The Possessor's Agency: Private Art Collecting in the Colonial Andes

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Elisa Mandell for her ideas and careful advice on how to improve this article. I also thank two anonymous reviewers and Frederick Luciani for their helpful suggestions. Funding for much of the research was provided by a Fulbright–Hays Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship in Peru. A preliminary version of this article was presented in 2005 at the University of California, Los Angeles Art History Graduate Student Symposium titled ‘On Collecting: Formation, Transmission, and Reception.’ I thank the organizers of that symposium as well as Cecelia Klein and Malcolm Baker for their comments on the paper I delivered.

Notes

1. ARP, Intendencias Civiles, Legajo 02 Exp. 082 unnumbered and Legajo 01 Exp. 053, fols 14v–46v.

2. In Cachicatari's estate list these are usually termed ‘estancias,’ but one, Hancohaque, is called a ‘hacienda.’

3. Tapana is described in the estate list as ‘un vecino en una esquina de la plaza’ (fol. 45r). It is unclear whether Tapana was a vecino of Juli in the sense of being a Hispanic property owner, or whether he was simply Cachicatari's neighbor and her house was also therefore on or near the plaza. To my knowledge, Tapana is not a Hispanic surname.

4. ARP, Intendencias Civiles, Legajo 02 Exp. 082 unnumbered and Legajo 01 Exp. 053, fols 14v–46v.

5. Cachicatari unfortunately does not detail how she acquired her works of art, but she may have come by many of them as a result of the expulsion of the Jesuit order from Peru in 1767. Jesuits had founded Juli as a Christian town, and when expelled they were forced to leave all of their possessions behind. Many artworks were subsequently auctioned, and, given that her estate list is from 1797, Cachicatari or her parents may have purchased them that way. In Cusco an inventory is preserved listing the goods taken from the Jesuit church of La Compañía (Inventario de La Compañía de Cusco de 1768 1950). I know of no such accounting for Juli, however.

6. See for example the work of Felipe Cossío del Pomar (1964), Teresa Gisbert (1980), José de Mesa and Teresa Gisbert (1982), Teofilo Benavente Velarde (1995) Ramón Mujica Pinilla (1996; 2001), Dean (1999), and Celso Pastor de la Torre and Luis Enrique Tord (1999). Numerous recent exhibition catalogues could also be noted, especially Fane 1996; Phipps et al. 2004; Rishel and Stratton-Pruitt 2006.

7. A similar resource exists in church inventories, found primarily in archbishoprics’ archives. However, as I am concerned with private collecting for the domestic setting, I will not consider church collections here.

8. Appadurai defines the ‘commodity situation’ as that point at which an object's exchangeability is its socially relevant feature (1986, 13).

9. As part of my dissertation research, I read a sample of the notarial documents in the Regional Archive of Cusco and performed a full survey of the notarial documents in the Regional Archive of Puno. In Cusco I surveyed two bundles (legajos) of documents from each decade of the seventeenth century up to the 1670s. From that point on I read about five bundles per decade up to the end of the eighteenth century. Within each bundle I focused on wills, dowry lists, and estate lists, since that is where works of art are documented. I also read artist commissions and merchants’ import lists. I did not conduct a full review of documents in Lima, so for the present my analysis will focus on the Peruvian highlands and I will refrain from making comparisons with the collecting situation in Lima.

10. In the Journal of the History of Collections’ two decades of publication, there have only been a few exceptions, and these have come recently (see for example Sachko Macleod 2001; Andermann 2001; and Codell 2003). Scholars have more readily considered the collection of non-Western objects by Westerners, evidenced especially by occasional articles on the collection of Mexican codices by Europeans (see Mason 1997). Part of my project here is to decenter the discourse on collecting and address collectors who hail, at least in part, from alternative traditions, in this case that of the Andes.

11. Doña Isabel Ormachea, a native of Cusco, displayed several paintings and prints in her bedroom, among them images of the Virgin of Solitude, the Immaculate Conception, and St Joseph. Several other works hung in her living room, including paintings of the Descent from the Cross, Christ of the Earthquakes, St Michael, and the Assumption. ARC, Documentos notariales, Alejo Fernández Escudero, Prot. 106, 1726, fol. 224v. For the display of works of art at a rural hacienda, see for example ARC, Varios registros sueltos, XVII–XVIII, Protocolo 307, unn.

12. This is unlike the case of New Spain and, for that matter, Lima. Many works were imported from Spain to Mexico City and Lima and kept in both ecclesiastical and private collections. Works by Sevillian artists, most famously by Francisco de Zurbarán and his circle, were the most numerous. Some of these may have made their way to the highlands, but inventories from the Andes, and the lack of such works today, suggest this tendency was minimal.

