and Castro, Mark A., eds. (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2013), pp. 3035 Google Scholar.

25. Image available in José de Mesa and Teresa Gisbert, “El pintor y escultor Luis de Riaño,” Arte y Arqueología 3–4 (1975), p. 147. See also Mesa, José de and Gisbert, Teresa, Bitti, un pintor manierista en Sudamérica (La Paz: Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, 1974), p. 55 Google Scholar.

26. Ibid., p. 62.

27. It would not be unreasonable to assume that both Diego Cusi Guaman and Luis de Riaño were exposed to Bitti's work in Juli, whether in person or through copies. Although a considerable distance separated Urcos and Andahuaylillas from the Jesuit outpost of Juli on the shores of Lake Titicaca, the Jesuits established substantial links between the Cuzco and Lake Titicaca regions during this period. In 1621, the Jesuits were engaged in a dispute with the secular clergy of Cuzco about converting Andahuaylillas into a language-training center to teach priests Quechua. It was to have served as a counterpart to the Aymara language school that the Jesuits established in Juli, although the plan never came to fruition. See Ugarte, Rubén Vargas, Historia de la Iglesia en el Perú, vol. 3 (Burgos: Imprenta de Aldecoa, 1960), pp. 368369 Google Scholar; Bruce Mannheim, The Language of the Inka Since the European Invasion, pp. 250–251n17; Durston, Alan, Pastoral Quechua: The History of Christian Translation in Colonial Peru, 1550–1650 (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), p. 339n24Google Scholar; and Mannheim, , “Pérez Bocanegra, Juan (?–1645),” in Guide to Documentary Sources for Andean Studies, 1530–1900, vol. 3, Pillsbury, Joanne, ed. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008), pp. 516519 Google Scholar. Moreover, if the lives of Bernardo Bitti, Mateo Pérez de Alesio, and Angelino Medoro offer any indication, artists in seventeenth-century Peru traveled extensively throughout the viceroyalty. Medoro, for instance, began his South American career in modern-day Colombia, settled briefly in Ecuador, arrived in Lima around 1600, and then returned to Seville around 1624.

28. For further discussion of the interactions between Italian émigré and local Andean artists in seventeenth-century Cuzco, see Mesa and Gisbert, Bitti, un pintor manierista en Sudamérica; Mesa and Gisbert, Historia de la pintura cuzqueña, vol. 1, pp. 56–88; and Cárdenas, Ricardo Estabridis, “Influencia italiana en la pintura virreinal,” in Pintura en el virreinato del Perú, Galindo, Luis Nieri, ed. (Lima: Banco de Crédito del Perú, 1989), pp. 109166 Google Scholar.

29. Luis de Riaño's career remains poorly understood. For a biographical sketch and brief discussion of his major works, see Mesa, José de and Gisbert, Teresa, “El pintor y escultor Luis de Riaño,” Arte y Arqueología 3–4 (1975), pp. 145158 Google Scholar; Mesa and Gisbert, Historia de la pintura cuzqueña, vol. 1, pp. 237–238; and Arce, Elizabeth Kuon, “Del manierismo al barroco en murales cuzqueños: Luis de Riaño,” in Manierismo y transición al barroco. Memoria del III Encuentro Internacional sobre Barroco (La Paz: Unión Latina, 2005), pp. 105114 Google Scholar. The only known archival references to Riaño's career in Cuzco come from two contracts, one from 1634 and the other from 1643, that describe the terms of a commission for retablos and paintings for the church of Huaro, located near Andahuaylillas en route to the parish center of Urcos. See Bouroncle, Jorge Cornejo, Derroteros de arte cuzqueño. Datos para una historia del arte en el Perú. (Cuzco: Editorial Garcilaso, 1960), pp. 138, 143Google Scholar. Suzanne Stratton-Pruitt rightly cautions us on the problematic attributions accorded to many seventeenth-century Peruvian artists, Riaño included. See Stratton-Pruitt, “Origins of the Art of Painting in Colonial Peru and Bolivia,” p. 35n6.

