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Weaving and Tailoring the Andean Church: Textile Ornaments and Their Makers in Colonial Peru

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2015

Maya Stanfield-Mazzi
Maya Stanfield-Mazzi*
Affiliation:
University of FloridaGainesville, Floridamstanfield@arts.ufl.edu
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Extract

The first Christian churches were built in the Andes soon after Spaniards arrived. Initially simple structures, they were later remodeled into large stone monuments. Aside from their architectural construction, the furnishing and decoration of these churches was an ongoing project that involved many participants, often under the watchful eye of a parish priest. Art historians have uncovered fascinating cases in which native artists exercised agency in creating works to be displayed in church interiors, many of which expressed Andean as well as Christian beliefs. This scholarship has focused primarily on the art forms of painting and sculpture, which were very visible within the church, especially in cases such as the baptism murals discussed by Ananda Cohen Suarez in this issue. An underappreciated yet equally notable aspect of church decoration was textiles. Throughout the colonial period churches were abundantly adorned with “church clothing,” textile ornaments meant to cover floors, walls, and altars as well as clothe church functionaries and religious statuary. The purchase and maintenance of church textiles consumed the lion's share of annual church budgets.

Type
Articles
Information
The Americas , Volume 72 , Special Issue 1: Indigenous Liminalities: Andean Actors and Translators of Colonial Culture , January 2015 , pp. 77 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2015 

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References

1. See Gisbert, Teresa, Iconografía y mitos indígenas en el arte (La Paz: Gisbert y Cía, 1980)Google Scholar; Dean, Carolyn, Inka Bodies and the Body of Christ: Corpus Christi in Colonial Cuzco, Peru (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; and Bailey, Gauvin A., The Andean Hybrid Baroque: Convergent Cultures in the Churches of Colonial Peru (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

2. Indigenous males gained the right to full ordination only in the latter half of the eighteenth century, but the roles of sacristan and mayordomo allowed for a measure of involvement in church administration. Garrett, David T., Shadows of Empire: The Indian Nobility of Cusco, 1750–1825 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 143–144 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dueñas, Alcira, Indians and Mestizos in the “Lettered City”: Reshaping Justice, Social Hierarchy, and Political Culture in Colonial Peru (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2010), p. 166 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For information on native church assistants as intermediaries, see Charles, John, Allies at Odds: The Andean Church and Its Indigenous Agents, 1583–1671 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

3. Tur, Neus Escandell, Producción y comercio de tejidos coloniales. Los obrajes y chorrillos del Cusco, 1570–1820 (Cusco: Centro de Estudios Regionales Andinos “Bartolomé de Las Casas,” 1997)Google Scholar.

4. Rowe, Ann Pollard, “Inca Weaving and Costume,” Textile Museum Journal 34–35 (1995–1996), pp. 5–53 Google Scholar.

5. Phipps, Elena, “Cochineal Red: The Art History of a Color,” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (Winter 2010), pp. 4–48 Google Scholar. While Neus Escandell Tur found that in the semi-industrial obrajes of Cusco cochineal was virtually never used as a dye, it must have been used in domestic production to produce works such as the Boston tapestry, discussed further on. Escandell Tur, Producción y comercio de tejidos coloniales, p. 194.

6. Escandell Tur, Producción y comercio de tejidos coloniales, p. 340.

7. Noonan, James Charles, The Church Visible: The Ceremonial Life and Protocol of the Roman Catholic Church (New York: Viking, 1996)Google Scholar.

8. In 1610 the priest of Calca, in the Cusco region, spent 280 pesos on a crimson velvet altar frontal with embroidered strips; he also purchased matching embroidered strips (known as orphreys) for a chasuble, the garment worn by a priest at mass. Archivo Arzobispal del Cusco, Calca, 1609–1658, Bk. 1, Registro de fábrica de 1610, fol. 27r.

9. del Arte, Sociedad Española de Amigos and Torres, José Ferrandis, Exposición de alfombras antiguas españolas. Catálogo general ilustrado (Madrid: Talleres Tipográficos Espasa-Calpe, S.A., 1934)Google Scholar; Museum, Textile and Kühnel, Ernst, Catalogue of Spanish Rugs, 12th Century to 19th Century (Washington, D.C.: National Pub. Co., 1953)Google Scholar.

