Silversmith’s Art in Peru

Silversmith's Art in Peru

In sixteenth-century Viceregal Peru, the area claimed by Spain that originally encompassed all of South America save for Brazil, unique factors created a climate highly favorable to the silversmith's art. Over the next three hundreds years of Spanish rule, master metalsmiths produced a body of work of impressive craftsmanship and beauty rarely equaled elsewhere at any point in recorded history. Yet, Viceregal Peruvian silver is little known outside the region, and relatively few examples have survived the vicissitudes of time.

At the time of the Conquest, Central and South American artisans had mastered a variety of techniques for working metals: gold, silver, copper, platinum, and mixed metals such as tumbaga (a copper-gold alloy), and bronze. Although pre-Conquest metalsmiths used only a few types of stone and copper tools, they surpassed European craftsmen in many aspects of the metalsmith's art. For example, the Indians of coastal Ecuador were able to work platinum via the incipient fusion or sintering method, a technique lost after the conquest, that was developed independently in Europe only in the nineteenth century. As early as 1,000 B.C.E., Chavin artisans in the highlands of northern Peru were hammering and annealing sheet gold into ornaments and vessels decorated with elaborate high relief work. Somewhat later, the lost-wax process became a favorite technique of a number of cultures from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego, as was hollow-casting. In many areas of the Americas, artisans knew how to gild copper objects utilize a hard solder of copper and gold alloys. Shortly before the conquest, Incan metalsmiths appear to have developed a technique for inlaying metals with other metals. Inlays of shell and stones had long been a favorite technique for decorating works, particularly along the Peruvian coast.

In the centuries prior to the Conquest, a highland clan in the central Andes, the Incas, conquered peoples from Colombia south to central Chile, and east into the Amazon basin. Claiming to be descendants of the Sun, they imposed their laws, their language, (Quechua), and their religion on their subject people from whom they gathered gold and silver as tribute. The theocratic Incas regarded gold as the "sweat of the Sun", and silver as the "tears" of Mama Killa, the mother moon, the sister-bride of the Sun. They and other pre-Hispanic cultures utilize precious metals for ceremonial, decorative, religious, and functional purposes, but not as currency or mediums of exchange. Skilled artisans used gold and silver to fashion everything from fish hooks and weaving needles to maceheads for Incan royalty. Of particular beauty were objects for the Coricancha, the Inca's ceremonial garden in Cusco, that was decorated with exquisitely crafted, life-size gold and silver fruit trees, plants, vegetables, animals, insects, birds, butterflies, and people. Temple rooms were decorated in sheets of precious metals and molten metal was sometimes poured between the perfectly cut stones of temple walls. The native taste for broad expanses of dazzling, shimmering metal, what André Emmerich terms a sheet-metal aesthetic, would continue to influence Peruvian silver- and goldsmithing into present times.

In 1532, when a small band of Spanish soldiers under the command of Francisco Pizarro landed on the northern coast of present-day Peru, they encountered a highly sophisticated society of peons, artisans, and aristocrats living in urban centers and rural agrarian settlements not unlike their own on the Iberian peninsula. Because the Incan realm was highly stratified, centralized, and in a period of political turmoil, the Spaniards, using chicanery and superior fire-power, were able to easily overcome the elites and subdue the populace quickly and effectively. The conquistadores looted Incan treasuries and graves. Hundreds of thousands of objects, many of dazzling workmanship, were smelted into bars for division among the soldiers, payment of the royal fifth tax to the Crown, and transport back to Europe. Although some of the more extraordinary works were allegedly set aside for Emperor Charles V of Spain, not a single documented object is known to exist today from the Peruvian conquest loot, an estimated 134,000 pounds of sliver and 17,500 pounds of gold, or twice the quantity of bullion confiscated from the Aztecs a decade earlier. A royal edict issued on February 13, 1535, decreed that all gold and silver from Peru should be melted at the royal mints at Sevilla, Toledo, and Segovia.

When the Peruvians witnessed the Spaniards' greed for precious metals, they hid their mines and artifacts from the invaders. Later, they claimed that they had concealed the greater part of their treasures from the Spaniards. Indeed, were it not for the works later recovered from ancient burials by archaeologists (and unfortunately, grave robbers and looters) little would be known of the high level of sophistication achieved by metalsmiths of the pre-Hispanic era. Moreover, because the Spanish Crown customarily forbade or restricted native gold and silversmiths from practicing their crafts, certain aspects of pre-Hispanic metallurgical skills and techniques might have been lost had it not been for a remarkable discovery just thirteen years after the conquest of Peru. In 1545, a Spaniard's native servant discovered a veritable mountain of silver at Potosi, in present-day highland Bolivia. The treasures robbed from the Incan realm were but a trifle compared to the estimated 22,300 tons of silver produced by this mine alone before it became depleted around 1800.