30. Scholars remain unclear on the chronology of Cusi Guaman's work in the Cuzco area. Pablo Macera notes that the most immediate local reference to his Baptism can be found in Riaño's painting at Andahuaylillas (“El arte mural cuzqueño,” p. 78), implying that Riaño's work came first. Flores Ochoa, Kuon Arce, and Samanez Argumedo date Cusi Guaman's painting to the early years of the seventeenth century, implying that Riaño's canvas came later (Pintura mural en el sur andino, p. 80). Mesa and Gisbert (Historia de la pintura cuzqueña, vol. 1, p. 236) remain mum on an exact date for Cusi Guaman's mural, but seem to imply that it was executed sometime between 1607 and 1630, the approximate dates of his alleged murals at the churches of Chinchero and Sangarará, respectively. In their 1975 publication on Luis de Riaño, however, they state that his painting directly influenced Diego Cusi Guaman (“El pintor y escultor Luis de Riaño,” p. 148). While the existing literature seems to suggest a rough date of the first quarter of the seventeenth century, I argue for a later date of 1630s to 1640s. The level of detail and technical virtuosity evident in Riaño's painting suggests its utility as a model for Cusi Guaman rather than vice versa. Cusi Guaman's painting bears a rougher quality that places greater emphasis on color and symbolism than on technical detail. It is less likely, then, that Riaño would have looked to Cusi Guaman's painting as a model since it lacks the attention to the fine modulation that plays such an important role in Riaño's oeuvre.

31. Mesa and Gisbert, Historia de la pintura cuzqueña, vol. 1, p. 236.

32. For further discussion of the differences between the production of murals and canvas paintings within an economic context, see Ananda Cohen, “Mural Painting and Social Change in the Colonial Andes, 1626–1830” (PhD diss.: Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 2012), pp. 54–61. Scholars have recently begun to examine the different kinds of values, both monetary and social, that contemporaries accorded to colonial Latin American artworks. See Stanfield-Mazzi, Maya, “The Possessor's Agency: Private Art Collecting in the Colonial Andes,” Colonial Latin American Review 18:3 (2009), pp. 339364 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Alcalá, Luisa Elena, “On Perceptions of Value in Colonial Art,” in Journeys to New Worlds: Spanish and Portuguese Colonial Art in the Roberta and Richard Hubler Collection, Stratton-Pruitt, Suzanne, ed. (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2013), pp. 1827 Google Scholar.

33. Murals in the colonial Andes were created using a fresco secco technique of applying tempera paint to dry plaster. See Macera, “El arte mural cuzqueño,” p. 66; Argumedo, Roberto Samanez, “Mural Painting on Adobe Walls During Peruvian Colonial Times – Its Restoration and Conservation,” in Case Studies in the Conservation of Stone and Wall Paintings: Preprints of the Contributions to the Bologna Congress, 21–26 September 1986, Brommelle, N. S. and Smith, Perry, eds. (London: The International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, 1986), pp. 7579 Google Scholar; Flores Ochoa, Kuon Arce, and Samanez Argumedo, Pintura mural en el sur andino, 11; Magaña, Rodolfo Vallín, “La pintura mural en hispanoamérica,” in Pintura, escultura y artes útiles en iberoamérica, 1500–1825, Gutiérrez, Ramón, ed. (Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra, 1995), p. 201 Google Scholar; and Magaña, Vallín, Imágenes bajo cal & pañete: pintura mural de la colonia en Colombia (Bogotá: Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, 1998), p. 49 Google Scholar.

34. Although a consideration of the full spectrum of possibilities that governed this urban/rural and temporal divide remains beyond the scope of this article, I would argue that aside from economic considerations, mural painting was the preferred medium for indigenous people because of its deep historical roots in the Andes, as an uninterrupted native artistic tradition in place for millennia before the Spanish invasion. Pablo Macera was the first to raise this distinction. See La pintura mural andina, siglos XVI–XIX, pp. 14–15, 37–39. I discuss this further in “Mural Painting and Social Change in the Colonial Andes, 1626–1830,” pp. 15–22. For a comprehensive discussion of pre-Columbian Andean murals within their respective archaeological contexts, see Bonavia, Duccio, Mural Painting in Ancient Peru, trans. Lyon, Patricia J. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985)Google Scholar. See also Flores Ochoa, Kuon Arce, and Samanez Argumedo, Pintura mural en el sur andino, pp. 25–34; and Macera, Pablo, “El arte mural cuzqueño, siglos XVI–XX,” Apuntes 2 (1975), pp. 59113 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35. A 1753 entry in the account book for the church states that the priest paid seven pesos for the baptistery to be painted: “Yt. Doi en Data ciete pesos q[ue] pague al Pintor p[a]r[a] q[ue] pintase el Bautisterio,” AAC, Ccatca San Juan Bautista, Libro de Fábrica e Inventario, Book 1 (1718–1765), fol. 78v. Five years later, the priest recorded that he paid fifteen pesos to the painter to paint two chapels and to return to renovate the entire church: “Ytt. Doy en Data quinze pesos que pague al Pintor p.r que pintase las dos capillas, y bolbiese a renovar toda la Yglesia.” Ibid., fol. 88v. In concert with the mural's stylistic features and bright color palette indicative of eighteenth-century highland Andean painting, this archival information suggests that the baptistery mural was created and/or modified between 1753 and 1758.

