Historia y Sociedad (Jul 2018)
Multicultural Encounter in the Art of Pasto Varnish or the Lacquer from the Virreinato del Perú
Abstract
Among the multiple influences and sources of inspiration that may have sparked the development of the art of Pasto varnish, this paper focuses particularly on those belonging to the Japanese export lacquer known as namban style (c.1580-c.1630). For that purpose, we analyze a Pasto varnish coffer featuring interesting iconographies and inscriptions, and we investigate the possible influences of Japanese lacquer and the erudite world of emblems and moralizing books —widely developed in Spain throughout the sixteenth and seventieth centuries— in the art of Pasto varnish. To complete the iconographic analysis, we examine images based on the Quechua culture, and more specifically, the Amaru serpent. A comparative method was used, since it allowed us to establish two types of parallels: on the one hand, to contrast the techniques and decorative motifs of the namban lacquer with the Pasto varnish; and on the other, to compare the inscriptions and images of the Pasto varnish with Spanish images and emblems dating back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The study highlights the fact that the Pasto varnish is representative of the great capacity of the American viceroyalties to absorb different cultures, thus demonstrating that —at the material level, in this case— they were a consequence of the fusion between European, Asian and Indigenous cultures that took place in the New World. We conclude that, in spite of the absence of documentary evidences of settlements of varnish artisans in the central Andes and of the styles cultivated there, the Pasto varnish coffer analyzed —bearing the image of Amaru— is as a significant proof that could lead to future in-depth research about the possible presence and elaboration of this mixed technique in the aforesaid region.
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