Memory, presence, and power
Subtitle: the social life of Peruvian portraits
By: by Nenita Ponce de Leon Elphick
Published: 2007
Language: eng
Number of pages: 414
Description: This work covers a wide range of portraits from the pre-Hispanic period to the mid-twentieth century, many of which have not been studied together or at all. Although broad in scope, this study does not pretend to be an exhaustive survey of Peruvian portraiture. Rather, it concentrates mostly on examples from Lima and Cuzco, and is organized thematically into three sections. The first section (Chapter 1) argues that Western European definitions of portraiture are not necessarily applicable to pre-Hispanic material culture; in searching for Inca portraiture, for example, one should discard common expectations of mimesis and focus on the function of Inca mummies, dismembered body parts, and sculpted body doubles, which, despite being non-mimetic, fulfilled Alberti's belief in the power of painted portraiture "to make the absent present" and "represent the dead to the living." The next section (Chapters 2-4) explores the relationship between sitters' bodies and colonial portraiture. The social, political, and religious emphasis the Inca placed on mummified ancestors was culturally abhorrent to the Spanish, but not actually dissimilar to Spanish beliefs in the power of the human body, particularly the bodies of kings, viceroys, and saints, whose presence and power could be transferred to portraits. When Inca descendants were banned from maintaining their mummies and non-mimetic sculptures, they adopted European-style portraiture to portray their ancestors and themselves, creating pictorial lineages that were not only socially acceptable to the Spanish, but also helped to secure political and economic benefices for themselves.

The final section (Chapters 5-6) argues that the portrait galleries of viceroys, archbishops, university rectors, and noble families adhered to formal conventions established in sixteenth-century Spain and that through these visual lineages sitters asserted, not their individuality, but their political legitimacy and power through corporate association. Independence and the introduction of cheap photography in the mid-nineteenth century gave more people access to portraiture. Many of the formal conventions of colonial painted portraiture remained popular in portrait photography until well into the mid-twentieth century because modern sitters, like colonial sitters, wanted to construct, convey, and even inflate their social status.
Notes: "June 2007."

Thesis (Ph.D., Dept. of History of Art & Archietcture)--Harvard University, 2007.

Includes bibliographical references.