Silver mining quickly became the most important economic activity in Viceregal Peru and Spaniards in particular amassed huge fortunes. The sheer abundance of bullion produced by Andean mines led to a lavish use of silver and gold among the colonists that achieved legendary proportions. The Church, building everywhere throughout the realm, was a primary client of silver and gold workshops. Ecclesiastical works large and small were commissioned by the Church, by the colonial government, and by wealthy colonists, who donated works to the Church. Additionally, the nouveau riche of Peru commissioned remarkable objects for their own use: bathtubs, chamber pots, and spittoons of raised silver, carriages completely covered in worked silver, and sumptuous private chapels. In the late 1600s, the visit of a Viceroy to Potosi was the occasion for a portion of the provincial city's streets to be paved with silver bricks. In Santa Cruz de la Sierra (Bolivia), the fabulously wealthy Velazco family is said to have eaten off plates of solid gold, while their servants ate off silver. Throughout the colonial period the use of silver tableware was common, china being more valuable and more rare than sliver.

The exploitation of the deposit at Potosi and the discovery of other rich veins led to the enslavement and death of hundreds of thousands of Indian miners. Yet the Spaniards' immediate need for experienced metalsmiths necessitated their opening the profession to natives. The ordenanzas that regulated all phases of metal working were less strictly enforced in Peru than in other parts of the colonies. Under pressure from the prestigious and influential Spanish silver- and goldsmiths' guilds, the Spanish Crown generally forbade non-white artisans from working precious metals. However, throughout the Viceregal period in the Andes, native, black, and mestizo (mixed-race) artisans worked silver and gold under master craftsmen who swarmed to Peru From all parts of Spain's Empire under the Hapsburgs. Many of the early European silversmiths were immigrants from northern Germany and Flanders. Non-Europeans' membership in the metalsmiths' guilds and cofradias (religious confraternities) was denied or restricted. However, in areas where the Indian population was able to maintain some autonomy, such as Cusco and the Lake Titicaca region, native silversmiths were generally able to practice their craft with fewer encumbrances than those imposed on their colleagues in Lima and other European-dominated cities.

At one point, the colonial city of Lima was one-third black, and many of its metalsmiths were either black or mulatto. This population, which included indentured or freed Spanish Moors as well as slaves brought directly to the Americas from West Africa, brought with them their own skills at working metals. Gold and silver filigree work, forging, and lost-wax casting techniques, for example, were associated with this population.

Workshops were established in the principal cities of the Viceroyalty: Potosi, Lima, Santiago de Chile, Buenos Aires, Tucumán, Chuquisaca (Sucre, Bolivia), Chuquiabo (La Paz), Trujillo, Arequipa, Cusco, Huamanga (Ayacucho, Peru), Quito, Cuenca, Popayán, Santa Fe de Bogotá, Caracas, and the Jesuit missions (reducciones) southern Bolivia and Paraguay. While many of the master plateros' names are known, Viceregal Peruvian silver is often unmarked. Assayers' marks are also absent from much of the plate, unlike in the Viceroyalty of New Spain (Mexico and Central America), where regulations governing metal purity and the collection of the Royal Fifth tax were more strictly enforced.

In terms of style, Viceregal Peruvian silver generally reflects the mestizaje of races that characterized the population of the region, and draws its influences from Native American, European, Black African and Moorish metalsmithing traditions. Over the three-hundred year colonial period, silver and gold work incorporated a variety of styles, forms, and regional differences. Nevertheless, work of the region shares three primary characteristics: a lavish use of the metal, an exuberance of style, and a high level of craftsmanship. The work is further distinguished by certain characteristic forms and decorative elements.

George Kubler, one of the most important of the present-day Latin American art historians, maintains that what distinguishes North and South American colonial period crafts from their European counterparts is their "strong surface… generously measured out from the marvelous abundance of raw materials in America. In Kubler's opinion, European silver of the period, while technically superb, presents a deliberately weak surface. Silversmiths strived for delicacy and fineness in their work. By contrast, even small silver and gold objects of the colonial period in South America are weighty and prepossessing. Silversmiths had an indulgent and enthusiastic clientele, abundant raw materials, and the assistance of cheap apprentices - factors that enabled them to sometimes lavish years on a single work. At least for the aristocracy and artisans, the colonial era in South America was generally an epoch of peace and prosperity. Given the right patron, no work was too costly, too difficult to craft, or too time consuming for a master platero and his workshop.