13. Cf. ARC, Documentos notariales, Prot. 54, 1604, fols 768r, 770v, 860r.

14. We must not assume that all artworks in Spain were attributed to specific artists, however. Cherry notes that most of the attributed paintings in Spanish inventories are said to be by Italian artists, and these consist of only about 25 percent of the total works listed (1997, 6).

15. ARC, Documentos notariales, Ambrocio Arias de Lira, Prot. 31, 1753–54, unn., 2nd ream.

16. ARC, Documentos notariales, Ambrocio Arias de Lira, Prot. 31, 1753–54, unn., 2nd ream.

17. Panel paintings were rare in the Andes, but used printing plates were often painted and framed.

18. As much as artworks depicting certain locally important Christian personages such as St Rose were widely collected, certain images of saints that were popular in Spain were rare in Peru. Images of Mary Magdalene, popular in Madrid (Cherry 1997, 78), were not as common in the Andes, perhaps because of their sensuality. Nudity, saintly or not, was anathema in colonial Andean art. In the Andes images of St Rose appear to have somewhat replaced those of the Spanish mystic St Theresa, popular in Spain and Italy.

19. Still lifes surely existed, especially ‘flower pieces,’ but it appears they were usually small and of little monetary value. Many of the paintings listed only summarily in inventories, with phrasing like ‘diez lienzos chicos,’ may have been still lifes or landscapes.

20. We might see the paintings of past Inka rulers as the Andean counterpart to Spanish depictions of Roman emperors, a theme popular in Madrid (Cherry 1997, 82), but never present in the Andes.

21. A similar collection is cited by Carolyn Dean and Dana Leibsohn (2003, 5, 24) and serves to illustrate and explore the problem of cultural hybridity. Chimbo Ocllo's Virgin of Guadalupe was probably a statue painting of the Spanish original; depictions of the Mexican Virgin of Guadalupe were not popular in the colonial Andes. ARC, Documentos notariales, Alonso de Bustamante, Prot. 13, 1681–82, fol. 339v.

22. The Andean textile tradition was one costumbre that the Spaniards saw fit to permit and even encourage (Cummins 1998, 113), surely because they saw the utility and exchange value inherent in fine weavings and the European esteem for tapestries were well established. And although Andean practice dictated that sacred entities be clothed in cumbi, the Spaniards perceived a distinction between idolatrous objects themselves and the textiles covering them. A common theme in Cusco School painting, the Virgin Child Spinning, also attests to the perceived importance of textile manufacturing and the perception that it was women's work.

23. Since the sixteenth century, the double-headed eagle had also become a common figure in native heraldry (Cummins 1998). The fact that the eagles are oriented in opposite directions suggests that the tapestry was meant to be placed on a floor or table, not hung on a wall, so that it could be read from both ends. However, the Inka headdress that appears between the eagles can only be read from one direction. Of course, ancient Andean sculptures such as the Raimondi Stela from Chavín de Huantar feature figures that can be read from different angles although the stela was placed in a fixed vertical position, thus adding to the work's complexity and visual appeal.

24. For an analysis of these headdresses see Dean (1999). Here the red portion of the fringe is minimized, since the background of the composition is also red. The top of the triangular element is partitioned into white and blue sections and there is a red strip, framed in gold, at the base of the triangle. A spray of white flowers extends from either side of the top of the triangle.

25. Cf. AAC, XXXVIII, 2, 26, 1673 fol., 102r; ARC, Documentos notariales, Cristóbal de Bustamante, Prot. 18, 1688, fol. 89v; ARC, Documentos notariales, Alejo Fernández Escudero, Prot. 93, 1712, fols 603r–4r.

26. ARC, Documentos notariales, Joseph Fernandez Cattaño, Prot. 107, 1728–31, fols 667–69r, 718v.

27. Originally the name ‘City of Kings’ was meant to refer to the Three Kings, who had wandered in the desert before finding the promised Jerusalem. The Spanish conquistadors likened Lima to the Three Kings’ long-awaited destination of Jerusalem, and the closest feast day to that of the founding of Lima was Epiphany (Cobo 1956, 291). However, Lima was established as the colonial administration's counterweight to Cusco, whose Inca legacy remained visible (Cummins 1996, 158), and in following years the phrase ‘City of Kings’ must have also indexed the kings of Spain.

