Pious coppers. Legacies and traditions in Andean Colonial painting on metal

GABRIELA SIRACUSANO

Londres

Simposio; Spain and the Hispanic World Symposium: cross-cultural exchanges Royal Academy Symposium. March 24th, London, 2023; 2023

Royal Academy of Sciences

In Spanish language the concept of legacy holds several meanings of origin. On the one hand, it is associated with what someone decides to give to another in their will, that is, something whose relative value deserves to be transferred and treasured by the recipient. In ancient Rome, the title of legatus was generally granted by the Senate and served the purpose of representing imperial power and administering on behalf of the emperor or another hierarchy in other spaces outside Rome. Once the papal power was established, the legate functioned as an ambassador of the Supreme Pontiff to execute certain tasks or negotiations on his behalf in distant territories. Thinking today about the scope of a legacy in cultural terms, particularly that which is usually recognized between the Iberian metropolis and its distant territories, forces us to reconsider the terms of this binomial and rethink how far this consideration works. The power of the Hispanic tradition could often be imposed in logics in which the weight of the legacy of origin, autochthonous, vanished, obliterated or was obscured when categories of analysis that could hardly fit were applied. The ambition to highlight the absence of great masters such as Velázquez, Murillo or Martinez Montañés, often bloked the possibility of recognizing the ways in which this artistic production was developed, of identifying the value and reasons for the anonymity of many pieces, the degree of originality and creativity in the new industries, and even the recognition of those who had excelled in that dynamic.