36. Andahuaylillas, Urcos, Ocongate, and Catca are located in the province of Quispicanchis. Pitumarca is located in the adjoining province of Canchis (originally classified as Canas y Canchis in the colonial period).

37. In 1688, a group of Spanish-descended painters drew up a petition directed to the corregidor of Cuzco in rebuttal of a (now lost) request made by indigenous artists to withdraw from participation in the creation of a triumphal arch for the 1677 Corpus Christi procession. The Spaniards countered the claims made by their indigenous associates of mistreatment and discrimination, instead claiming that it was the Indians themselves who were drunk and malicious toward them. The original document is located in the Archivo Regional de Cuzco. For an English translation of the document, see Damian, “Artist and Patron in Colonial Cuzco,” p. 53. For a full transcription see Urteaga, Horacio Villanueva, “Nacimiento de la escuela cuzqueña de pintura,” Boletín del Archivo Departamental del Cuzco 1 (1985), pp. 1113 Google Scholar. See also Mesa and Gisbert, Historia de la pintura cuzqueña, vol. 1, pp. 137–138. Recent scholars have critiqued José de Mesa and Teresa Gisbert's over-reliance on the 1688 document as the definitive turning point in Cuzco's artistic system, arguing instead for a more nuanced approach that acknowledges the documentary gaps that have impeded our understanding of the pre-1688 guild system in Cuzco. See Fernando Valenzuela, “Painting as a Form of Communication in Colonial Central Andes: Variations on the Form of Ornamental Art in Early World Society” (PhD diss.: Universität Luzern, 2009), pp. 182–209. For a more condensed version, see Fernando A. Valenzuela, “The Guild of Painters in the Evolution of Art in Colonial Cusco,” Working paper des Soziologischen Seminars 01/2010 Soziologisches Seminar der Universität Luzern, June 2010.

38. A wealth of scholarship exists on the Cuzco School. See, for instance, del Pomar, Felipe Cossío, Pintura colonial (escuela cuzqueña) (Cuzco: H. G. Rozas, 1928 Google Scholar); García, José Uriel, “Escuela cusqueña de arte colonial. La iglesia de Huaroc,” Revista del Instituto Americano del Arte 9:11 (1963), pp. 353376 Google Scholar; Castedo, Leopoldo, The Cuzco Circle (New York: Center for Inter-American Relations, 1976)Google Scholar; Gutiérrez, Ramón, “Notas sobre organización artesanal en el Cusco durante la colonia,” Histórica 3:1 (1979), pp. 115 Google Scholar; de Mesa, José and Gisbert, Teresa, Historia de la pintura cuzqueña, 2 vols, vol. 1 (Lima: Fundación Banco Wiese, 1982)Google Scholar; and de Mesa, José, “La pintura cuzqueña (1540–1821),” Cuadernos de Arte Colonial 4 (May 1988) pp. 542 Google Scholar.

39. This is not to imply, of course, that Cuzco School paintings did not contain indigenous symbolism. On the contrary, we can find innumerable references to Andean life in such images, from women bedecked in traditional Andean dress to the inclusion of local flora and fauna. The distinction I am drawing here is between indigenous symbolism and direct references to local sites and histories.

40. Access to technical reports produced during conservation campaigns of the 1980s and 1990s remains exceedingly difficult, and in many cases, such documentation has been lost after the transfer of conservation archives to their current site at the Conservación del Patrimonio Cultural Mueble de la Dirección Regional de Cultura de Cusco in the town of Tipón. In the absence of information regarding the chemical composition of the murals, we must make educated guesses as to the possible pigments used based on documentation of pigment trade and use in other Andean paintings of the same period and region. I draw primarily from the expertise of Gabriela Siracusano and her team of scientists, who have worked extensively on colonial Andean paintings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries produced throughout Cuzco, Potosí, and northwestern Argentina (see below).

