Hanaq Pachap means “land of above” or “heaven” in Quechua, the language of the Inca. The Quechua word that defines heaven as a sacred place also serves as a thread that weaves through the devotional works created by the indigenous guilds of Viceregal Peru, providing windows into the religious practices that emerged after the Spanish conquest and reconfigured European visual sources to reflect a new form of Indigenous Catholicism. The conquest and evangelization of the Americas was, and still is, composed of episodes of confrontation and peace, oppression and submission, but also of deep religiosity, collaboration, solidarity, creativity, and syncretism.

The works on view here also express the aesthetic sensibility and religious fervor of the colonized Indigenous communities of the Andean highlands. The artists, most of them unknown Indigenous painters, are grouped in what art historians have named the Cusco School, which split from the European-led painters’ guild and established their own ateliers. Their visual language consists mainly of devotional works inspired by European engravings, shallow perspectives, vibrant colors, the inclusion of local flora and fauna, and richly gilded vestments on the figures inspired in contemporary Spanish colonial fashions.

At first glance, these icons evidence the deep Christian religiosity that emerged among the Indigenous populations after the Conquest. A closer reading, however, unveils embedded Inca religious beliefs and ritual practices that pervaded in the viceregal period, but were re-contextualized and adapted to Catholicism.