Get to know the richest burial site in the Western hemisphere. One fateful night initiated an extensive archaeological excavation of the site over a period of nearly two decades, yielding over thirteen royal tombs.
Dr. Ananda Cohen-Aponte
Mummies were also buried with offerings of food and jewelry to accompany the deceased into the afterlife. The types of textiles and offerings associated with a mummy bundle shed light on the individual’s social status; the larger and more elaborate the bundle, the higher social standing the person held during his or her life.
Paracas Textiles: An Introduction
Textiles remained important items after the Spanish conquest in the Viceroyalty of Peru. Churches were even painted with textile murals to endow these spaces with sacredness.
Textiles in the Colonial Andes
The Viceroyalty of Peru was established in 1542 and encompassed modern-day Venezuela, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina, making it the largest viceroyalty in the Spanish Americas.
Introduction to the Viceroyalty of Peru
From elaborately adorned mummies and early writing systems to carved gourds and scenes of decapitation, the art of early Andean cultures is varied and complex.
The Earliest Andean Cultures
The Tiwanaku civilization was centered in the Lake Titicaca region of present-day southern Peru and western Bolivia, although its cultural influence spread into Bolivia and parts of Chile and Argentina. Tiwanaku’s main city center boasted a population of 25,000–40,000.
Tiwanaku, an introduction
“For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it / But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”
Luis de Riaño and indigenous collaborators, The ...
Portraits can be so much more than a person's likeness — they can be personal, commemorative and deeply political.
Portrait Painting in the Viceroyalty of Peru
Sinners depicted along the lower register receive an array of bodily tortures; the souls in heaven, by contrast, surround the ascended Christ in an orderly formation.
Diego Quispe Tito, Last Judgment, 1675
Guaman Poma's “The Bad Confession” image participates in a larger visual and textual argument about the ability for native Andeans to rule themselves without Spanish intervention after the conquest.
“Bad Confession” in Guaman Poma’s The First ...
Cuzco School paintings came into such high demand that they were exported to patrons residing in far-flung cities located in present-day Chile and Argentina, and even Italy.
Our Lady of Cocharcas and the ...
Exploring the beginnings of Spanish missionary activities and spaces in Peru.
Introduction to religious art and architecture in ...
The inhabitants of the Andes developed a stunning visual tradition that lasted over 10,000 years before the Spanish invasion of South America in 1532.
