‘Y yo, con buen celo y ánimo, tomé los pinceles del oleo … ’: dynamics of cultural entanglement and transculturation in Diego de Ocaña’s Virgin of Guadalupe (Bolivia, 17th–18th centuries)

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Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Notes

1. The colonial names of the town were Chuquisaca and La Plata.

2. Alcalá cites more cases of medieval sculptures of seated Virgins that were altered and dressed to appear to be standing (2009, 59).

3. Mills argues that Ocaña’s experience with the Augustinian Guadalupe and his stay in Saña was crucial to develop a general strategy for his project, ‘his dream narrative of replenished control’ (2013, 128).

4. The brotherhood of the Virgin of Guadalupe of Potosí is documented in the archival sources since 1602, in La Plata only since 1629; according to Pablo Quisbert, the latter date is due to the destruction of documents (2008, 323, 328, 329).

5. Archivo y Biblioteca Arquidiocesanos ‘Monseñor de los Santos Taborga’, Sucre (hereafter referred to as ABAS), Actas Capitulares, 1, 1582–1602, f. 236r.

6. See also, ABAS, Actas Capitulares, 1, 1582–1602, fs. 98r ff.

7. Nonetheless, La Plata was not elevated to an archdiocese until 1609.

8. The present version of the image in Sucre is very different from the image that Ocaña painted. The cathedral inventory of 1784 informs us that the original canvas had been replaced by a plate of gilded silver to which the objects had to be fixed. The only remaining preserved and visible original parts of the old canvas formed the visual core of the sacralization: the face and the hands of the Virgin and the face of the Christ Child (ABAS, Archivo Capitular, Actas Capitulares, Inventario Sta. Yglesia Metropolitana 2, 1784–1885, f. 1).

9. A similar description of the image can be found in Herrera y Toledo 1996, 76.

10. ABAS, Archivo Capitular, Actas Capitulares, Inventario Sta. Yglesia Metropolitana 2, 1784–1885, f. 1.

11. In 1403, the Spanish ambassador in Constantinople reported that the city’s most famous icon, the Hodegetria, was covered by a plate of silver with numerous inset emeralds, sapphires, turquoises, pearls, and other gems (Cormack 2007, 36).

12. ‘Style, as a tool used by traditional art historical practice to situate an object in history, becomes displaced and cannot be used to date these works and place them within a scheme of evolving artistic development’ (Alcalá 2009, 58).

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Notes on contributors

Astrid Windus

Astrid Windus is assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of Cologne, Germany. Previously, she conducted the Junior Research Group ‘Text, Image, Performance: Change and Ambivalence of Cultural Orders in Colonial Contact Zones (Provincia de Charcas and Philippines, 17th–18th Centuries)’ at the University of Hamburg, Germany. Her research interests are the cultural history of the colonial Andes, in particular religious communication and questions of intermediality and transculturation. Her second field is the history of Afro-Latin-American and especially Afro-Argentine cultures. She has held fellowships and grants from the the German Research Foundation (DFG), the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and the Foundation of German Business (SDW). With Eberhard Crailsheim, she is the co-editor of Image–Object–Performance: Mediality and Communication in Cultural Contact Zones of Colonial Latin America and the Philippines (2013).