Escola Cusquenha de Pintura
With the conquest of Cuzco by the Spanish in 1534, a profound transformation began in the political history of the Inca Empire, as well as a new chapter in its art history.
Cusquenian painting emerged as ecclesiastical art, and its main purpose was didactic - above all catechetical, since the Spanish, as they increasingly appropriated the riches of the new colony, set about converting pagan souls to the Catholic faith.
The image - together with the word - was the only truly effective means of conveying Catholicism. Committed to evangelizing the peoples of the Inca community, Spain sent a group of religious artists to create doctrinal works, forming schools of Indigenous or mestizo painters and teaching them the art of drawing and oil painting.
The term "Cusquenian", however, is not limited to Cuzco, the origin of these Spanish American colonial paintings, which were also produced in other Andean countries, such as Bolivia and Ecuador, between the 16th and 18th centuries. The name became widespread mainly because the city of Cuzco, in Peru, was the capital and center of the Inca Empire. In any case, the Cuzco School is considered the first organized pictorial center in the so-called New World.
The Cusquenian themes - exclusively religious - are the same as those of the Italian Fra Angelico in the first half of the 15th century and of the masters of Pisa and Siena in the Middle Ages: biblical scenes of the Catholic tradition - the glorification of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and the Saints, the Last Judgment, with the glories of Paradise and the damnation of Hell.
The Cusquenian painters ignore perspective and favor red, yellow and earth tones. They emphasize the physical beauty of the figures, enlarging the saints so as to reduce their devotees to tiny dots on the canvases. They create the impression of statuesque volume in sumptuous mantles and give curtains and columns a monumental outline.
Although influenced by the Byzantine, Flemish and Italian Renaissance schools, the Peruvian Cusquenian painters show a freedom unknown to Europeans: bright colors, images distorted to heighten the drama of the scene, against backgrounds illustrated with Andean fauna and flora and adorned with angels and archangels.
The authorship of most of these works is unknown, given the tradition of the pre-Columbian peoples, whose art was essentially communal and ritual.
The Cusquenian School of Painting, in a way, represents the true meeting of two worlds, the exact moment when art became a tool of doctrine and, beyond interests or rules, turned into a genuine artistic expression that can be considered the first mestizo expression of Latin America.
