Estudio iconográfico de la representación del felino en los queros o vasos ceremoniales incas del Museo de América de Madrid

Abstract

El Quero is a ceremonial vase, mainly in the shape of an inverted bell, a ceremonial vessel for parties, rituals, libations or to seal pacts and alliances, where chicha or aqha was placed, a drink of varying alcoholic strength resulting from the non-distilled fermentation of corn. Its use occurred in pre-Columbian societies and persist in the Viceroyalty of Peru associated with the image of the descendants of Inca lineage. They wanted to see themselves as heirs of the Incario and would use the queros in public as part of their propaganda to be direct political connectors of their ancestry. Important representation will be that of the feline: to be mythical present in all pre-Columbian cultures. Jaguars and pumas were protective and benevolent divinities and at the same time a devastating being, if they were not given rites and sacrifices to appease their anger, the Incas had it as their main totem. The new viceregal order brings with it a new way of capturing the image, the European painting brought by Spain showed in a naturalistic way the themes related to evangelization, the civil and monarchical portrait, the history painting and the allegorical one; all this will rethink the reasons present in the queros. The face of the quero was used to introduce figurative motifs easily expressing histories and triumphs of the Incario, rites and divinities, adding one more resource: color. The ancient Inca symbols were not discarded, but fused to the new way of representing the thought of an Inca elite who was not resigned to losing their quotas of power in the Viceroyalty. OBJECTIVES OF THE THESIS: • Demonstrate the preponderance of the image of the feline in the Inca queros made in the Viceroyalty of Peru, its scope, evolution and formal artistic association. • To show the reason why the elite of descendants of the Incas and caciques in the viceregal context ordered to place the image of the feline on the queros. • Determine if the object of study turned out to be a model of cultural resistance to the appearance of new Western visual models and how this conditioning took place. METHODOLOGY A record of bibliographic and archival information was made, from macro study to a specific sample of analysis. It was considered sources from zoology, botany, geology, geography, among others, for the reasons analyzed. As well as compilation and comparison with ethnographic studies, religious sciences, the political and social problems of those who demanded such pieces, to understand the survival of certain artistic practices and techniques and models of representation. Then the iconographic analysis was given, adding sociological or formalist points depending on what the object of study in each case. The study included themes or motifs represented to finally make a catalog of the main pieces. CONCLUSIONS • The feline was an important character present in the queros and around the image of the elite. Nobles and curacas use their image to show themselves as agents of power in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. • The feline divinity subsisted through the quero painted with several of the qualities of the pre-Columbian world. Its characteristics were extended by the heraldic motives, relations with other divinities and narrative historical themes. • The painting of the queros maintains a relationship with that of canvas during the 17th and 18th centuries, they share models of representation. It is probable that the Querocamayoc, painters of wood, had training in the treatment of Western painting. Consolidating the proposal that the technique of the painting of the queros marks a mode of cultural resistance.