Page 292 - Perú indígena y virreinal

Argentina. In the following years the prestige of Marcos Zapata (active 1748–1773) dominated the art of Cusco thanks to his conventional and pleasant depictions of the Virgin. In the cathedral Zapata was responsible for the series of litanies of the Virgin (1755) based on the Elogia Mariana by Thomas Scheffler (1732). This use of 18th Century northern prints saw continuation in the work of his follower Antonio Huillca Vilca (active 1778–1803) who gave the Rococco themes of the Klauber brothers an interpretation that was as delicate and innocent as it was fanciful.
THE RESURGENCE OF LIMA
Following a completely different path, Lima would see, in the second half of the 18th Century, a real resurgence of its painting school with a definite cosmopolitan nature. At that time the city was recovering from the devastating earthquake of 1746, and inspired by the new enlightened spirit of the Bourbons. One of the main artistic consequences of this process was the renewed activity of the painters in Lima after several decades of decline and fall as a result of the imported work coming from Cusco.
During this time the capital benefited from the artistic patronage of the viceroys Manso de Velasco and Amat as well as from the emergent Creole aristocracy. The emblematic representative of this civil patronage was the judge Pedro Bravo de Lagunas y Castilla, a collector and defender of the arts who owned a large collection of not only Spanish and Flemish works but also—which was unusual at that time—English, Italian and French. In this cultured and European influenced atmosphere arose the key figure of Cristóbal Lozano (ca. 1705–1776), the best oil painter of his day in Lima. After an early stage when he was still influenced by the Cusco School, Lozano would change his style dramatically around 1740 after coming into contact with Spanish painters from the Golden century and the new 18th Century models.
Though the post of court painter to the viceroyalty would later be filled by Cristóbal Aguilar (active 1751–1771), a contemporary and rival of Lozano it was the style of the latter which was followed in large part by the next generation of painters in Lima, amongst whom figure José Joaquin Bermejo, Julián Jayo, Juan de Mata Coronado and Pedro Díaz. Several of them participated in the decoration of the convent of la Merced between 1766 and 1792, considered to be the crowning artistic achievement of the time.
EPILOGUE: BETWEEN NEO-CLASSICISM AND POPULAR PAINTING
Moving towards the 19th Century, as independence was getting nearer, the old colonial system of the guilds and workshops would have to face up to the concepts of the academies and the classical norms they produced. Unlike Mexico the Peruvian viceroyalty would see itself frustrated in the attempt to begin a local academy under the name of San Hermenegildo and the introduction of pictorial neo-classicism is owed to two influential Spanish artists working in the capital. These were the Sevillian José de Pozo, who abandoned the Malaspina expedition in 1791 to found a private academy in Lima and Matías Maestro architect and painter who, under the protection of archbishop La Reguera began the classical “renovation” of the ecclesiastic interiors of Lima. Although in reality Pozo was really a late follower of the Andalusian Baroque he joined together with Maestro and the pair produced a series of mostly mediocre religious compositions with a moralising tone.
Neo-classicism was found mostly in Lima, hardly making inroads in the interior of the country. Except for some isolated episodes Cusco remained faithful to its own traditions and witnessed an upsurge in mural painting which can only be compared to the boom of the first colonial times. Tadeo Escalante quickly became the most prolific mural painter in the region, with a style that reinterpreted and joined together those of his predecessors especially Marcos Zapata. The followers of Escalante took his mural effects and applied them to small leather supports hardened with plaster on which they made paintings dedicated to patrons of the country and of livestock such as San Isidro, San Marcos and San Juan Bautista, which a rural and provincial clientele had commissioned. With this legion of anonymous artists, christened “popular painters of the Andes” the techniques and themes of colonial painting were kept alive well into the beginnings of the republic.
sculpture, altarpieces and imagery
in the viceroyalty
Luis Eduardo Wuffarden
In his Nueva Crónica y Buen Gobierno, written at the beginning of the 17th Century, Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala recommended the cultivation of the arts among the indigenous population owing to the obvious usefulness this would bring to the success of the viceroyalty. He could find no better example than sculpture and he produced two native artisans working on the polychromy of a crucified Christ. In this way he demonstrated not only the relevance of these trades but also the crucial importance that images of worship would acquire with the Christianisation of Peru. To support this idea the chronicler assured that “seeing the saints made real, reminds us of the divine service”. And therefore it was a privilege that the Christians of the New World could agree on “the image and likeness of God”. After various generations of incessant artistic work the reproductions of Christ, the Virgin and the saints were found in every church in the country and had taken root deep in the imagination of the peoples of the Andes.
The mention that Guamán Poma makes of the trades of engraver, painter, sculptor and embroidery at around the same time is revealing. His words confirm that, far from being an isolated genre, sculpture depended on a complicated combination of different trades. Without doubt the slow adaptation of these old arts and crafts trades to the needs of the medium constitute a crucial chapter in the history of American art. The omnipresence of sculpture was due to the differing functions that it fulfilled throughout the viceroyalty assigned, as it was, to altarpieces, choir stalls, doorways, used in temporary displays or worshiped as a processional image or for private devotions.
ORIGINS
Owing to its position as the capital and the commercial relations it maintained with Seville, Lima received the bulk of important sculpture from the time of its foundation onwards. The great religious orders as well as the former principal church possessed images of the Virgin of exceptional quality which, within a very short time, had a devout following. Some of these have survived, despite earthquakes, urban transformations and changes in taste, due to their continuing status as objects of worship. They have been considered, though without the evidence to back it up, as gifts of the emperor Charles V.
Most of these statues came from the Sevillian workshop under Roque de Balduque, the Flemish master who was active in the second third of the 16th Century and who has traditionally been known as “the image maker of the mother of God”. Two documented pieces support the early presence of his work in Lima. One is the Virgen de la Asunción, named after the second cathedral and commissioned by the daughter of Francisco Pizarro around 1551. The second is the Virgen del Rosario which was ordered by the Dominicans and carved by Balduque in 1558. Both pieces display the typical characteristics of the artist, mixing elements of Renaissance naturalism with touches of older Gothic elements which reveal the northern origins of the sculptor. In the 1580’s the work of Juan Bautista Vázquez el Viejo began to arrive, an artist who was imbued with the style of Michelangelo and whose work could be compared easily to the Italianate painting which was beginning to come into fashion in the capital. Some of the statues remain of those sent in 1582 for the Rosario chapel in the church of Santa Domingo and in the Virgen con el Niño (Instituto Riva-Agüero), undoubtedly part of an altarpiece that is now lost, in which we can observe the majestic proportions characteristic of Vázquez’s Spanish period.
During these early years it was still possible to find a marked difference between the pieces which arrived from the peninsula and those which were made by Spanish carvers who had set themselves up in the viceroyalty. This is so in the case of Alonso Gómez, the author of the reliefs for the high altar of the second cathedral (1558). Gómez came from Toro
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