Page 276 - Perú indígena y virreinal

18th Century version of the diplomatic bag. Such were the cases of Superunda or Amat, portrayed by artists like Cristóbal Lozano and Pedro Díaz, works that were far removed from the Cuzcan school of symbolism, paying attention instead the problems of perspective and representative nature that were the dominant styles in European Courts in the 1700’s.
Furthermore, the ways of art, the paths it follows, are not only those established to connect the Viceroyalty of Peru with Europe, but also those that interconnect the Continent’s various Viceroyalties. Sumptuous objects arrived from Mexico and the Orient, such as furniture, ceramic ware and enconchados, often with an iconographic subject matter. On many occasions these were brought by high-ranking officials or civil servants, including the Viceroys themselves who came with diverse works of art among their personal belongings, each one adding something to the new cultural landscape. It is therefore hardly surprising that portraits of Saint Rosa de Lima should prove so popular in Mexico, or conversely that there should be so many Virgins of Guadalupe in the churches and convents of Peru. There are also pieces that seem, on the face of it, out of context, such as the portrait of Don Juan de Palafox, the Bishop of Puebla de Los Ángeles in Mexico, still kept in the Convent of Saint Teresa in Ayacucho. In keeping with this expansionist concept, Cusco’s painters sent their work far afield, to Charcas in Bolivia and to Chile, seeking a cut of the art merchant’s business, men who often had indigenous painters working exclusively for them. Work was also sent, logically enough, to the capital at Lima as well as to those territories that at the end of the 18th Century would become The Viceroyalty of La Plata.
Itinerant artists too respected their geographical reality. The city of San Juan de la Frontera de Huamanga (Ayacucho) was built in 1539 between Cusco, the Inca capital, and Lima, the capital of the Viceroys. The site for the new city was on with a long cultural tradition, having been the centre of the Wari Empire. This was the homeland of Guamán Poma de Ayala, who claimed region of the Chupas valley, stretching as far as the city of Huamanga, as his own, declaring himself heir to the Kurazcazgo. His celebrated manuscript, Primera Nueva Crónica y Buen Gobierno (“First New Chronicle and Good Government”), written in Spanish with some texts in Quechua, portrays, with the help of some four hundred illustrations, day to day life and customs, social structures, geographical and urban territories, the basis of Peruvian religion as well as the history of Peru. It has proved to be of immense value, showing us the options open to an artist at the time, as well as the dominant stylistic devices in place and the syncretic relationship between the newly arrived Europeans and local tradition at the beginning of the 17th Century. The manuscript was written for King Felipe III, the author himself announcing he had sent his work in a letter dated 14th of February 1615, found by Guillermo Lohmann in the General Archive of the Indies in Seville. Guamán Poma met the author of another contemporary manuscript, similar in style to his work, by Fray Martín de Murúa (1590), the illustrations of which depict the maltreatment that the indigenous population suffered at the hands of the Spanish. The artistic and historical importance of this second work is best summed up by the 112 colour drawings that complement Poma de Ayala´s vision in Nueva Corónica.
The cultural path of the process of imposing the Catholic catechism reached the four corners of Tawantinsuyo mid-way through the 17th Century, although this did not mean the eradication of pre-Hispanic religious sentiment, manifested in its cosmology and ritual practices. Instead, it led to diverse kinds of syncretism depending on the individual community or region. The wealth of possibilities offered by artistic expression in the Viceroyalty in terms of material, technique and iconography serves to exemplify such religious feeling.
In this exhibition, the painting La Flota de Manila—“The Manila Fleet”— characterises on a visual level the arrival of Christian iconography to Spanish overseas territories, and in a symbolic context, the integrating power of religion. These images, occasionally regarded as “miraculous” in their own right due to documented happenings, constituted the creation of an Andean image system that permitted divine mediation. This interventionist role was quickly assimilated by various ethnic groups and by whole neighbourhoods. Religious brotherhoods and their celebrations were seen as a way for different social groups to appear in public and take control of the streets and barrios. In fact, the spread of the Cult of the Saints was to a large extent due to the evident connection with the pre-Columbine mobile huacas. In the catechisms that were promoted throughout the period of the Viceroyalty there were constant comparisons made between
the huacas and “images that are painted, and are made from sticks and metal and are kissed and knelt before, and are taken to the chest and are spoken to”.
