Union of the Inka Royal Family with the Houses of Loyola and Borgia

1700-1800

Name(s) currently unknown

Lima, PER, Museo Pedro de Osma (current location)

This painting depicts the marriages of two Inka princesses—the last survivors of the Inka royal line— to Spanish grandees. Its ordered composition implies a seamless transfer of power from an indigenous dynasty to a Spanish one, through the sacrament of marriage.

At the center of the image, doña Beatriz Clara Coya (c. 1557- 1600), one of the wealthiest women in Perú and member of the Inka royal family, weds don Martín García de Loyola (d. 1598), a conquistador and nephew of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. Doña Beatriz’s noble lineage is signaled by the Inkas who sit at upper left in traditional dress, shaded by a plumed umbrella that was reserved for noble use. The group may include her father Sayri Túpac, (d. 1561), her mother, doña María Cusi Huarcay, and grandfather Manco Inka. To the right of the bride are St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, who holds an open book and St. Francis de Borja, another Jesuit saint, who holds a skull. On axis with St. Iganatius, the monograph “I.H.S.” appears in the sky, alluding to the saint’s claim that he had special knowledge of the holy Trinity. It stands for “Jesus Hominum Salvator,” or Jesus, the savior of men. At the far right of the painting, dressed in a gold dress, doña Ana María Lorenza de Loyola (b. 1596-1630) is pictured. She was the daughter of the couple in the left foreground and is shown marrying a member of the Spanish nobility, don Juan Enríquez de Borja y Almansa in Madrid in 1614, her groom, like her father, having a prominent link to the Jesuit order. The couple appears a second time in the front of the painting standing alongside her parents. In addition to providing biographical details, the framed legend on the left of the painting connects these couples to the Jesuit order. It reads, in part: “With this marriage, the royal house of the Inka was joined to the houses of Loyola and Borja.”

The picture of the wedding was first commissioned for La Compañía, the main Jesuit church in Cuzco, the former Inka capital city. It is exceptional in that it is a secular painting in a religious building. The version pictured here, however, is one of several known.

The work is an oil painting, measuring 178 x 171 cm (ca. 71 x 67 inches). It has dulled over the years as the protective varnishes have yellowed and has been subject to various campaigns of repainting; the artistry of the original becoming less important than the clarity of its message.

Doña Beatriz’s story is a poignant one: one of the richest brides in the kingdom, she was the prize given to Don Martín García de Loyola, the conquistador who killed her uncle Túpac Amaru in 1572, the last claimant to the Inka throne. This narrative of her marriage, and that of her daughter, was used by the Jesuits to connect their order to the Inka nobility. The painting is believed to have been in La Compañia since the 18th century. This copy is now in Lima and there are a number of versions of this event, both painted and in other media.

Doña Beatriz Clara Coya was a wealthy trophy bride and it was whispered in Cuzco that one aspirant for her hand had raped her when she was nine to secure his claim to her and her inheritance. She was finally awarded to don Martín García de Loyola for his success in defeating (and executing) her uncle. He, in turn, would be killed at the hands of the Araucano in Chile. Their daughter, orphaned as a young girl, was another trophy bride, dispatched to Spain to be married off. But the painting occludes much of this violent history. Its ordered composition suggests a placid co-mingling of traditions, with willing acceptance of the indigenous brides. Like all ideal images, the painting corresponds only in oblique ways to the lived experiences of mestizaje in Spanish America.

Reproduced courtesy of the Museo Pedro de Osma

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

Gisbert, Teresa, 1980. Iconografía y Mitos Indigenas en el Arte. La Paz: Gisbert y Cia.

Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, María. 1970. "El Repartimiento de Doña Beatriz Coya, en el Valle de Yucay." Historia y Cultura: Organo del Museo Nacional de Historia (Lima, Peru), 4: 153-267.

Timberlake, Marie. 1999. “The Painted Colonial Image: Jesuit and Andean Fabrication of History in Matrimonio de García de Loyola con Nusta Beatriz.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 29 (3): 563-598.