10. In 1646 the church of San Antonio of Chinchaypujio, west of Cusco, had a rug (alfombra) said to be from Castile. But in 1647 the church of La Purísima Concepción in Soraya (Apurímac) had a colored chuze “de la tierra,” and in 1669 purchased a new locally made rug (chuze) with a checkerboard pattern, to be placed in front of the altar. And by 1771 the church of Todos Santos in Huanoquite (Cusco) had a total of five rugs made in Peru. One was from the altiplano region of Collao, rich in camelid resources. AAC: Fábrica e Inventario San Antón de Chinchaypuqio, Bk. 1, 1631–1684, Inventario de 1646, fol. 65v; Aymaraes (Soraya), Bk. 1, 1641–1754, Inventario de 1647, fol. 169r; Fábrica e Inventario Huanoquite 1752–1768, Inventario de 1771, fol. 76v. See Bertonio, P. Ludovico, Vocabulario de la lengua aymara (Cochabamba, Bolivia: Centro de Estudios de la Realidad Económica y Social, 1984 [1612]), Bk. 2, p. 94 Google Scholar.

11. Andean weavers did produce pile weaves, but under the Wari state, previous to Inca rule. Frame, Mary, Andean Four-Cornered Hats: Ancient Volumes (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1990)Google Scholar. They also began to make pile rugs by the eighteenth century, if not earlier. Fane, Diana, ed., Converging Cultures: Art & Identity in Spanish America (New York: The Brooklyn Museum, 1996), pp. 196–198 Google Scholar.

12. The entry reads, “176 ps.: lama blanca para una capa, casulla, y un campo de un frontal blanco.” AAC, Calca, 1609–1658, Bk. 1, Registro de fábrica de 1634, fol. 51v.

13. “4 patacones [pesos] de la hechura del frontal verde que pagaron a un sastre.” Ibid., fol. 53r.

14. Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, Rolena Adorno and Ivan Boserup, “GKS 2232 4º: Guaman Poma, Nueva corónica y buen gobierno (1615),” Royal Library of Copenhagen, www.kb.dk/permalink/2006/poma/info/en/frontpage.htm, p. 822 [836], accessed August 18, 2013.

15. Santisteban, Fernando Silva, Los obrajes en el Virreinato del Perú (Lima: Museo Nacional de Historia, 1964), pp. 21–29 Google Scholar; Escandell Tur, Producción y comercio de tejidos coloniales, p. 339.

16. For more on the worldwide textile trade in the early modern period, see Peck, Amelia and Bogansky, Amy Elizabeth, Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500–1800 (New York; New Haven: Metropolitan Museum of Art; distributed by Yale University Press, 2013)Google Scholar.

17. Escandell Tur, Producción y comercio de tejidos coloniales, pp. 51, 227.

18. Ramos, Gabriela, “Los tejidos en la sociedad colonial andina,” Colonial Latin American Review 29:1 (April 2010), p. 126 Google Scholar.

19. Itinerant artisans might also have qualified as forasteros, people who were exempt from tribute due to being divorced from their native communities. Stern, Steve J., Peru's Indian Peoples and the Challenge of Spanish Conquest: Huamanga to 1640 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), pp. 134, 152Google Scholar.

20. Cherry, Peter, “Seventeenth-Century Spanish Taste,” in Collections of Paintings in Madrid, 1601–1755, vol. 1, Gilbert, María L., ed. (Los Angeles: Provenance Index of the Getty Information Institute, 1997), p. 5 Google Scholar.

21. It was the very first item listed in the inventory: “Primeramente un frontal de lana de la tierra azul con sus frontaleras de lana ajedrezadas de amarillo y colorado con una cruz innri [with the letters INRI at the top] con sus flocaduras de lana de amarillo y azul.” Archivo General de Indias, Lima 305, fol. 68r.

22. At the church of Zepita, “Un frontal de lana de la tierra de manta con unos pájaros colorados y amarillos y una cruz colorada inrri con frontaleras de manta de la tierra ajedrezadas de diversos colores con flocadura de lana colorada de la tierra.” AGI, Lima 305, fol. 73v.

23. For further discussion of the checkerboard pattern and its links to both Inca and Spanish art, see Stanfield-Mazzi, Maya, Object and Apparition: Envisioning the Christian Divine in the Colonial Andes (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2013), p. 45 Google Scholar.