28. ARC, Documentos notariales, Alonso de Bustamante, Prot. 13, 1681–82, fols 132r–v.

29. The disconnect between producers, the objects of their production, and consumers that Marxist critics of capitalism have focused on would be very difficult to argue for here.

30. For other cases of native Andean art collectors, see that of Francisca Chimbo Ocllo, mentioned above, as well as AAC LXXII, 3, 56, f. 6. 1754, fol. 3r (the will of cacique Thomas Thupa Orcoguaranca Suta Pongopiña); ARC, Documentos notariales, Joseph Fernandez Cattaño, Prot. 107, 1728–31, fol. 1136r (the will of Doña María Quispe Sissa, wife of cacique Francisco Unyas Condemaita); and AAC VII, 5, 109, 1773, fols 2r–5r (the will of Clara Vipi).

31. It was not unheard of for women to hold the post. In 1763 one Doña María Torres was the cacica for the town of Pomata, adjacent to Cachicatari's hometown of Juli. ARP, Corregimiento, Sección Cabildo, 1668–1783, Legajo 04, unn. On eighteenth-century cacicas, see Garrett (2008).

32. ARC, Documentos notariales, Alonso de Bustamante, Prot. 12, 1679–80, fols 148r–v.

33. ARC, Documentos notariales, Andrés de Zamora, Prot. 295, 1790–94, fols 137r–40r.

34. On print production in Lima, see Estabridis Cárdenas (2002).

35. ARC, Documentos notariales, Alonso de Bustamante, Prot. 12, 1679–80, fols 148r–v.

36. Illegitimacy was common in colonial Peru and was not widely censured (see Salles-Reese 1996, 59). It did, however, complicate children's rights to inheritance. ARC, Documentos notariales, Andrés de Zamora, Prot. 295, 1790–94, fols 137r–40r.

37. ARC, Documentos notariales, Andrés de Zamora, Prot. 295, 1790–94, fol. 149r.

38. ARC, Documentos notariales, Cristóbal de Bustamante, Prot. 20, 1690, fols. 517v–29r.

39. Apart from the Virgin of Pomata, other paintings identified in the auction list are an Immaculate Conception, a Holy Family, two St Roses of different sizes, and images of San Cayetano, the Trinity, St Gertrude, St Nicholas of Tolentino, and the Virgin of Solitude. Juan Auca paid 30 pesos for his five paintings, while Martín Diez only paid five pesos, two reales.

40. Priests often had children with maidservants of their homes, but tended not to recognize them publicly (see Meiklejohn 1988, 174). For an example of a priest-collector who bequeaths paintings to a female servant, see ARC, Documentos notariales, Matias Vasquez, Prot. 276, 1773–83, fol. 498v.

41. By stating this, I do not wish to discount the extreme poverty that many Andeans were forced into under the colonial regime, in particular due to the mita system that required labor in the mines. Many Andeans, in order to escape the mita and other tribute obligations, left their hometowns and became permanent forasteros, or ‘outsiders.’ It is difficult to imagine that such individuals could have maintained art collections.

42. The cups are termed mates and cocos in the testaments that Ramírez analyzes, but could be considered to be similar in function to queros, which were produced in matching pairs and meant to be used in feasting (Ramírez 1998; Cummins 2002).

43. In Peru a peso was worth eight reales.

44. European textiles such as lace and brocades were also collected, but in private collections they appear as small clothing items so are not highly valued. However, a look at church inventories, which always give priority to priests’ and statues’ vestments, shows that larger pieces of these textiles were very valuable.

45. Granted, the lliclla was probably brand new and the mules might have been old. ARC, Documentos notariales, Alonso de Bustamante, Prot. 13, 1681–82, fols 87–88r.

46. Cf. ARC, Documentos notariales, Alonso de Bustamante, Prot. 14, 1683, fol. 244r, for a large painting of the Trinity that cost 70 pesos. Presumably it was bought new.

47. Cf. ARC, Documentos notariales, Lucero Alonso Beltrán, Prot. 6, 1636–37, fol. 210r.

48. ARC, Documentos notariales, Alonso de Bustamante, Prot. 13, 1681–82, fol. 132v.

49. Nor have I noticed any efforts to maintain series of artworks intact. Since the canvases of well-known series such as the Corpus Christi paintings from Cusco (Dean 1999) are scattered in different locations, and since many private collections contain individual paintings depicting a single scene from the life of a saint, it seems that the maintenance of intact series was not a priority.

50. Cf. ARC, Documentos notariales, Juan Bautista Gamarra, Prot. 140, 1763–64, fol. 114v.