Cockfight, Trujillo del Perú

1780-1789

Martínez Campañón, don Baltasar Jaime (author; 1737-1797)

Madrid, ESP, Biblioteca de la Palacio Real (current location)

This watercolor comes from a set of books today known as Trujillo del Perú>, a compendium created for a bishop whose authority extended over the northern, coastal region of modern Peru. In the late 18th century, when Bishop Baltazar Jaime Martínez de Compañon traveled through his bishopric, he recorded local customs, employing painters to create descriptive images. In this scene, which today seems marked by directness and simplicity, two valiant cocks face off in an arena, while well-dressed men watch intently.

Today it is not known which city this scene represents, but cockfights were common public events in much of Spanish America. From covered viewing stands, an official and his assistants oversee the event and collection of wagers. Around the circular arena, men gather, but none of them are painted in enough detail to suggest individual identities. Rather, they take on meaning as generic “men of the city.” The fine clothing of the gamblers--the cloaks, hats and breeches--suggest these were hardly the poorest of local residents and the city they lived in enjoyed some prosperity. At the center of the ring, the two birds are larger than most of the gamblers in this scene, and were painted this way to stress their importance.

The painter, whose name is not known, may have been an assistant of Bishop Baltazar Jaime Martínez de Compañon who traveled with him, recording local customs along the northern coast of Peru. Although he would not have been considered a patron in the traditional sense, Bishop Martínez de Compañon’s travels provided the source and inspiration for this image. In the same decade that Tupac Amaru II was leading a rebellion in the southern Andes, Martínez de Compañón journeyed through his more peaceful bishopric along the northern coast of Peru recording his observations. Written reports from visitas—tours by local officials inquiring into the state of affairs in their domains—were common in Spanish America. This fully pictorial album is more unusual.

This is a watercolor painting on paper. It is one of hundreds of paintings made in the late 18th century for an album that records characteristics of daily life in the regions in and around cities like Trujillo, Cajamarca and Lambeyeque.

Unfortunately, no texts survive to explain or illuminate Martínez de Compañon’s images (or his observations while traveling). Today, the images he had created are bound into books in the collection of the Real Biblioteca in Madrid.

This gambling scene confirms that certain patterns of modern urban life had their roots in colonial cities. This particular event was one of the civic rituals, like parades and processions, that bound different classes together in a collective, albeit sometimes bloody, enterprise. Among the scenes Bishop Martínez de Compañon and his painters described were festivals and dance costumes, musical instruments and songs, “types” of individuals (i.e. mestizos, mulattos), and indigenous artifacts. Leisure activities—from napping in hammocks to playing cards and other games—also appear. These images are some of the best documents of everyday life in late colonial Perú.

© Patrimonio Nacional. All rights reserved.

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

Macera, Pablo, Arturo Jiménez Borja and Irma Franke. 1997. Trujillo del Perú. Baltazar Jaime Martínez Compañón. Acuarelas—Siglo VIII. Lima: Fundación del Banco Continental.

Martínez de Compañón, Baltazar Jaime. 1978-1985-1994. Trujillo del Perú, a fines del S. XVIII, dibujos y acuarelas que mandó hacer el Obispo don Baltazar J. Martínez de Compañón. 9 vols. Madrid: Cultural Hispánica.

Morales, Consolación. 1970. “Juegos en el Perú Virreynal del Siglo XVIII.” Reales Sitios 23. Madrid.

Soule, Emily Berquist. 2014. The Bishop's Utopia: Envisioning Improvement in Colonial Peru. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.