La consistencia del cuadro colonial (The consistency of the colonial painting)

Knowing what a painting looks like implies not only observing and analyzing what is represented but also being able to touch and manipulate an object, to access its sides and its reverse. Answering why and for what purpose a painting is a way it is, is only possible if we establish connections between the theory of pictorial representation and the development of the necessary techniques to comply, or not, with those theoretical principles. In this book, based on the analysis of 251 paintings from Cusco in the 17th and 18th centuries, a set of singular material features emerge, which even if they bear significant similarities with European frames of reference, also constitute a deeply conceptual and cultural break with that model. The author, questioning the categories of analysis traditionally applied to these paintings, concludes that the colonial painting from Cusco is not exactly a painting, but is constituted as another modality of production and presentation of the sacred in the Andean colonial space. A material entity that signifies a liberation rooted in the remnants that establish the consistency of its transformation.