24. The commonly used phrase for an item being destroyed or recycled due to wear was “se consumió.” In Chinchaypujio in 1646 there were three “old” cumbis, one of which was consumed along with a cumbi rug. AAC, Fábrica e Inventario, San Antón de Chinchaypuqio 1, 1631–1684, Inventario de 1646, fols. 65r–65v.

25. AAC: Accha 1631–1730, Bk. 1, Inventario de Vilque de 1631, fol. 2r; Aymaraes (Soraya) Primer libro 1641–1754, Inventario de 1647, unnum. See also note 22 above.

26. A smaller fragment with an almost identical design survives in the Royal Museum of Art and History in Brussels (AAM 2004.1.1). I thank Julia Montoya for alerting me to it.

27. Phipps, Elena, Looking at Textiles: A Guide to Technical Terms (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011), p. 16 Google Scholar.

28. Catholic Church, Missale romanum ex decreto sacrosancti Concilii Tridentini restitutum, S. Pii V Pontificis Maximi jussu editum, Clementis VIII et Urbani VIII auctoritate recognitum (Regensburg: Sumtibus charatis et typis Friderici Putstet, 1862), p. 43 Google Scholar.

29. Stone, Rebecca R., “‘And all theirs different from his’: The Inka Royal Tunic in Context,” in “Variability in the Expression of Inka Power,” Proceedings of the 1997 Dumbarton Oaks Conference, Richard Burger, Craig Morris, and Ramiro Matos, eds. (Washington D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 2007), pp. 385–422 Google Scholar.

30. Catholic Church, Missale romanum, p. 43.

31. Zimmern, Nathalie H., “A Peruvian Catafalque,” Art Bulletin 27:1 (1945), pp. 66–68 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pál Kelemen, “Preliminary Study of Spanish Colonial Textiles” (Washington, D.C.: The Textile Museum, 1961); Kelemen, , Vanishing Art of the Americas (New York: Walker, 1977), p. 35 Google Scholar. For the other two examples, see Phipps, Elena, “66. Tapestry with Skulls and the Five Wounds of Christ,” in The Colonial Andes Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530–1830, Phipps, Elena, Hecht, Johanna, and Martín, Cristina Esteras, eds. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004), pp. 230–232 Google Scholar.

32. This is an example of the hidden hybridity identified by Carolyn Dean and Dana Leibsohn in other works of Andean manufacture, which appear entirely European on the surface but were actually made with significantly Andean techniques and materials. Dean, and Leibsohn, , “Hybridity and its Discontents: Considering Visual Culture in Colonial Spanish America,” Colonial Latin American Review 12:1 (2003), pp. 15–16 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33. In 1727 Soraya's church still had “una silla de cumbe.” AAC, Aymaraes (Soraya), Bk. 1, 1641–1754, Inventario de 1727, fol. 86r.

34. The two large tapestry rugs that were commissioned for the wedding of the rebel leader José Gabriel Felipe Condorcanqui Tupac Amaru to Micaela Bastidas in 1760 (in the church of Surimana) are excellent examples of the survival of cumbi cloth, specifically for church use, into the late eighteenth century. Duthurburu, José Antonio del Busto, José Gabriel Túpac Amaru antes de su rebelión (Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú; Fondo Editorial, 1981), p. 55 Google Scholar; Elena Phipps, “Cumbi to Tapestry: Collection, Innovation, and Transformation of the Colonial Andean Tapestry Tradition,” in The Colonial Andes Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530–1830, Elena Phipps, Johanna Hecht, and Cristina Esteras Martín, eds., p. 91; Stanfield-Mazzi, Maya, “The Possessor's Agency: Private Art Collecting in the Colonial Andes,” Colonial Latin American Review 18:3 (2009), pp. 349–350 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35. Toledo's Ordenanzas also referred to paintings on church walls, and prohibited people from weaving animals and birds into their own clothing. Gisbert, Teresa, Arze, Silvia, and Cajías, Martha, Arte textil y mundo andino (La Paz: Gisbert y Cía., 1987), p. 10 Google Scholar.