Viceregal Peruvian metalsmithing styles reflected European fashions, specifically those of Seville, although artistic currents lagged behind those of the mother country and tended to last longer, especially in rural areas. At the time of the Conquest, Spain's artistic center, Seville, was itself at the confluence of many artistic currents, chief among them being that of the Italian renaissance then predominant throughout Europe. Southern Spain, however, as the last Moorish bastion in Europe, was still somewhat under the sway of Arabic tastes. Plateresque style, which evolved in Seville and was popularized by the Arfes, a fifteenth-and sixteenth-century dynasty of German-originated silversmiths, incorporated many Arabic conventions in its characteristic elaborate foliage, floral bas-reliefs, and arabesques. Plateresco proved particularly popular in the Americas during the first two centuries of colonial rule.

By 1680, however, the initial purity of European design, as transferred to the Americas by master silversmiths from Seville, was supplanted in the Andes by a baroque style that differed in important ways from the European baroque. According to Bolivian art historian Teresa Gisbert, mestizo baroque as it evolved combined European and indigenous elements: the Greco-Roman classicism as interpreted by the renaissance, Christian tradition and iconography, pre-Columbian tradition and iconography, and tropical flora and fauna of the Andean region. In the Jesuit missions among Paraguay's Guarani Indians, a somewhat more subdued and delicate style of floral embossing evolved, a mestizo style sometimes referred to as Jesuit mission baroque.

Throughout the Andes, Indian and mestizo woodworkers, stone masons, weavers, and metalsmiths incorporated symbols and elements important in pre-Hispanic mythology into their work - monkeys, sirens, pumas, and vizcacha ( a rabbit-like rodent), as well as the sun, moon, and stars. Mestizo baroque, in which the entire surface of an object or an architectural detail was intricately worked and completely filled, appealed to both sophisticated Europeans and the unlettered indigenous masses. It was exuberant and elaborate, mysterious and complex, lavish and weighty. Although some clerics complained bitterly about the artisans' use of idolatrous pagan elements, many Europeans were oblivious to the special meaning that innocuous-seeming design details might hold for Andean Indians. The bell-shaped kantuta flower, for example, which appears everywhere in colonial-period crafts, symbolizes submission and has a special place in ancient Peruvian funeral customs, according to Alain Gheerbrant. The Virgin, saints, angels, and the crucified Christ, whom Indians persist in calling Taita Diós (Father God) were often depicted wearing the mascapaicha, a feathered headdress denoting Incan royalty.

Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the mestizo baroque remained popular. Metalsmiths created objects of elaborate repoussé and chiseled silver decorated altars, caskets, wall plaques, and so forth. At the same time, however, they often worked in a nearly antithetical style, creating weighty, elegant, simple, raised objects with smooth, unadorned surfaces that recalled pre-Conquest artisan creations. In architecture, Incan buildings were constructed of massive blocks of perfectly cut and joined stone that needed no embellishment. In weaving, textiles were often exquisitely simple, with a thin band of brilliant color to one side of a field of undyed, tightly spun, silky vicuña or alpaca wool. Carved and polished wooden objects derived their beauty from the strength of the raw material and a simple form, rather than chiseled details.

In colonial-period silver reflective of the elegant, restrained aesthetic, a diametric opposite of the frenzied horror vacui of the mestizo baroque, the beauty of an object relied upon the elegant simplicity of its form, and the exquisite craftsmanship with which it was wrought, rather than on the embellishment of the object. Chalices, censers, cups, bowls, plates, platters, tureens, and other objects were patiently raised and skillfully formed. The addition of a finely worked detail, a simple beaded border, a cast finial or handle, a rocker-engraved design, supplied the right measure of adornment to complete a piece. The sheen of such an object's surface, faintly stippled by hammer marks, reflects the pre-Hispanic predilection for broad, shiny, reflective surfaces (the previously mentioned sheet-metal aesthetic).