41. For a discussion of red pigments in colonial Andean painting, see Seldes, Alicia et al., “Green, Yellow, and Red Pigments in South American Painting, 1610–1780,” Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 41:3 (2002), pp. 233237 Google Scholar.

42. For further discussion of the depiction of the mascapaycha in colonial Andean painting, see Teresa Gisbert, Iconografía y mitos indígenas en el arte, pp. 82–84; and Dean, Carolyn, Inka Bodies and the Body of Christ: Corpus Christi in Colonial Cuzco, Peru (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), pp. 103110 Google Scholar.

43. For more on the symbolic import of water in Inca mythology and imperial strategy, see Sherbondy, Jeanette E., “Water Ideology in Inca Ethnogenesis,” in through Time: Persistence and Emergence, Dover, Robert V. H., Seibold, Katharine E., and McDowell, John H., eds. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), pp. 4666 Google Scholar; and Dean, Carolyn, A Culture of Stone: Inka Perspectives on Rock (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44. See Siracusano, Gabriela, El poder de los colores. De lo material a lo simbólico en las prácticas culturales andinas. Siglos XVI–XVII (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica de Argentina, 2005), p. 161 Google Scholar.

45. Seldes, Alicia M. et al., “Blue Pigments in South American Painting (1610–1780),” Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 38:2 (1999), pp. 100123 Google Scholar. In the absence of published reports on any physical analysis that may have been conducted on the murals at the church of Urcos during its restoration, we can only speculate on the pigment sources. Nevertheless, my interpretation of the compatibility between the representation of water and its materiality is largely indebted to Gabriela Siracusano's El poder de los colores in the context of the Andes, as well as Diana Magaloni Kerpel's work on Mesoamerican painting before and after the conquest, particularly “Painters of the New World: The Process of Making the Florentine Codex,” in Colors Between Two Worlds: The Florentine Codex of Bernardino de Sahagún, Gerhard Wolf and Joseph Connors, eds., Villa I Tatti 28 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011), pp. 47–78.

46. Seldes et al., “Blue Pigments in South American Painting (1610–1780),” p. 104.

47. Ibid., p. 110.

48. Ibid., p. 106.

49. For example, archaeologist Luis Valcárcel excavated a number of mineral deposits in the Muyujmarka sector of the Inca site of Sacsayhuaman, including malachite, cinnabar, and azurite. He discovered a small alabaster vessel excavated in this sector that contained geometric motifs in red, green, and blue, the latter of which derived from azurite. Valcárcel also suggests that the mineral would have been ground and combined with sap to decorate keros. See Valcárcel, Luis E., “Los trabajos arqueológicos en el departamento del Cuzco. Sajsawaman redescubierto IV,” Revista del Museo Nacional 4:2 (1935), pp. 167168 Google Scholar. See also Georg, Petersen G., Mining and Metallurgy in Ancient Perú, trans. Brooks, William E. (Boulder, Colo.: Geological Society of America, 2010), p. 9 Google Scholar.

50. See de Villagómez, Pedro, Carta pastoral de exortacion e instruccion contra las idolatrias de los indios del arcobispado de Lima (Lima: Iorge Lopez de Herrera, 1649), 45vGoogle Scholar. Gabriela Siracusano has compiled a list of similar references in the seventeenth-century extirpation of idolatries literature. See El poder de los colores, pp. 304–309.

51. Urcos was an important Inca settlement and figured into some Inca origin stories, particularly the version related by the sixteenth-century Spanish chronicler Juan de Betanzos. According to Betanzos, the creator god Con Ticci Viracocha (also spelled Contiti Viracocha) passed through Urcos on his travels from Lake Titicaca to Cuzco. When he arrived in Urcos he climbed to the top of a mountain and ordered all of the ancestors of that region living in mountain peaks (apu) to emerge. The people of Urcos subsequently built a shrine (huaca) to honor Viracocha and placed it on the stone where he had once sat. Betanzos describes the huaca as a bench of fine gold on which they placed a statue of Viracocha. Urcos was the last site that Viracocha passed through before arriving in the Inca capital of Cuzco. Although Lake Urcos is not specifically mentioned in this variant of the Inca creation story, the reference to the settlement of Urcos carries an implicit association with the lake. de Betanzos, Juan, Suma y narración de los Incas, Martín Rubio, María del Carmen, ed. (Cuzco: Fondo Editorial de la Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad, 1999), p. 14 Google Scholar.

