Smarthistory – Viceroyalty of Peru

The viceroyalty encompassed modern-day Peru as well as much of the rest of South America, the Portuguese controlled what is today Brazil.

1534–1820 C.E.

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Commissioned by the Bishop, the painted Virgin conveys the power of evangelization in the Viceroyalty of Peru.

Combining Indigenous and European conventions, the Virgin of Pomata was one of the most popular images in the colonial Andes.

Only 28 years old, the sitter in this lavish portrait governed Chile under colonial Spain.

The destructive earthquake of 1650 is remembered in this colonial-era painting of Cuzco.

This painting is a fascinating window into the power relations between the Inka, the Jesuits, and the Spanish colonial authorities.

Nueva Corónica provides us with a revealing glimpse at interactions between Africans and Indigenous Andeans in the Viceroyalty of Peru.

Despite violent European invasion and colonization, Indigenous people living in the Andes continued, adapted, resisted, and shaped Peru.

An Indigenous nobleman in colonial Peru, Don Marcos is strategically portrayed with emblems of both Inka and Spanish elite status.

Never underestimate the power of a well-chosen accessory!

These portraits of a couple show us what the sitters want us to see about them, and conceal the less glamorous details of their lives.

This luxuriously dressed Virgin Mary as a child spinning cloth may have spoken to the rich textile traditions of Indigenous cultures in Peru

The Trinity visualized as triplets was a common subject in 18th-century Peru—and beyond

Viceroyalty of Peru