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ART AND IDENTITY OF PERUVIAN BAROQUE
Three striking exhibitions - the first in Barcelona initially and now in Madrid; the second in the Metropolitan Museum of New York and the third in Monaco and Paris – and the two rigorous volumes of Peruvian Baroque* provide new insight into this exhilarating period of American art. These pages contain emblematic pictures and extracts of expert Ramon Mujica Pinilla?s medullar study.

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THE SEMANTIC PROBLEM
For more than seven decades, Spanish-American art historians have used various terms to describe the nature and meaning of Baroque Art during the Peruvian Viceroyship. Between the twenties and forties, when research on Viceroy art and architecture began, an attempt was made to define its originality based on the influence or survival of indigenous elements in the works of art. The indigenist movement helped to re-think Indian and crossbreed aspects as theoretical and ideological instruments that faced up to the Euro-centralism that prevailed in academic historiography.

Besides, these terms were used by the expert to explain the differences between European and American art. Nevertheless, the difficulty in describing the real scope of Indian and crossbreed aspects – not to mention the discussions about these words – reveal the complexity of the semantic and hermeneutic problem (…).

The semantic problem concealed two methods of analysis and incompatible ideas regarding the meaning and nature of American art. Whereas Leopoldo Castedo in 1972 spoke about the «crossbreed reinterpretation of Christian symbols», Ilmar Lux felt cheated by the lack of an objective and scientific analysis of «indigenist supporters who, in their attempts to find or enhance non-existent (native) values, have more than once distorted the historical-artistic contexts». Whilst some rejoice at identifying artistic traces of «indigenous sensitivity», others viewed them as clumsy and inexperienced artists who, without a formal and conceptual understanding of the European models they imitated, merely produced copies of no original or aesthetic value. By 1959, Soria was pointing out the undeniable influence of Flandes, Italy and Spain in the «colonial» art from overseas.

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It is worth remembering, above all, that from the point of view of Indian Law, a «colony» was not the same as a «kingdom» or Viceroyship, which was a superior entity that participated in politics and administratively in the Courts convened by the Spanish monarch. In 1542, when the Nueva Castilla Viceroyship was created, it was actually referred to as the provinces or kingdom of Peru. However, given the geographical scope of the region, its capital – the City of Kings – had a unique and privileged dimension in political and protocol terms, which was difficult to compare with the socio-political circumstances in Europe. At the height of their splendour, the kingdoms of Peru covered the territory that now comprises ten South American republics: Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Uruguay and Paraguay.

From a political and legal point of view, Peruvian baroque art covered all its regional expressions (…). All the administrative sub-divisions within the old Viceroyship were innovating Bourbon reforms carried out for efficiency, profitability and absolute French-European centralism purposes. Nevertheless, it was not because of the historic union of the Peruvian Kingdoms that Inca Tupac Amaru II took up the imperial symbol as his replevying standard. When he rose against the Spanish regime, he exclaimed: Don Jose first of all, by the Grace of God, Inca King of Peru, Santa Fe, Quito, Chile, Buenos Aires and continents of the South Seas, Duke of the Superlative, Lord of the Ceasars and Amazons with dominion in Grand Paiti, Commissary and Distributor of Divine Piety.

Forming part of the Spanish monarchy system, the Viceroy society had a peripheral rather than a provincial mentality. In other words, despite having access to artistic European innovations that reached the New World through the trade of hundreds of illustrations and engravings disseminating the artistic ideas and aesthetic and formal precepts of Flemish, German, Italian or Spanish compositions, rural and urban artists in Peru preferred to interpret them without following any fixed artistic rules, standards or styles. Since it was within the world’s geographical and cultural boundaries, in theory the archaic hierarchic structure of the Viceroy world was not designed for change, but to last beyond time, like a utopian project. In practice, however, the increasing conflicts and contradictions between the various ethnic groups gave rise to the emergence of new trains of thought and discursive representations, in many cases using religious topics and metropolitan artistic creations, thus displacing the centralist peninsular agenda within a process of appropriation and cultural reinterpretation.

What was initially considered a semantic problem, therefore, was actually a Euro-centralist artistic appraisal system which, far from studying the tense dialectic between centralism and marginality, was only able to see degraded forms of the dominating culture in the defiant and dissonant manifestations of the dissimilar American art. Consequently, a whole group of historical issues concerning other topics that are just as difficult to define were disregarded: the matter of artistic «style» and its interpretative «readings».

THE PROBLEM OF STYLE
Not much is known about Peruvian art in the years immediately following the foundation of Lima in 1535 and the subsequent civil wars. During the last third of the XVI century, however, Gothic, Mudejar and lower renaissance ideas and artistic forms arrived from Europe. Between 1575 and 1620/1650, Italian mannerism was introduced and fully developed, or countermannerism as some prefer to call it, since it was a Roman style of the late XVI century associated with the religious spirit of Trento and the engraved compositions of Flandes.

