The human body in religious painting in the Andes of Cusco

In many of the paintings covered in this article, the human body plays a secondary role in clothing, accoutrements, pose and other defining attributes of one’s identity. Indeed, as many of the paintings of the avocations of the Virgin Mary, Saints and archangels have shown us.

Some Facts of Cusqueñian Paintings:

Cusqueñian Artists took great care in the deployment of patterns, textures, and small details when representing their clothes and accessories.
Clothing often took center stage in these paintings and enabled viewers to easily identify particular religious figures based on what they wore, what they were holding in their hands and how they were posed.
There is an aesthetic emphasis on clothing May relate to widespread Andean Beliefs in the sacredness of cloth, which has roots in the pre-Columbian era and continued through the colonial period and into the present Day.
Rarely do facial features or Expressions play a roll in facilitating one´s interpretation of cusqueñan paintings From this Period.
The few instances where the human body and face were accorded special attention are in depictions of martyrdom in which the body is subjected to different forms of torture or disfigurement

These examples are important for providing a rare window onto the different ways that Andean artists dealt explicitly with the human form!

The Local painter is Cusco also merit attention in light of the distinct artistic climate within which artists worked on the other hand in Europe, artists of the Renaissance and Baroque periods relied on human models that posed in the nude and classical sculptures or plaster casts that rendered the body with close attention to proportion and Human Anatomy some of them even visited Morgues in order to explore the inner workings of the human body to achieve anatomical perfection in the depiction of the human form in an infinite variety of positions.

On the Andes however copies of Greek and Roman sculptures we’re not readly available to artists Aunt no documental are pictorial evidence exists that would suggest that artists utilized live models. Ended nudity in colonial andean art is almost completely absent with a few exceptions , including the paintings of Mary Magdalene and the partial nudity of Agatha of Sicily
the paintings in this section demonstrate the different strategies that andean artists used in depicting the human body, in ways that would convey the nature of the martyrdom while still staying within the bounds of propriety.