The Artists of Crisis: The Construction and Reconstruction of Cuzco, Peru

This postdoctoral project analyzes the relationship between four natural disasters and the artists, whose art and architecture helped the citizens of Cuzco to navigate their collective trauma. As the former Inca capital and strategically located within the Andes Mountain Range at 3,400 meters and between the Viceregal capital of Lima and the silver mines of Potosí, Cuzco has remained an important social and cultural center since its foundation.  This art historical project embraces the act of reconstructing the city through written, notarial documents to demonstrate how the Cuzco’s urban form and religious churches were in a constant process of reconstruction by Indigenous, Spanish, and Afro-descendant artists.

The first crisis began with the Spanish invasion of Cuzco in 1534 and ended with the conclusion of the Spanish Civil Wars in the 1550s. Very little of this initial architecture or adornment remains in Cuzco, which has led scholars, such as Michael Schreffler, to turn to Spanish chronicles to reconstruct the city’s identity.  Additionally, notarial documents, in the Regional Archive of Cuzco, which will form the basis of this project, provide insight into the processes, and more importantly, the people, who reconstructed the city in the long aftermath of these wars.  The second natural disaster investigated is the earthquake that struck Cuzco early in the afternoon on March 31^st, 1650.  This earthquake led to a flurry of correspondence between local officials and the Spanish Court to document the damages incurred and garner aid in their reconstruction. Moreover, multiple miraculous images claimed to have rescued the city, all of which remain central to the devotions of local Cusqueñans and have been examined by various scholars, such as Tom Cummins, Patrick Hajovsky, and Lucila Iglesias.  Building upon my doctoral research, I employ notarial documents to question not only how the artists rebuilt Cuzco in the traumatic aftermath of this earthquake, but also how this natural disaster affected the places and ways in which art was produced in the city.

The third catastrophe that this project explores is the pandemic of 1720.  This epidemic, according to Gabriela Ramos, was principally brought about by the unsanitary conditions of cities, such as Cuzco.  Therefore, I examine the reforms to urban infrastructure and decorative practices that resulted as a response to the fears of infectious disease.  In the final natural disaster, this project turns to the earthquake of May 21^st, 1950, which destroyed many of the religious complexes that had previously been reconstructed in the seventeenth century.  Art Historians, such as George Kubler, performed a crucial role in the modernization and restoration of Cuzco, however, it was through the labor of local artists from Cuzco and the surrounding countryside that the Baroque city was brought back to life.  Across all these crises, who produces this art and for whom? What does it mean to produce art when the world is full of chaos and despair?

By turning to an investigation of the artists, I contend we will be able to better understand how the unique circumstances and trauma of each crisis led to a new physical and devotional version of Cuzco.  That is, studying these four catastrophes to a singular city over the course of four centuries, I argue, will emphasize the complex, entangled nature of artistic production, in which technical and material innovations not only evidenced and memorialized compounding traumas, but also advanced local and contemporary aesthetic practice.