Three artists inaugurated this artistic tendency: the Jesuit artist Bernardo Bitti (1548-1610), who on behalf of the Company of Jesus and «since his arrival in 1575» according to Teresa Gisbert, «applied Trentine standards to his paintings in many large cities of the Peruvian viceroyship» (Lima, Arequipa, Ayacucho, Cusco, Juli, Potosi, Sucre and La Paz); Mateo Perez de Alesio (circa 1547-1607), «one of the artists who painted the Sistine Chapel in Rome, arrived in Lima in 1587 with a thick volume of engravings, including the complete works of Durero»; and Angelino Medoro (1567- 1633) (...). The influence of the Madrid, Valencia and Seville schools of art and sculpture on the workshops in Lima marked a transition towards the baroque, which is still fairly undocumented.

By the end of the XVII century, the language of the great native artists had been consolidated: Diego Quispe Tito (?1611 - 1681?), Basilio Santa Cruz Pumacallo (active between 1661 and 1700), Juan Espinosa de los Monteros, Juan Zapata Inca and, subsequently in the XVIII century, Marcos Zapata (active between 1748 and 1773) and his circle, among many others. By that time, Cuzco style art workshops had virtually become factories, producing canvases to export hundreds of paintings to Tucuman, Santiago de Chile, La Paz, Lima, etc. Unlike baroque artists, who were addicted to light/dark paintings, Cuzco artists copied and renewed the pictorial language of Flandes’ illustrations, reproducing many of the allegoric counter-reformist compositions of Pedro Pablo Rubens (1577 – 1640), or others from the medieval calendar or Apocryphal gospels. They changed the size of the figures within the structure of their compositions, freely interpreted the colours and drapery of the characters, or added angels, flowers, local birds or even phylactery with coded doctrine texts. What appear to be mere historical anachronisms in their paintings are in fact systems of commitment or adaptability beyond the scope of the purely aesthetic.

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There is no doubt whatsoever that during the Viceroyship, Peruvian Indians left a deep impression on the arts. From an academic point of view, their artistic style was not consistent with the aesthetic European style. Native artist don Alonso Viracocha Inga was ridiculed when in 1582 he began to sculpt his miraculous image of the «Virgen de la Candelaria» in Potosi, which marked the beginning of the regional cults to the Virgin of Copacabana and, subsequently, of Cocharcas (...). It was precisely because of the ethnic contents of the new clothing that, after the insurrection and imprisonment of Tupac Amaru in 1780, the Bourbon administration prohibited the descendants of Inca sovereigns from wearing their traditional tunics or from being portrayed with their heraldic shields.

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*Peruvian Baroque. Bibliographic compilation: Glenda Escajadillo. Texts: Ramon Mujica Pinilla, Pierre Duviols, Teresa Gisbert, Roberto Samanaez Argumedo, Maria Concepcion Garcia Saiz, Thomas Cummins, Fernando R. De la Flor, Sabine Mac Cormack, Scarlett O’Phelan Godoy and Luis Enrique Tord. Banco de Credito del Peru. Lima, 2002, Volume I, 333 pages; Volume II, Lima, 2003, 355 pages. www.viabcp.com
See also the important catalogues of our exhibitions Peru Indigena y Virreinal (Native and Viceregal Peru), on display until 9th January in the National Library of Madrid and subsequently in the National Geographic Society in Washington; The Colonial Andes, Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530-1830, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York until 12th December; and Esplendores de la Pintura Peruana durante los siglos XVII y XVIII (The splendour of Peruvian Paintings during the XVII and XVIII centurias), Museo de Osma collection, in the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco until December 5th and from December 10th until February 12th in the Mona Bismarck Foundation in Paris.

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Pictures Information:
1. Matrimonio de Don Martin de Loyola con Dona Beatriz Nusta (Marriage of Don Martin de Loyola and Dona Beatriz Nusta). Anonymous. Cuzco School. End of the XVII century. Oil on canvas. La Compania Church, Cuzco.
2. Nuestra Senora del Rosario Pomata (Our Lady of Rosario Pomata). Anonymous. Oil on canvas. Church of Santa Clara, Ayacucho.
3. Jesus Inca o el Inca Mesianico (Inca Jesus or the Mesianic Inca). Anonymous Cuzco artist. XVIII century. Private collection, Lima.
4. Arcangel arcabucero Esriel (Harquebusier Archangel Esriel. Anonymous. Cuzco School. Oil on canvas. XVIII century. Private collection.
5. Captura de Atahualpa (Capture of Atahualpa). Oil on canvas. Santo Domingo Convent, Cuzco.