52. While most English sources translate the Spanish and Quechua terms to “chain” or “cable,” it may not have been a chain at all. Huascar was allegedly named in honor of this great golden ornament. The Quechua word for the chain is huasca, which translates to the Spanish word maroma, or rope. Samuel K. Lothrop argues that the so-called chain would have more likely been a gold-plated rope, based on testimony by the chronicler de Gamboa, Pedro Sarmiento. See Inca Treasure as Depicted by Spanish Historians (Los Angeles: The Southwest Museum, 1938), p. 45 Google Scholar.

53. “Al tiempo que le nació el primer hijo mandó hazer Guaynacaua vna maroma de oro, tan gruessa (según ay muchos indios biuos que lo dizen) que asidos a ello más de dozientos indios orejones no la reuantauan muy fácilmente; y en memoria desta tan señalada joya llamaron al hijo Guasca, que en su lengua quiere dezir ‘soga.’” de Zárate, Agustín, Historia del descubrimiento y conquista del Perú, Franklin, Pease G. Y. and Martínez, Teodoro Hampe, eds. (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Fondo Editorial, 1995), pp. 5960 Google Scholar. The Spaniards commonly referred to elite Incas as “orejones,” which translates to “big ears,” because of the large earspools that they wore.

54. de la Vega, Garcilaso, Royal Commentaries of the Incas, and General History of Peru, vol. 1, trans. Livermore, Harold V. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966), p. 544 Google Scholar.

55. Ibid., p. 545.

56. “In the valley of Orcos, six leagues south of Cuzco, there is a small lake less than half a league round, but very deep and surrounded by high hills. The story is that the Indians threw a great part of the treasure from Cuzco in it as soon as they knew about the approach of the Spaniards, and that one of the treasures was the gold chain Huaina Cápac had ordered to be made, of which I shall speak in due course. Twelve or thirteen Spaniards dwelling in Cuzco, not settlers who possess Indians but merchants and traders, were stirred by this report to form a company to share the risk or profit of draining the lake and securing the treasure. They sounded it and found it was [in] twenty-three or twenty-four fathoms of water without counting the mud, which was deep. They decided to make a tunnel to the east of the lake, where the river Y’úcay passes and the land is lower than the level of the lake: they could thus run off the water and leave the lake dry . . . They began work in 1557 with great hopes of getting the treasure, but after tunneling fifty paces into the hillside, they struck a rock and though they tried to break it, they found it was flint, and when they persisted, they found they struck more sparks than stone. So having wasted many ducats of their capital, they lost hope and gave up. I went into the tunnel several times while they were working.” Ibid., pp. 190–191.

57. MacCormack, Sabine, Religion in the Andes: Vision and Imagination in Early Colonial Peru (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 97 Google Scholar.

58. Mesa and Gisbert, Historia de la pintura cuzqueña, vol. 1, p. 236.

59. An image of Dürer's engraving of Adam and Eve is available at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Online Collection: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/19.73.1, accessed October 7, 2014. For further discussion, see de Mesa, José and Gisbert, Teresa, El pintor Mateo Pérez de Alesio (La Paz: Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, 1972), pp. 8990 Google Scholar; and Mesa and Gisbert, Historia de la pintura cuzqueña, vol. 1, p. 236.

60. Okada, Hiroshige, “Inverted Exoticism? Monkeys, Parrots, and Mermaids in Andean Colonial Art,” in The Virgin, Saints, and Angels: South American Paintings 1600–1825, from the Thoma Collection, Stratton-Pruitt, Suzanne, ed. (Milan: Skira, 2006), p. 74 Google Scholar.

61. See Honour, Hugh, The New Golden Land: European Images of America from The Discoveries to the Present Time (New York: Pantheon Books, 1975), pp. 3437 Google Scholar.

62. “Tiempo en questamos los quales son ynfieles, aunque con el Ynga tubieron pas y amistad. Y después acá son yndios belicosos, yndios de la montaña, comen carne humana. Y en su tierra ay animales, serpientes y tigres y leones y culebras ponsoñosas y saluages y lagartos, bacas, asnos montecinos y otros animales y muchos uacamayas y papaguayos y páxaros, monos y monas, puercos montecinos y muchos yndios de Guerra y otros desnudos y otros que tray panpanilla y otros que tray atra anaco, los hombres como las mugeres.” de Ayala, Felipe Guaman Poma, El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno, Murra, John V. and Adorno, Rolena, eds. (Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno, 1980 [1615]), p. 60 [77]Google Scholar.

