Page 305 - Perú indígena y virreinal

Por mi lealtad se estime
la mas preciosa oblación
hoy con cuño más sublime
la real imagen imprime
amor en mi corazón.
[Estimate my loyalty
for the highest sacrifice
with the most sublime mark as the royal image is imprinted with love in my heart.]
When the procession walked by this arch, family members of the count threw flowers and gold and silver coins and the countess and her first born, don José de Santa Cruz, came down and joined the procession. Many others also joined the procession during its walk until it reached the Palace.
There was a stop in the program of celebrations on the festivity of the Immaculate Conception and the day of the Octave in honour of Louis I’s coronation, but it resumed on December the 18th with fireworks, traditional religious dances (matachines), jesters and giants with a Hydra. There were also chariots with allegories of Spain, accompanied by Virtue and Fortune, or Cupid shooting a love arrow into an allegory of Lima, as well as games such as the juegos de cañas (games of the canes) or juegos de alcancías (game of balls between horsemen) and bullfights. Among these expressions we emphasise the allegorical chariots, financed by the carpenter and architect guild, with representations of the months and planets. For example, Mercury’s chariot pulled by storks; Venus and Cupid’s chariot pulled by pigeons or Jupiter’s by two eagles. This guild ended its participation with a representation of a fable of Troy and Thebes, displaying turrets, castles and nine fireworks machines.
The celebration organised by the natives of the Indica Nation on January the 26th, 27th and 28th was a completely different case. They walked the streets dressed in rich costumes and accompanied by footmen and musicians, by a nobleman from Lambayeque named Valentín Niño—who rode a horse decked in gold and feathers, ear muffs, a big sun on his chest, a imperial tassel (mascapaicha) and a royal scepter—as well as other characters that represented the different Indicas who, as they walked under the viceroy’s balcony, would shout: “Long live the great Inca don Luis I”, as an act of submissiveness. The description of the natives’ costumes in these processions reminds us exactly of the representation of the natives in the series of paintings on the Corpus Procession in Cusco.
The fiesta held in Lima for the proclamation of King Charles IV was similar to the one in honour of Louis I. It was described in a book written by Esteban de Terralla y Landa in 1790, a work that was studied in the book Grabado en Lima Virreinal that we published in 2002, where we include an illustration of don Bartolomé de Mesa, signed by José Vázquez—legend has it that he was commissioner of the festivities on February the 8th. We only wish to point out what the author says at the end of the book, where he explains that it was decided that the celebrations were to be immortalised in two paintings four varas wide [vara: length measure equivalent to 772 mm], one to be sent to the Villa and Court of Madrid and the other to remain in this capital with the intention of maintaining the festive idea of the Indica Nation alive in the minds of all people and in order to understand the description better thanks to the vividness of the paintings. He adds that lack of time did not allow for the sending, in the La Mejicana ship, of a painting destined for His Majesty. Porras Barrenechea attributes the authorship of these paintings—which to this day have been missing—to an artist still unknown in Peruvian painting, Julián Dávila, although he does not cite any sources.
The above-mentioned characteristic constitutive elements were organised for the celebrations in honour of King Charles IV’s proclamation, including the natives’ celebrations with their imperial costumes and their aboriginal dances. In Joseph Skinner’s book entitled The Present State of Peru, published in London in 1805, we can observe twenty illustrations inspired in the above-mentioned paintings that represent characters dressed in traditional costumes. Among them, the representation of an Inca and his queen, a Yurimagua tribe warrior and an Indian inhabitant such as Peru’s Minerva stand out.]
ROYAL FUNERAL RITES IN THE 18TH CENTURY
In Lima there were other fiestas apart from the ones celebrated to proclaim a new monarch of Spain, such as the mournful celebrations held to commemorate their death, which also meant a symbiosis between space and ephemeral art.
Documents found in archives furnish information on the protocol used during these ceremonies in the 18th Century and onwards. We can also find it in funeral rite books published in Lima that contain the preparations before a ceremony, protocol during a procession and sermons, a description of the tumuli generally designed by a prestigious architect in Lima and a cenotaph engraved at the end of the book, immortalising the monarch’s ephemeral image for the benefit of our cultural memory. Funeral architecture also included sculptures and paintings based on an iconographic program that welcomed hieroglyphs, emblems and even mythological themes; program that was prepared by an intellectual from San Marcos University who, with his message, aimed to stand out the deceased’s virtues and obtain historic immortality.
We have chosen four tumuli built in Lima’s cathedral as an example, for our present study, of ephemeral architecture in 18th Century Lima. José Vázquez, one of Peru’s most famous engravers during viceroyal times, illustrated them. We are referring to the tumulus of the Queen Mother Isabel Farnesio, 1789; the Archbishop Pedro Antonio de Barroeta y Angel, 1776; Archbishop Diego Antonio Parada, 1781 and king Charles III, 1789.
The illustration of the Queen Mother Isabel Farnesio’s tumulus was included in José Antonio Borda y Orosco´ s book published in Lima in 1768, work of a still unknown architect although its design has many similarities with the one Antonio Bejarano Loayza made for the funeral rites of María Bárbara of Portugal in 1760. In this case, the program included eight allegorical sculptures of the theological and cardinal virtues, the Piedad, geographical allegories of different parts of the world, and at the top, the allegory of Lima with the city’s coat of arms.
We would like to take a while to study the figure of Death that appears in the interior of the third section of the cenotaph of Isabel Farnesio. Even though the skeleton of death had already been used in the Archbishop Juan de Castañeda Velázquez y Salazar’s tumulus in 1763, unlike that one, the one in the queen’s tumulus has a bow and an arrow instead of a scythe—an iconographic variation used for the first time in a tumulus in Lima—that refers to the Arquero de la muerte, (the Archer of Death) the non-ephemeral work of the 18th Century sculptor Baltazar Gavilán. This sculpture was supposed to have been shaped for the procession that left the temple of San Agustín on Easter.
In the 18th Century we discover an innovation; funeral rites are held not only for the royalty but also for popes and archbishops. Two good examples of this are the illustrations done by the engraver José Vázquez of the archbishops Pedro Antonio de Barroeta y Angel and Diego Antonio de Parada’s tumuli. Pedro Antonio de Barroeta’s funeral rites were written by Joseph Potau and published in Lima in 1776, in times of the viceroy Amat. The iconographic program included allegories of the theological and cardinal virtues as well as the allegory of the church at the top and the Arquero de la muerte in the interior of the second section. The funeral rites for Lima’s archbishop don Diego Antonio de Parada can be found in Alphonso Pinto y Quesada’s book published in Lima in 1781next to an illustration by Vázquez where, once again, we can see the same figure of Death as in Gavilán’s sculpture, but in this case it is winged.
In order to conclude this chapter, we will talk about the funeral rites held in Lima for Charles III and described in Juan Rico’s book published in 1789, during viceroy Teodoro Croix times. According to documentation, Francisco de Ontañón would be the assembler of the work and José Vázquez the engraver. The architectural structure built in Lima’s Cathedral for Charles III’s funeral rites followed the same pattern as the one created for Isabel Farnesio’s last honours and bears iconographic similarities with Gavilán’s Arquero de la muerte. The main variation consists in replacing the enormous columns and flaming urns in the Queen’s rites with pyramids of lights in the King’s.
It is important to notice that, with the help of the tumuli that we have selected, we can state that until late 18th Century, it is common to find centrally-planned cenotaphs with an inverted tower shaped architecture of Renaissance inspiration, but with decorative elements that already include the small stones and the iconographic program that belong to the Baroque.
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