4 - Confraternal “Collections”: Black and Indigenous Cofradías and the Curation of Religious Life in Colonial Lima

Summary

Abstract

Taking advantage of Lima's rich documentary record, this chapter begins the process of recovering the images, material culture, and devotional interactions of black and indigenous confraternities that have been erased by colonialism. I propose that if we consider each confraternity as a “collection,” we can situate their documented sacred images and possession as “inventory items” that were actively collected and thoughtfully displayed, rather than objects that were passively owned. I argue that black and indigenous confraternities curated their religious and social experiences and, thereby, came to visually define the artistic religious landscape of Lima in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Keywords: Peru, Andean Catholicism, black confraternity, colonial art, material culture

Introduction

A monumental painting depicting a Good Friday procession (c.1660; Figure 4.1), commissioned by the elite Spanish confraternity of the Virgen de la Soledad, provides us with one of the only extant pictorial records of the material grandeur of Holy Week in colonial Lima, the capital of viceregal Peru. At the far right of the painting, an ephemeral Calvary tableau is set beneath an awning, against the facade of the Chapel of La Soledad. The central cross is empty with only a loosely draped cloth hanging from the cross bar, indicating that the sculptural image of Christ has already been removed and that the procession depicted is of the Santo Entierro, or Holy Burial. With candles in their hands, a continuous line of elite Limeños process along, including regular clergy, members of the military, holy women, and cofrades from the Spanish nobility. The stream of wealthy participants is punctuated by sacred images, borne aloft on litters (andas). In the painting, at the front of the procession, the image of Christ appears wrapped in a cloth and lying upon an elaborate silver bier adorned with tall candles (cirios). The Virgin, wearing a black mantle and kneeling under a canopy (palio), follows her son on an elaborate golden platform. A final image tableau represents a scene of the Supper at Emmaus and sits on a simpler, wooden platform, decorated with candles and a dozen flowerpots, overflowing with red and white bunches of flowers (ramos). Each of the litters is accompanied by four external bearers, whose faces are concealed, and several more carrying the weight from behind the andas’ blue skirts (faldones).