63. According to Thierry Saignes, Chuncho is an Aymara term employed by missionaries and other colonial-period writers who roughly translated it to mean ‘savage.’ See Saignes, , Los Andes orientales: historia de un olvido (Cochabamba: Ediciones CERES, 1985), pp. 5154 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The term does not appear in Ludivico Bertonio's 1612 dictionary, Vocabulario de la lengua Aymara, however. It does appear in Diego González Holguín's 1608 Quechua dictionary, spelled ‘Chhunchu’ and defined as “a province, or bellicose Andeans” (“vna prouinvia, o de Andes de Guerra”), probably meant to invoke an association of Chunchos as warlike people. See Holguín, González, Vocabulario de la lengua general de todo el Peru llamada lengua quichua, o del inca (Lima: Instituto de Historia, 1952), p. 121 Google Scholar. The term seems to have been devoid of any specific ethnic or geographic affiliation other than somewhere east of the Andes. In fact, in one eighteenth-century publication describing missionary efforts in the early colonial period, ‘Chuncho’ was used to describe indigenous people in Paraguay. See Lozano, Pedro, Historia de la Compañía de Jesus en la provincia del Paraguay, escrita por el padre Pedro Lozano, vol. 1 (Madrid: Imprenta de la Viuda de M. Fernández, 1754), p. 568 Google Scholar.

64. Wilson, Lee Anne, “Nature versus Culture: The Image of the Uncivilized Wild-Man in Textiles from the Department of Cuzco, Peru,” in Textile Traditions of Mesoamerica and the Andes: An Anthology, Schevill, Margot, Berlo, Janet Catherine, and Dwyer, Edward Bridgman, eds. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), p. 209 Google Scholar.

65. Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, El primer nueva corónica i buen gobierno [1615], fol. 175 [177].

66. Ibid., fol. 322 [324]. An image is available on the Det Kongelige Bibliotek website, which has fully digitized Guaman Poma's manuscript: http://www.kb.dk/permalink/2006/poma/324/es/text/?open=id3087472, accessed May 15, 2014.

67. Marzal, Manuel M., El mundo religioso de Urcos: un estudio de antropología religiosa y de pastoral campesina de los Andes (Cuzco: Instituto de Pastoral Andina, 1971), p. 130 Google Scholar.

68. I am indebted to the scholarship of Rolena Adorno, Raquel Chang-Rodríguez, Mercedes López-Baralt, and others, whose work on Guaman Poma de Ayala's illustrations has provided a framework for approaching the implicit spatial hierarchies and relations embedded in many colonial Andean images. See in particular Adorno, Rolena, “On Pictorial Language and the Typology of Culture in a New World Chronicle,” Semiotica 36:1–2 (1981), pp. 51106 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Adorno, R., From Oral to Written Expression: Native Andean Chronicles of the Early Colonial Period (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, 1982)Google Scholar; Adorno, R. et al., eds., Guaman Poma de Ayala: The Colonial Art of an Andean Author (New York: Americas Society, 1992)Google Scholar; Adorno, R., Guaman Poma: Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru, 2nd ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Mercedes López-Baralt, “From Looking to Seeing: The Image as Text and the Author as Artist,” in Guaman Poma de Ayala: The Colonial Art of an Andean Author, R. Adorno et al., eds., pp. 14–31; and Chang-Rodríguez, Raquel, La palabra y la pluma en “Primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno” (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Fondo Editorial, 2005)Google Scholar.

69. For further discussion on the construction of Inca identities vis-à-vis the Chuncho, particularly in terms of gender, see Dean, Carolyn, “Andean Androgyny and the Making of Men,” in Gender in Pre-Hispanic America, Klein, Cecelia F. and Quilter, Jeffrey, eds. (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2001), pp. 143182 Google Scholar. See also “War Games: Indigenous Militaristic Theater in Colonial Peru,” in Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World, Ilona Katzew, ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), pp. 132–149.

70. A representative image of this genre of kero decoration can be found in Ilona Katzew, ed., Contested Visions, p. 143.

