Ananda Cohen-Aponte is Associate Professor of History of Art at Cornell University. She works on the visual culture of colonial Latin America, with special interests in issues of cross-cultural exchange, historicity, identity, and anti-colonial movements. Her recent book, Heaven, Hell, and Everything in Between: Murals of the Colonial Andes (University of Texas Press, 2016) explores the intersections between art, politics, religion, and society in mural paintings located in colonial churches across the southern Andes.
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.
The main city center of Tiwanaku (centered in the Lake Titicaca region of present-day southern Peru and western Bolivia) boasted a population of 25,000–40,000.
Guaman Poma's “The Bad Confession” image participates in a larger argument about the ability for native Andeans to rule themselves without Spanish intervention.
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.
“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.”
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.
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.