36. AAC, Aymaraes (Soraya), Bk. 1, 1641–1754, Auto de 1677, fol. 80r.

37. Some of these frontals survive in collections of the Cusco region, such as at the Museum of the Convent of Santa Catalina and the private collection Hacienda Huayoccari. A set of frontals painted on canvas from the church of Huanoquite has been recently restored by the Ministerio de Cultura in Cusco (Tipón). These frontals are documented in eighteenth-century inventories of the church. See Fábrica e Inventario Huanoquite 1752–1768, Libro de Fábrica de 1776, fol. 57v: “3 ps. por un frontal que mandó retocar nuevamente el que sirve en el Altar del Señor de las Ánimas, por declaración del Maestro Pintor Don Tomás de Luna.”

38. AAC, Aymaraes (Soraya), Bk. 1, 1641–1754, Auto de 1677, fol. 45r. A forthcoming study of these textile murals shows the ways in which this imagery of European cloths was integrated into Andean ways of seeing the sacred. Ananda Cohen Suarez, Local Cosmopolitanisms: Mural Painting and Social Meaning in Colonial Peru (in preparation), chapt. 4.

39. See AAC, Fábrica e Inventario San Anton de Chinchaypuqio Bk. 1, 1631–1684, Aumentos de 1648, fol. 67v.

40. In this technique the crosswise weft threads skip over the warp threads at intervals to create the pattern.

41. See The Colonial Andes Tapestries and Silverwork, Phipps, Hecht, and Esteras Martín, eds., cat. #9.

42. Phipps, “Cumbi to Tapestry,” p. 87.

43. I thank Aaron Hyman for this reference. The passage reads in Spanish, “en hacer tirar oro y plata hasta poner en estado de que se hile en seda o en hilo.” Archivo Regional del Cusco, Protocolos Notariales, Joan de Saldaña 1686, 308, fols. 480r–v.

44. Turmo, Isabel, Bordados y bordadores sevillanos (siglos XVI a XVIII) (Madrid: Universidad de Sevilla, Laboratorio de Arte, 1955), p. 13 Google Scholar; Phipps, “Cumbi to Tapestry,” p. 87.

45. “22 pessos y medio por 4 baras de razo negro de la china, y una bara de tafetan negro de la china y ocho onzas y ma de seda negra de la china y 7 baras de melinge y siete onzas de plata y dos reales de hilo para un frontal . . . 8 pesos que llevo un indio sedero por hacer el dicho frontal . . . 7 pesos por pintar unas calaveras para el dicho frontal.” AAC, Calca, 1609–1658, Bk. 1, Registro de fábrica de 1613, fol. 29v.

46. AAC, Calca, 1609–1658, Bk. 1, Registro de fábrica de 1640, fol. 71v.

47. Most art historical scholarship that has considered the role of indigenous intermediaries has focused on these individuals instead of on artists, looking to how these elites were represented in art. See Cummins, Thomas, “We are the Other: Peruvian Portraits of Colonial Kurakakuna,” in Transatlantic Encounters: Europeans and Andeans in the Sixteenth Century, Andrien, Kenneth J. and Adorno, Rolena, eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 203–270 Google Scholar; Dean, Carolyn, Inka Bodies and the Body of Christ: Corpus Christi in Colonial Cuzco, Peru (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; and Stanfield-Mazzi, Maya, “Cult, Countenance, and Community: Donor Portraits from the Colonial Andes,” Religion and the Arts 15:3 (2011), pp. 429–459 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48. The donors were don Thomas Yrinpuella in 1629, don Blas Vienutupa in 1632, and doña Francisca Quispe Ynga in 1635. They all gave banners of imported red or yellow satin fabric. AAC, Huanoquite Cofradía, 1631–1662, unnumbered (last page of legajo).

49. “10 ps.: el paño del guión, que dio el género el cacique; en cinco varas de franja de oro con su puntita calada que pesó cuatro onzas y media, y unas armas bordada con oro de realce, forrado en damasquillo carmesí, seda, hechura al sastre, que costeé, importa.” AAC, Fábrica e Inventario Huanoquite 1752–1768, Registro de fábrica de 1778, fol. 65v.

50. See Dean, Inka Bodies and the Body of Christ, plates II and III.

51. Personal communication, Barbara Arthur and Barbara Nitzburg, de Young Museum of Art, San Francisco, June 20, 2013, and Nilda Callañaupa Álvarez, Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco, May 28, 2014.