71. Thomas B. F. Cummins, Toasts with the Inca, pp. 256–257.

72. The literature on duality in the Andes is vast. For an archaeological perspective, see Moore, Jerry D., “The Archaeology of Dual Organization in Andean South America: A Theoretical Review and Case Study,” Latin American Antiquity 6:2 (1995), pp. 165181 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For broader discussions of its role in state formation and the delineation of moieties, see Netherly, Patricia J., “The Nature of the Andean State,” in Configurations of Power: Holistic Anthropology in Theory and Practice, Henderson, John S. and Netherly, Patricia J., eds. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 1135 Google Scholar; and Zuidema, R. Tom, Inca Civilization in Cuzco, trans. Decoster, Jean-Jacques (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990)Google Scholar. For a discussion of duality and its intersections with Inca material culture, see van de Guchte, Maarten, “Sculpture and the Concept of the Double among the Inca Kings,” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 29/30 (1996), pp. 256268 Google Scholar. And for a discussion of these concepts as they relate to modern Andean societies, see Palomino, Salvador, “Duality in the Sociocultural Organization of Several Andean Populations,” Folk 13 (1971), pp. 6588 Google Scholar; and Platt, Tristan, “Mirrors and Maize: The Concept of Yanatin Among the Macha of Bolivia,” in Anthropological History of Andean Polities, Murra, John V., Wachtel, Nathan, and Revel, Jacques, eds. (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 228259 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73. Rowe, John Howland, “El movimiento nacional inca del siglo XVIII,” Revista Universitaria 43:107 (1954), pp. 1747 Google Scholar.

74. Scholars have written extensively on the various channels through which the Inca past was reenacted and reconstructed in the colonial period. For a discussion of artistic representations of the Incas in the eighteenth century, see Gisbert, Teresa, Iconografía y mitos indígenas en el arte, 3rd ed. (La Paz: Editorial Gisbert, 2004), pp. 117146 Google Scholar; Ochoa, Jorge Flores, Arce, Elizabeth Kuon, and Argumedo, Roberto Samanez, “De la evangelización al incanismo. La pintura mural del sur andino,” Histórica 15:2 (1991), p. 171 Google Scholar; Flores Ochoa, Kuon Arce, and Samanez Argumedo, Pintura mural en el sur andino, pp. 254–267; Macera, Pablo, La pintura mural andina, siglos XVI–XIX (Lima: Editorial Milla Batres, 1993), pp. 1923, 35–40Google Scholar; and Majluf, Natalia, “De la rebelión al museo: genealogías y retratos de los Incas, 1781–1900,” in Los Incas, reyes del Perú, Cummins, Thomas et al., eds. (Lima: Banco de Crédito del Perú, 2005), pp. 254316 Google Scholar.

75. See Pérez, Pedro Guibovich, “Lectura y difusión de la obra del Inca Garcilaso en el virreinato peruano (siglos XVII–XVIII). El caso de los Comentarios Reales ,” Revista Histórica 37 (1990–1992), pp. 103120 Google Scholar; Maguiña, Carlos García-Bedoya, Para una periodización de la literatura peruana (Lima: Latinoamericana Editores, 1990), pp. 187194 Google Scholar; and Mazzotti, José Antonio, Incan Insights: El Inca Garcilaso's Hints to Andean Readers (Madrid: Iberoamericana Editorial, 2008)Google Scholar.

76. Ángel Rama's groundbreaking work, La ciudad letrada (1984) argued that the written word served as a powerful tool of legitimacy in the Spanish Americas, which was largely controlled, bureaucratized, and shaped by powerful Spaniards and creoles. Recent works, however, have begun to complicate the picture, pointing out the role of mestizo and indigenous writers in the quest for power through the production of texts and images. See for instance Dueñas, Alcira, Indians and Mestizos in the “Lettered City”: Reshaping Justice, Social Hierarchy, and Political Culture in Colonial Peru (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Salomon, Frank and Niño-Murcia, Mercedes, The Lettered Mountain: A Peruvian Village's Way With Writing (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Rappaport, Joanne and Cummins, Thomas B. F., Beyond the Lettered City: Indigenous Literacies in the Andes (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012)Google Scholar. Other authors, such as Roberto Echevarría, have focused on the legacy of the Spanish legal culture in the New World. His oft-cited phrase, “America existed as a legal document before it was physically discovered” (p. 46), points to the primacy of the written word in the conquest, as well as in the perpetuation of the colonial state. See Echevarría, Roberto González, Myth and Archive: A Theory of Latin American Narrative (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This is not to imply, however, that Garcilaso's second edition served as the sole vehicle by which Inca narratives became reenacted in the colonial period. There exists a rich body of literature on the impact of theatrical productions such as Ollantay and Usca Paucar, of which I will include a few representative examples: Beyersdorff, Margot, Historia y drama ritual en los Andes bolivianos, siglos XVI–XX (La Paz: Plural Editores, 1997)Google Scholar; Chang-Rodríguez, Raquel, Hidden Messages: Representation and Resistance in Andean Colonial Drama (Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; and Silva-Santisteban, Ricardo, Antología general del teatro peruano, vol. 3 (Lima: Banco Continental, 2000)Google Scholar.