A third style that courses through Andean silversmithing during the colonial era is filigree, a technique often employed by Jewish and Arab jewelers in Portugal and Spain in the fifteenth century, although filigree objects were crafted throughout the Mediterranean as early as classical Greece and the Etruscan period. In South America, the pre-Conquest artisans of the Quimbaya, Sinú, and Muisca cultures of the northern Andes produced surface-decorated, cast-filigree objects in gold and tumbaga, but true filigree work, using draw-plated gold or sliver wire to create an openwork design, appears to have arrived with the Iberians. In colonial Peru, gold and sliver filigree was employed in jewelry making and to craft crowns and attributes for saint figures. In the late colonial era, some large pieces, primarily animal-form incense burners, were created in silver filigree. This work is associated with the Ayacucho region, and the Lanao family in particular.

Without a doubt, the most impressive examples of Viceregal Peruvian artistry in silver are to be found in the region's churches, convents, and chapels, where the surfaces of altars, altar retables, and tabernacles have been completely worked in the intricate, gleaming high relief that typifies the mestizo baroque style. These astonishing displays of floral and vegetal tracery, putti (often with Indian faces), animals, birds, people, and sacred scenes were meant to captivate and awe the beholder, whether a sophisticated Spanish noble or a barefoot Indian peasant.

Ecclesiastical silver of the colonial period was both decorative and functional, and in the case of altars, pulpits, baptismal fonts, baldachins, and processional pallets, sometimes architectural as well. Many objects were typical of items found in any European church: missal stands, candelabras, holy water fonts, pyxis, crucifixes, censers, ciboria, sanctuary lamps, sconces, reliquaries and monstrances (sometimes encrusted with huge jewels), cruets, and chalices.

Other ecclesiastical silver forms were either unique to or typical of the Andean region. In rural churches, chalices, like the ancient Andean Indian k'ero and cochas (beakers and two-handled bowls used for ceremonial drinking) were sometimes decorated with tassels of silver chain, coins, and beads. In highland Bolivia, mayas, usually triangular or oval plaques with elaborate repoussé floral motives, were placed behind vases of flowers. Navetas (incense vessels in shapes reminiscent of Spanish ships (naves) were companion pieces to incensarios (censers). Sahumadores (perfumers) were used in some churches, their liturgical rather than domestic purpose indicated by a small cross on the top of the vessel. Saint figures (santos), large or small, were sometimes cast completely or partially in silver. In colonial Ecuador, a polychrome mask of silver or lead was sometimes used as the face for a carved wooden saint figure. Polychrome wood santos were often adorned with silver crowns, miters, aureoles, radiants and potencias (rays) as well as silver attributes: a plate of eyes for Santa Lucia, a silver fish for San Rafael, silver wings for archangels, silver equestrian gear for Santiago's (St. James') steed, a pair of silver or gold sandals for the Niño Jesús, and so forth. Portable altars (retablos) were popular with travelers and itinerant clergy. While most of these triptychs were made of wood and gesso, some were exquisitely crafted in silver.

Throughout the Iberian world, including the South American colonies, the devout would decorate statues of the Virgin and the saints and their altars with small cast or sheet silver and gold votive offerings called milagros or ex-votos. These miniature animals, human figures, body parts, plants, and other objects were given to an image in thanks for an answered prayer, or in fulfillment of a vow (promesa). The faithful also adorned their favorite santos with gifts of jewelry, some of it very valuable and jewel-encrusted. Gold and silver earrings, necklaces (gargantillas), crosses, rosaries, and rosario necklaces were not only hung on the sacred image, but, in the Andes, jewelry and gold and silver decorations were also sometimes sewn onto the canvas painting of a beloved or miraculous image. The revered Virgin of Guadalupe of Chuquisaca (Sucre, Bolivia), painted by Fray Diego de Ocaña circa 1600, is festooned with gold and silver jewelry to the extent that only the hand and black face of the Virgin and her child are visible in a glittering sea of appliquéd silver and gold objects and pearls. The Virgin de Guápulo (Ecuador) is another image that has been thus decorated.

Religious jewelry was popular in the colonial period, an age of state-sponsored religion, public piety, and religiosity. Moreover, the wearing of precious metals and jewels in the form of religious adornment was a way for Spanish subjects to display their riches while not running afoul of the Sumptuary Laws that forbade ostentatious displays of wealth. In the Andes, one of the most unique forms of religious jewelry was the relicario, a devotional miniature painting or sculpture in a two-sided locket that was often of elegantly worked gold or silver. In the Americas, relicarios, which derived from the late medieval fashion of wearing saints' relics in lockets, rarely contained actual relics of the saints. Instead, the term "relic" referred to objects of sacred memory contained within the pendant casing. Crosses, those that were of gold and jewel-encrusted as well as those of simple silver, brass, or bronze, were worn by members of the clergy as well as lay men and women, especially those who were members of cofradias (religious confraternities).