The idea of the city as religious space is a subject matter that comes up time and time again in Peruvian painting Such was the case of the aforementioned earthquake of 1650 in Cusco, and the painting depicting the subsequent procession that were kept in the Soledad Church in Lima (also known as The Holy Sepulchre Church or The Church of Christ Crucified), where the theme of the painting is not only the religious event but also very architecture of the city, its people and urban landscape. The same is also true of paintings of a more secular nature, such as the Entrance of Bishop Mollinedo in Potosí by Melchor Pérez de Holguín (Museo de América, Madrid) or the magnificent canvas depicting Lima’s Plaza Mayor, of a completely un-religious nature, the whereabouts of, unfortunately, are unknown.
The concept of a Religious Brotherhood, known as a cofradía in Spanish, ties in perfectly with the idea of “family” that is central to a Christian community. One sole family with direct relationships concurrent with the more specific and private devotions, which acquires ideological refinements through a concrete historical moment, such as the union of Jesuits with the Inca royal family. In this way, the well-known marriage between Martín García de Loyola (the grand-nephew of the Jesuits founder, Saint Ignacio de Loyola) and Beatriz Clara Coya (princess and legitimate heir to the Inca throne) was celebrated in the sotocoro of the Jesuit Church in Cusco, whilst numerous copies of prints depicting the scene were given out in the schools and other Jesuit institutions in Peru. In the original painting there are actually two weddings in progress, the one we have referred to above and a second, with a number of historical inaccuracies possibly due to it having been re- painted on a number of occasions, between Ana María Lorenza (the so-called daughter of the above mentioned marriage) and Enríquez de Borja y Almansa (supposedly the son of Saint Francis of Borja). The relationships between the protagonists indicate the level of symbolic content as well as necessitating the central presence of the two Jesuit saints endorsing the nuptials. The genealogical mistakes, however, in no way impede the ideological analysis of the painting or the position of The Company of Jesus.
Meanwhile, in private, where the inquisitive tentacles of officialdom have trouble reaching, small devotional objects emerged, the most important being the small portable altars and Christmas and Saint Mark Boxes. Among these latter examples, we should highlight the boxes produced in Huamanga, which were divided into two levels, the higher being dedicated to the patron saints, the lower one to reality with the representation of a scene from everyday life. These manifestations of culture as well as piety go deeper than they would in any other public setting, with ancestral beliefs ensuring the continuity of meaning and yet modifying and adapting them to adhere to a Christian image-system (Christ of the Tremors-Pachacamac, The Virgin Mary-Pachamama or Saint James-Illapa) which would finally replace them.
We have referred to the process of acquiring culture through specific spiritual devotion and the formation of cofradías. Among the most interesting were those that had the infant Christ Child at their centre. Curiously, a number of these brotherhoods in Cusco dressed the infant in the clothes of Inca royalty, especially the mascapaicha—a scarlet tassel or pompom, exclusive to Inca rulers. This syncretic solution, summed up in the words of Carolyn S. Dean: “...although the infant Christ Child was introduced to the Andean communities as an assimilative mechanism, designed to convert them definitively in Catholics, we can see that during the colonial period, the Incas in fact converted him into one of them, an Inca.” (C. Dean, 2002, 180)
To see the extent of syncretism in artistic techniques we need look no further than ceramic ware. The continuity of pre-Columbine culture had taken pottery to great technical and symbolic heights, especially in the areas of moulding and shaping. The same forms would continue on into the Viceroyalty, with the addition of two refinements that were to transform production: the potter’s wheel and glazes employing metallic oxides, predominantly yellow, green and brown. At first, these advances did not mean improvements to the system of firing pieces—in fact many of the examples we see today had only received a single firing, whilst glazing techniques, introduced to Spain by the Arabs, meant that the object had to be fired twice. Although decoration tended to be based around local forms and symbols, there was a gradual introduction of others more typical of the
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