77. Jorge Flores Ochoa and his colleagues have established the link between the Pitumarca depictions of totora boats with Lake Titicaca, but they do not probe this connection further. See Flores Ochoa, Kuon Arce, and Samanez Argumedo, Pintura mural en el sur andino, 241. Teresa Gisbert as well as Antonio Palesati and Nicoletta Lepri also reference the indigenous manufacture of the totora boats and their connection to Lake Titicaca, but mistakenly identify the Pitumarca mural as being located in the Church of Catca. See Gisbert, Teresa, Iconografía y mitos indígenas en el arte, 3rd ed. (La Paz: Editorial Gisbert, 2004), pl. 88Google Scholar; and Palesati, Antonio and Lepri, Nicoletta, Matteo da Leccia. Manierista Toscano dall’Europa al Perú (Pomarance, Italy: Associazione Turistica Pro Pomerance, 1999), p. 79Google Scholar.

78. For a discussion of the significance of Lake Titicaca as a pilgrimage site from the pre-Columbian to the colonial period, see Bauer, Brian S. and Stanish, Charles, Ritual and Pilgrimage in the Ancient Andes: The Islands of the Sun and the Moon (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001)Google Scholar; and Salles-Reese, Verónica, From Viracocha to the Virgin of Copacabana: Representation of the Sacred at Lake Titicaca (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

79. Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries, Bk. 1, chapt. XV, p. 42.

80. Ibid., p. 40.

81. Mills, Kenneth discusses this phenomenon in greater depth in his essay “The Naturalization of Andean Christianities,” in The Cambridge History of Christianity: Reform and Expansion, 1500–1660, vol. 6, Hsia, R. Po-chia, ed. (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 508539 Google Scholar.

82. Wuffarden, Luis Eduardo, “From Apprentices to ‘Famous Brushes’: Native Artists in Colonial Peru,” in Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World, Katzew, Ilona, ed. (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2012), pp. 267269 Google Scholar.

83. Dueñas, Indians and Mestizos in the “Lettered City,” p. 175.

84. For further discussion on assertions of indigenous elite power through the practice of artistic patronage, see Dean, Carolyn, Inka Bodies and the Body of Christ: Corpus Christi in Colonial Cuzco, Peru (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Dean, , “Inka Nobles: Portraiture and Paradox in Colonial Peru,” in Exploring New World Imagery: Spanish Colonial Papers from the 2002 Mayer Center Symposium, Pierce, Donna, ed. (Denver: Denver Art Museum, 2005), pp. 80103 Google Scholar; and Stanfield-Mazzi, “The Possessor's Agency.”

85. Cummins, Tom and Rappaport, Joanne, “The Reconfiguration of Civic and Sacred Space: Architecture, Image, and Writing in the Colonial Northern Andes,” Latin American Literary Review 26:52 (1998), pp. 174200 Google Scholar; Joanne Rappaport and Thomas B. F. Cummins, Beyond the Lettered City.

86. However, see Classen, Constance, “Sweet Colors, Fragrant Songs: Sensory Models of the Andes and the Amazon,” American Ethnologist 17:4 (1990), pp. 722735 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Classen, , Inca Cosmology and the Human Body (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1993)Google Scholar; Baker, Geoffrey, Imposing Harmony: Music and Society in Colonial Cuzco (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Cummins, Tom and Mannheim, Bruce, “The River Around Us, the Stream Within Us, the Traces of the Sun and Inka Kinetics,” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 59/60 (2011), pp. 521 Google Scholar.