Portrait of a Ñusta

1700-1750

Name(s) currently unknown

Cuzco, PER, Museo Inka (current location)

This full-length image depicts a ñusta, or Inka noblewoman. The elegant outfit she wears draws upon pre-Hispanic Inka styles, as does the fine clothing of her attendant dwarf. The landscape setting, with its castle in the background, is an imaginary one, not a scene from the Andes.

The portrait painting, as a genre of representation, was introduced in the Andes from Europe. The pre-Hispanic Inka had no tradition of depicting their rulers in two-dimensional, representational form. In this portrait, the Ñusta wears a lliclla over her shoulders. It is embroidered with flowers and bordered with tocapu. Beneath it is an acsu, a wrapped dress. All her garments are colonial versions of clothing that derive from pre-Hispanic Inka traditions of elite dress. The Ñusta’s elaborate outfit would not have been the daily dress of any indigenous noble in the 18th century. For ceremonies and processions, “neo-Inka” clothing might be worn. The flowers held by the Nusta are ñuchuju, a blossom associated with Inka royalty. Parrots, like the one at right, appear in many paintings made in and around Cuzco in the 18th century, particularly those associated with the Cuzco School of art. The castle in the background is an iconographic element introduced from Europe. Such castles did not exist in the Andes and the one in this image may function as an evocation of antiquity. Many images of elite Andean women from this period are set into landscapes of this type. Dwarves attended Inka nobility before Spaniards arrived in Peru. This image of an elite woman with her attendant therefore resonates with both indigenous Andean courtly traditions and those of Europe, where dwarves were also court attendants and appeared in portraits.

Neither the painter’s name, nor that of his patron is known. In Cuzco and its surrounding towns, portraits of Inka nobility were sometimes commissioned in sets, showing kings and queens in pairs, and were sought by descendants of noble families. This image could be one such example.

This is a life-sized portrait, painted in oil on canvas. The canvas measures 206 x 124 cm (ca. 81 x 50 inches).

Today this painting hangs in the Museo Inka, in Cuzco Peru.

For elite Andeans throughout the colonial period, connections to the Inka nobility provided invaluable social currency and images such as this one sometimes “documented” membership among the highest social ranks of indigenous society. No less importantly, such paintings offered a way of remembering and renewing ties to Inka antiquity, both real and imaginary. However, unlike keros, a native Andean form, both the media and genre of painted portraits were appropriated from European models.

Reproduced courtesy of the Museo Inka

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

Cummins, Thomas B. F. “Retrato de coya con paisaje.” In Siglos de Oro en los Virreinatos de América, 1550-1700. Pp. 188-191. Madrid: Sociedad Estatal para la Conmemoraciónd e los Centernarios de Felipe II y Carlos V.

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

Flores Ochoa, Jorge. 1990. El Cuzco. Resistencia y continuidad. Cuzco: Centro de Estudios Andinos Cuzco.

Wuffarden, Luís Eduardo. 2004. “Portrait of a Nusta,” In The Colonial Andes: Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530-1830. Ed. Elena Phipps, Johanna Hecht and Cristina Esteras Martín. Pp. 160-163. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.