52. Also known as Virgin of the Mountain. For an illustration see The Colonial Andes Tapestries and Silverwork, Phipps, Hecht, and Esteras Martín, eds., cat. #80.

53. Certain ancient Andean textile traditions, such as that of the Paracas and Nasca cultures of south coastal Peru (ca. 600 BCE–600 CE), seem to have attached more meaning to the imagery on the borders of cloth than that in the central areas. See Paul, Anne, “Protective Perimeters: The Symbolism of Borders on Paracas Textiles,” Res 38 (2000), pp. 144–167 Google Scholar; Frame, Mary, “Motion Pictures: Symmetry as Animator, Classifier, and Syntax in the Nasca Embroideries of Peru,” in Symmetry Comes of Age: The Role of Pattern in Culture, Washburn, Dorothy K. and Crowe, Donald W., eds. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004), pp. 133–176 Google Scholar.

54. Zorn, Elayne, “Textiles in Herders’ Ritual Bundles in Macusani, Peru,” in The Junius B. Bird Conference on Andean Textiles, Rowe, Ann Pollard, ed. (Washington, D.C.: The Textile Museum, 1986), pp. 289–307 Google Scholar.

55. Álvarez, Nilda Callañaupa, Weaving in the Peruvian Highlands: Dreaming Patterns, Weaving Memories (Cusco, Peru; Loveland, Colo.: Centro de Textiles Tradicionales del Cusco; distributed in North America by Interweave Press, 2007), p. 87 Google Scholar.

56. Silverman, Gail P., A Woven Book of Knowledge: Textile Iconography of Cuzco, Peru (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2008), pp. 159, 164, 172Google Scholar.

57. Callañaupa Álvarez, Weaving in the Peruvian Highlands, pp. 69, 78–79.

58. The four opposing colors of the pampas in the unkhuña contribute to making it a four-part or “corner” (k'uchu) unkhuña and thus distinguish it from common unkhuñakuna, used simply as carrying cloths.

59. Gisbert, Arze, and Cajías, Arte textil y mundo andino, p. 16.

60. Further research is needed to confirm this, but it appears the strips are heirlooms and are no longer being produced in the Andes today. See Callañaupa Álvarez, Weaving in the Peruvian Highlands, pp. 29, 34. An Andean woman's mantle (lliklla) now at the de Young Museum of Art features one of these strips inserted as a connector between the two webs of cloth (#1992.107.87). It is thought to be older than the rest of the mantle. Meisch, Lynn, ed., Traditional Textiles of the Andes: Life and Cloth in the Highlands. The Jeffrey Appleby Collection of Andean Textiles (London; New York: Thames and Hudson; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1997), p. 111 Google Scholar.

61. Callañaupa Álvarez, Weaving in the Peruvian Highlands, p. 72. Some weavers in Bolivia also maintain the technique for fine rugs and hangings.

62. It is unlikely that this work or any of the franjas under discussion date to the twentieth century. My survey of a series of church textiles (primarily garments for statues) from the twentieth century in the church of Santiago de Pomata, Peru, all of which have dated inscriptions naming their donors, showed not one example of such a strip. Instead those textiles are embroidered with flexible silver and gold-toned threads, which by mid-century appear to be made of polyester or plastic.

63. The Church allows for cloth of gold and silver to replace other colors on very solemn occasions. Noonan, The Church Visible, p. 136.

64. Frame, Mary, “The Visual Images of Fabric Structures in Ancient Peruvian Art,” in The Junius B. Bird Conference on Andean Textiles, Rowe, Anne Pollard, ed. (Washington, D.C.: The Textile Museum, 1986), pp. 47–80 Google Scholar.

65. For examples of the continued production in Cusco of liturgical textiles, see Ochoa, Jorge A. Flores, Arce, Elizabeth Kuon, and Argumedo, Roberto Samanez, Cuzco, el lenguaje de la fiesta (Lima: Banco de Crédito, 2009)Google Scholar.

66. Pillsbury, Joanne, “Inka Colonial Tunics: A Case Study of the Bandelier Set,” in Andean Textile Traditions: Papers from the 2001 Mayer Center Symposium at the Denver Art Museum, Simpson, Fronia W. and Young-Sánchez, Margaret, eds. (Denver: Denver Art Museum, 2006), pp. 120–168 Google Scholar; Ramos, “Los tejidos en la sociedad colonial andina.”