Colonial silversmiths created a variety of domestic silver items similar to those used throughout Europe and her colonies: plates and platters, tableware, bowls, cups, tureens, candlesticks, tea and coffee pots, chocolateras, and so forth. The best of this silver is heavy, beautifully raised, and elegant. Colonial South American domestic silver is especially noted for certain forms unique to or specific to the period and the region. Sahumadores were perfumers in which incense or herbs were burned, the fragrant smoke serving to freshen clothing and rooms, and dispel disease, insects, odors, and harmful spirits. Like the Arabic perfumers popular on the Iberian Peninsula, South American sahumadores were often globular forms (squash, pomegranates, pineapples) atop a stem or they were in the shape of animals. Llamas, condors, doves, armadillos, deer, turkeys, and other native fauna were popular forms, especially in the late colonial period. Pava-hornillos, kettles containing coal chimneys that were used to boil water, were also crafted in the shape of animals and birds indigenous to the Andes. Cocateras were elaborate, footed boxes of hardwood and/or silver for the storing of coca leaves, used in every household for tea, chewing, and medicinal purposes. Yerberas served for the storage of yerba maté tea leaves and other herbs. Silver and gold maté cups on a footed base or pedestal were a popular household item in the southern Andes and Argentina, where to this day the drinking of maté tea is a daily ritual. Maté is most typically sipped through a bombilla, a specially crafted, fanciful metal straw or strainer with animal, floral or bird decoration. Mistureros were delicate baskets, usually of filigreed silver, that held the petals of fragrant flowers strewn to freshen clothing and linens and cast along the routes of religious processions. Paintings of the Virgin from the southern Andes sometimes depict her carrying a basket that appears to be a filigree misturero.

Jewelers crafted an infinite variety of personal items in gold and silver for the colonists: tobacco pouches (tabaqueras), strike-a-lights (yesqueros), ear spoons, hand-held spittoons, and so forth. On the pampas of Argentina, which was a part of the Viceroyalty of Peru until 1776, when it became a Viceroyalty of its own, gaucho cowboys and owners of the vast ranches (estancia) commissioned a variety of elaborate personal items in silver, gold, and gilded silver: wide, coin-studded belts with elaborate fastenings (rastra), daggers (dagas), knives (facones), and chambaos (cups of chiseled horn and silver). Throughout Spain's American colonies, equestrian silver was particularly elaborate and beautifully crafted; bridles, saddles, martingales, spurs, stirrups, harnesses, riding crops, and cups on a chain that could be lowered into a well or stream without the rider dismounting, and so forth.

In those areas where the indigenous culture maintained a strong presence: the rural highlands, and such urban centers as Cusco (the ancient Incan capital), Cuenca, Otavalo, Quito, Potosi, La Paz, Popayán, and Tucumán, Indian silversmiths continued to craft traditional items for natives and mestizos. Travelers carried chifles (oxen horns decorated with engraved bands of silver) that served for carrying liquids, especially pisco (brandy). Sometimes the chifle was completely crafted of silver in the shape of a horn. Bastones de manda, silver and chonta wood canes decorated with coins and personal talismans, were carried by village and clan headmen as badges of office. K'eros (beakers or tumblers), akillas (footed cups), and cochas (shallow, two-handled silver bowls, sometimes with a bull, condor, or llama in the center) were ceremonial drinking vessels based on pre-Hispanic forms. Silversmiths also produced a variety of traditional silver jewelry items. Tupus, pins used since ancient times by Andean women to fasten their shawls, were created in a variety of fanciful forms and designs. Cast miniatures were made for use as milagros or as dijes (charms) for women's rosario necklaces of trade beads, coins, and crosses, men's coca bags (bastones de manda), and other uses. In Chile, native silversmiths crafted traditional Araucanian silver jewelry up to modern times: headbands, collars, breastplates, large earrings, tupus, and other items of silver sheet, silver studs, and coins.

