San Pedro, Cuzco

1688-1699

Tuyrú Túpac, Juan Tomás (architect; active 1677-1706)

Cuzco, PER

This building is one of the large parish churches within the city of Cuzco. Created under the auspices of the energetic Bishop Manuel de Mollinedo y Angulo, it is one of the few buildings in Peru whose indigenous architect is known.

The organization of San Pedro's façade echoes that of La Compañía, the Jesuit church on the main plaza of Cuzco, only a few blocks away. The decorative elements of the façade are concentrated between the two massive towers. Its dense, reddish stone is used widely in Cuzco’s colonial buildings and comes from the quarry of Piccho. The 1650 earthquake destroyed an earlier church on the site and this is its replacement.

Names of architects are known for only a few buildings created in colonial Spanish America. But scholars have surmised that indigenous architects and builders played a large role in the creation of many monumental buildings, and certainly no large structure was created without indigenous labor. In the case of San Pedro, Juan Tomás Tuyrú Túpac was its architect. He is also known for his religious carvings and was likely a part of Cuzco’s vibrant indigenous artistic community.

Barbara E. Mundy

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

Bayón, Damián and Murillo Marx. 1992. History of South American Colonial Art and Architecture. Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafa.

Chara Zereceda, Oscar. 1998. Iglesias del Cuco: historia y arquitectura. Cusco: Editorial Universitaria UNSAAC.

Wethey, Harold E. 1949. Colonial Architecture and Sculpture in Peru. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.