Corpus Christi Procession, Parish of San Cristobál

1680

Name(s) currently unknown

Cuzco, PER, Museo de Arte Religioso (current location)

This is one of a series of sixteen known paintings showing the celebration of the feast of Corpus Christi in late 17th century Cuzco, Peru. In it, members of the parish of San Cristóbal march alongside a large cart—akin to a modern-day float. The feast of Corpus Christi was the most important festival in Cuzco’s church calendar. In celebrating the Eucharist, it also commemorated the triumph of Christianity in once pagan lands. During the celebration, the different parishes of Cuzco, the religious confraternities, the religious orders, and the civil government would all march through the Cuzco along a processional route towards the cathedral.

In the background, members of the Cuzco elite watch the procession from the windows of their houses that lined the processional route. Hanging from their balconies are brightly colored tapestries. A cart dominates the center of the painting. It carries a sculpture of San Cristóbal (St. Christopher) figure, the patron of one of Cuzco's parishes. The sculpture would have resided in the parish church but was paraded through town in important celebrations, a tradition that continues today. Although the cart is striking in its appearance, it is an imagined vehicle and its form and style derive from a Spanish book of festival prints, not from an actual cart used in the procession. Its presence complicates the painting, turning it from a visual account of what actually happened during Corpus Christi into an appeal to viewers' imaginations about what could possibly appear. To the left, the elegantly dressed man who carries the red standard is the cacique of San Cristobál parish, don Carlos Huayna Capac Inka. At his feet, the inscription identifies him: "Victor D. Carlos Guainacapac Ynga, Alferez Real de su M[a]g[es]dad" (Acclaimed don Carlos Huayna Capac Inka, His Majesty’s royal standard-bearer). He wears a festival costume, a 17th-century interpretation of ancient Inka clothing, which includes a tunic embroidered with tocapu over full lace sleeves. His headdress, which probably extended a foot or more in height, includes many symbols of Inka royalty and high status, such as the red-fringe of pre-Hispanic Inka royalty, the mascapaycha, a black condor, a jeweled black feather, a miniature castle on a stick, flowers, and Inka axe-scepters.

A number of the sixteeen paintings from this series, like this one, feature a cult statue from one of Cuzco’s parishes, suggesting that parishes also may have commissioned some of the paintings to commemorate their participation in this major annual feast. Two of the canvases in the series feature Bishop Manuel de Mollinedo y Angulo, who was a vigorous reformer, and he may have been another one of the patrons of the paintings. It is likely that the various painters who worked on the sixteen known canvases of this series were indigenous painters, as were the majority of painters working in Cuzco at this period. This painting is stylistically similar to the work of Juan Zapaca Inga.

This painting is quite large, measuring 53 ½ by 86 ¾ inches (136 x 219 cm). Like others in this series of sixteen works, was probably created in a workshop under the direction of a master painter. He would have taken charge of some or all of the painting—most certainly the important passages like the portrait faces. Apprentices would have carried out the rest under his direction. Among the sources for this image were actual events in Cuzco’s Corpus Christi celebrations and a book of festival prints, by Juan Bautista Valda, brought to Cuzco from Spain.

The paintings (sixteen are known) were thought to have decorated the walls of the Santa Ana parish church. Santa Ana was the first church in festival itineraries, marking the entrance to Cuzco. And as a series, these processional paintings privilege the parish of Santa Ana in subtle ways.

Since this painting and others in the series were probably locally commissioned, they offer a complex portrait of late 17th century Cuzco. Indigenous leaders, like the standard bearer in this picture, play the role of colonial mediators: their roles and costumes refer both to their knowledge of European customs and their noble Inka past. So too do the paintings, installed as they once were in the Church of Santa Ana, where indigenous Andeans and colonial authorities would have seen them. The paintings also document the religious celebrations that were frequently carried out across Spanish America. Their focus on the cult statues of the parishes as they were carried through the streets of the city illustrate one of the many ways that otherworldly figures, like Saint Christopher, were experienced by Cuzco’s citizens.

Carolyn S. Dean

Dana Leibsohn and Barbara E. Mundy.
Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520-1820. http://www.fordham.edu/vistas, 2015.

Dean, Carolyn. 1999. Inka Bodies and the Body of Christ: Corpus Christi in Colonial Cuzco, Peru. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Wuffarden, Luis Eduardo. 1996. La procesión del Corpus en el Cuzco. Seville: Unión Latina.

Wuffarden, Luís Eduardo. 2004. “The Carriage of Saint Christopher.” In The Colonial Andes: Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530-1830. Elena Phipps, Johanna Hecht and Cristina Esteras Martín, eds. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 314-15.