In sum, during Spain's three centuries of reign in the Andes, thousands of skilled metalsmiths worked the abundant silver and gold into a host of objects. Yet few examples of Viceregal Peruvian silver have survived into present times. The ages-old Spanish practice of melting down works of silver and gold to use as bullion in times of need or simply in order to craft something more fashionable is a primary reason for the disappearance of a significant part of the inventory of Spanish colonial silver and gold. The custom was hardly one invented by South American oligarchs when they fell on hard times. In 1475 Queen Isabel herself requested the churches of Castille to loan her half their plate, which was melted down to fund the War of Succession. Unfortunately, the practice continues into modern times. In 1979-1980, the Hunt brothers' unsuccessful attempt to manipulate the world silver market resulted in the destruction of unknown quantities of Spanish colonial silver and irreplaceable worked silver objects the world over.

Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century silver from all parts of the Americas, works that were usually simple and sometimes not very well crafted, is especially rare. However, scholars have recently discovered a few examples of Peruvian silver from this era in southwest Spain. Centuries ago, grateful and proud hidalgos sent these works home from the Americas as gifts to their home parishes, where they remain today.

Other factors contributed to the disappearance of colonial silver. In coastal areas, pirates frequently sacked churches, treasuries, and homes and carried off all valuable objects. Many ships in Spain's treasure fleet, which sailed annually for the mother country from Cartagena, Colombia, with hoards of Peruvian silver and gold, some of it disguised as anchors or hidden in tar barrels to avoid taxes, never made it to their destination and were sunk at sea by pirates or violent storms. The natural disasters that plague South America - volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, mudslides, floods, and fires - further reduced the colonial silver and gold inventory, as did civil unrest and especially the wars for independence from Spain that began in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. More objects were destroyed in the post-Independence era, when nearly constant warfare and civil strife plagued many parts of the Andes. Mobs, soldiers, thieves, and some clerics themselves sacked churches, convents, and the homes of the wealthy and made off with their valuables. Governments hostile to the church frequently confiscated church treasuries and the works were never seen again.

Poor conservation methods and ignorance have also taken a toll. The burial of silver, a method frequently resorted to by besieged households, often led to severe damage or destruction of the objects. Moreover, the crude cleaning methods commonly used in Latin America to polish tarnished silver: lime juice, sand, salt, blanco de Espafia (lead carbonate), and scouring pads, resulted in the erasure of detail and the scratching of delicate surfaces.

Little would remain today of the fine works created during the period of Spanish rule in South America were it not for the heirloom holdings of some families, the collections of a few dedicated, visionary collectors, and a small number of museums in South America, Europe, and the United States. Viceregal Peruvian silver collections are held in such US museums as: The Arizona Historical Society, Tucson; The Brooklyn Museum, The Denver Art Museum, The DeYoung Museum, San Francisco; The LA County Natural History Museum, The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe; The New Orleans Museum of Art, and The San Antonio Museum of Art, among others.

Increasing interest in historical silver from South America, as well as the continued abundance of the metal and its current low price, has led to a revival of colonial style silversmithing. Workshops in Lima, Arequipa, Cochabamba, and Buenos Aires in particular are producing remarkable reproductions of classic Peruvian silver, especially repoussé frames, candlesticks, sahumadores, cups, crosses, and relicarios. Unfortunately, many of these works are being artificially aged and sold as authentic colonial silver. Because the craftsmanship is often exceptionally fine, and silversmiths sometimes use historical methods to produce the works, only scientific analysis can determine the true age of a piece described as Spanish colonial silver. Caveat emptor.

Martha Egan is a specialist in Latin America colonial art. She resides in Corrales, New Mexico.

NOTES

1. Alain Gheerbrant, ed. The Incas: The Royal Commentaries of Garcilaso, the Inca (New York: Orion Press, 1963), 80.

2. Ibid, 151.

3. Samuel K. Lothrop, Metals from the Cenote of Sacrifice, Chicken Itza, Yucatan (Cambridge: Peabody Museum Memoirs, Vol. X, No. 2, 1952), 9.

4. Gheerbrant, The Incas, 153.

5. Taullard, Plateria sudamericana (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Peuser, 1947) 30.

6. Winterthur Conference Report, Spanish, French and English Traditions in the Colonial Silver of North America (Winterthur: The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, 1968) 11.

7. Teresa Gisbert, Iconografia y mitos indigenas en el arte (La Paz: Editoria Gisbert y Cia, S. A., 1980) 62-63.

8. Gheerbrant, The Incas, 395.

9. Peggy K. Liss, Isabel the Queen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) 119.

By Martha Egan

Metalsmith Magazine – 1996 Fall

In association with SNAG‘s

Metalsmith magazine, founded in 1980, is an award winning publication and the only magazine in America devoted to the metal arts.