The exhibition inaugurated this Thursday at the Museum of America in Madrid marks a milestone: for the first time in Spain, an exhibition dedicated to Cuzco viceregal painting is organized with funds almost entirely from national collections. The institution presents Cusco painting: Center and peripherywhich brings to light a set of works that, for decades, have lain dormant in museum warehouses, in churches or in private Spanish collections.
In the midst of the decolonial debate that is going through museums around the world, the exhibition proposes a reading that tries to get closer to that: presenting it as a continuous crossing between indigenous memory, Catholic tradition, Atlantic circulation and an artistic identity that was able to affirm itself over time despite earthquakes and colonial hierarchies. Francisco Montes, specialist in Latin American art and curator of the exhibition, points out that the concept of center and periphery structures the route, but he does so not from a hierarchical perspective, but rather as a horizontal map around Cuzco (Peru). “We have chosen a concept that has already been used in the history of art: center and periphery, but not to prioritize one place over another, but to offer a geography that evidently transitions from Cuzco as a nucleus that radiates a series of influences that affect its surroundings, both on a regional and transatlantic scale,” explains Montes.
“Cuzco is going to generate its tools and resources to continue standing out on the economic level, on the ideological level and on the artistic level,” he says about this art that reached its period of maximum expansion in the 17th and 18th centuries.
The Museum of America has collected about 60 works, of which 25 were loaned. Montes, also a professor at the Department of Art History at the University of Seville, emphasizes that until now the large exhibitions of Peruvian viceregal art depended on loans brought from Peru.
Added to the institution’s pieces are those from the Thoma Foundation, in the United States, considered one of the largest reserves of viceregal art in the world and which has donated seven works. Institutions such as the General Archive of the Indies, the National Library of Spain, the Prado Museum, the National Archaeological Museum, the National Museum of Anthropology, the Museum of Fine Arts of Seville and the El Greco Museum have also contributed, as well as Andalusian convents, parishes and cathedrals whose heritage, in many cases not very visible, acquires a new reading here.
The commissioner insists on indigenous memory as the key to understanding the uniqueness of Cuzco, the ancient capital of the Inca empire. That identity, he points out, is also expressed in art, in the symbolic value of textiles and in ornamental techniques such as the use of gold leaf, a technical and symbolic resource that identifies Cusco art.
More than a year and a half passed between the initial idea and the final assembly, says the curator. The process of selecting pieces was long and was divided between archival work, bibliographic consultations, and searches in convents and collections where some works had been forgotten. “We found unpublished pieces,” he says.
The exhibition also dialogues with material objects that accompany the paintings: textiles with Andean symbols, silver carved with iconography of birds—essential figures in the Andean worldview—and wooden pieces such as queros, a South Andean ceremonial vessel. All the pieces, he maintains, help to rethink notions such as “syncretic art” or “mestizo art”, terms that current historiography questions due to their rigidity or the hierarchical connotations they carry.
A reproduction of the altarpiece of the Virgin of Copacabana, whose replicas were turned into souvenirs during the colonial period, appears in the exhibition as a silver liturgical piece of furniture in the center of the exhibition. It concentrates saints and Eucharistic reliefs, like a small devotional theater. “At that time, reproductions of the altarpiece were taken or given to their relatives in Spain,” says Montes. The silver work, remembers the curator, is not a simple ornamental gesture: this metal came from the mines of Potosí, the nerve center of its trade.
Montes also places the evolution of the Cusco school within its historical context. The earthquake of 1650, which devastated the city, activated an intense architectural and artistic reconstruction; The later arrival of Bishop Manuel de Mollinedo y Angulo, with a valuable collection of European paintings, promoted local workshops; and the independence of the indigenous guild from the Spanish guild gave strength and autonomy to the painters. All of this coincided with an economic boom on the Camino Real route and generated such abundant production that, already in the 18th century, massive exports began to nearby places, such as what is now Chile or Argentina.
The exhibition also presents the relationships between European models and local reinterpretations. The works of Francisco de Zurbarán and his workshop dialogue with later Cuzco versions, where painters incorporate wooded landscapes, birds and meticulous fabrics that define their own language. The Peruvian painters Basilio de Santa Cruz Puma Callao and Diego Quispe Tito introduce iconographic and decorative elements that distinguish the Cuzco school from other regions of the viceroyalty. The taste for painted coppers, the adaptation of Flemish engravings and the persistence of iconography such as the Virgen de la Leche show how local artists reinterpreted global models from their own cultural environment.
“This exhibition wants to review and update Cuzco painting within the framework of new historiographical perspectives,” says Montes. The exhibition can be visited at the Museum of America until April of next year.