Abstract
Landscape painting in Peru typically does not receive much attention from critical dis-course, even though the adoption of the Flemish landscape by Andean viceregal painters became a distinctive feature of Peruvian painting of the second half of the 17th century. Considered a consequence of a change in the artistic taste of viceregal society, the landscape was perceived as a secondary element of the composition. In this article, we will analyze the inclusion of the Flemish landscape in Andean religious painting from another critical perspective that takes into account different spiritual processes that colonial religiosity goes through. We analyze how the influence of the Franciscan and Jesuit mysticism created a fertile ground where landscape painting could develop in Peru. The Andean viceregal painters found in the landscape an effective way to visualize suprasensible spiritual experiences and an important device for the development in Peru of a painting with visionary characteristics.
Highlights
In the second half of the seventeenth century, viceregal painting in Peru began a period of aesthetic transformations conducted by the painters of Cuzco—mostly mestizo and indigenous—and spread to other parts in the South Andes
We argue that landscape painting in the Andes was a pictorial component that, based on the spiritual meaning that mystical thought placed on nature and creatures, allowed viceregal painters to use it as a valid form of representation or visualization of invisible phenomena
The representation of nature in Andean paintings was symptomatic of the development of a colonial spirituality that was grounded in a context of baroque culturalism and mysticism
Summary
In the second half of the seventeenth century, viceregal painting in Peru began a period of aesthetic transformations conducted by the painters of Cuzco—mostly mestizo and indigenous—and spread to other parts in the South Andes. As we have just stated, even if it was often possible to identify the representation of Andean species of fauna and flora in 18th-century viceregal canvases, the landscape continued to be almost exclusively of Flemish inspiration For this reason, the purpose of some specialists who advanced the idea that, at some point in the history of viceregal painting in Peru, there was a kind of emancipation of the European landscape could be overstated. Once the translatio was produced, this meant that the Flemish landscape broke into viceregal painting and left room for the appearance of inventio; this pictorial element became validly genuine This invention of which we speak is not necessarily characterized by a transformation of the European components of the landscape, no matter how little that was, but rather by a conceptual appropriation and reuse of the landscape in different compositional contexts for which they had not originally been created. We argue that landscape painting in the Andes was a pictorial component that, based on the spiritual meaning that mystical thought placed on nature and creatures, allowed viceregal painters to use it as a valid form of representation or visualization of invisible phenomena
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