Reservoirs of the Lakes of Cari-Cari, Potosí

1709

Name(s) currently unknown

Madrid, ESP, Museo del Ejercito (current location)

This painting depicts the city of Potosí stretching out in front of the Cerro Rico, the silver-producing mountain adjacent to the city. The mountain top has been surrounded with rays, as if to highlight its importance—both to Potosí and in this image. Towards the top of the map is a mountain landscape dotted with lakes and settlements, each labeled with its name. The horror vaccui of the image suggests the density of the mountain landscape is no less ‘empty’ than the compact city below.

The painting does not bear any obvious signature, although the label at the bottom left describes the overall scene as the imperial city of Potosí and the 21 lakes surrounding it in the mountains of Cari-Cari and Nicaua. In an extraordinary undertaking of engineering, the water from these lakes, shown as white pools in the upper part of the painting, were dammed and then channeled to the mills for refining silver in Potosí. Sprinkled through the mountains are trains of llamas, herded by mine workers—as if to stress the productivity of the Cerro Rico mines. In other parts of the mountain landscape above Potosí, llamas graze and rest—a clear contrast to the animals enlisted in the mining enterprise. The city of Potosí dominates the lower part of the painting, and its grid-plan is most formal near the center of town, which the case in many Spanish-planned towns in the Americas. The dark block of buildings near the city center is the Casa de la Moneda, the royal mint. Above it is the main plaza of Potosí, with the Cathedral along the left side. Along the right hand side of the painting, the coat-of-arms of Juan de Lizarazu Beaumont de Navarra appear. He was the first of the Condes of the Casa Real de Moneda. A prominent mine-owner in Potosí, he may have commissioned the painting.

The painting is oil on canvas.

This view of Potosí stresses the compact form of the city and the strong presence of religious establishments there. The mining enterprise, so crucial to Potosí’s survival and the Spanish crown, is another primary concern of the painting. The mountains may thus contrast with the city below, but both, the painting suggests, were bound up with the mines.

Reproduced courtesy of the Museo del Ejercito

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

Kagan, Richard. 1998. Imágenes urbanas del mundo hispánico, 1493-1780. Madrid: Viso.

Kagan, Richard. 2000. Urban Images of the Hispanic World, 1493-1793. New Haven, Connecticut and London: Yale University Press.

Querejazu, Pedro and Elizabeth Ferrer, eds. 1997. Potosí: Colonial Treasures and the Bolivian City of Silver. New York: Americas Society.