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The late-seventeenth-century Peruvian painting Matrimonio de Garcia de Loyola con gusta Beatriz (fig. 1) commemorates two marriages: that of Nusta (or Princess) Beatriz Clara Coya, the last legitimate heir to the Inka throne, to Don Martin Garcia de Loyola, the grandnephew of San Ignacio de Loyola (Saint Ignatius Loyola); and that of their daughter, Ana Maria Lorenza, to the grandson of San Francisco de Borja (Saint Francis Borgia). By her marriage, Beatriz welds the royal Inka line with that of the founders of the Jesuit order, an act which extinguishes the royal indigenous lineage as an independent force and reifies the myth that the Jesuits are the legitimate successors of that indigenous lineage. Beatriz and Don Martin directly meet the gaze of the spectator, fostering the illusion that this merging of Inkaic and Spanish/Christian culture is an equal and consensual union, as their marriage is alleged to be-an illusion which belies the forced nature of both the marriage and the union of cultures. Beatriz was, in fact, a war trophy. She was raped at age eight by a powerful Spanish colonist in a secretive betrothal/marriage ceremony in an attempt to gain control of her lands, title, and wealth. Later she was wed by order of the Peruvian viceroy to Don Martin as the prize for his capture of her uncle, the rebel Inka Tupac Amaru.1
The essays in this volume address issues of collective participation in a shared environment and culture. This contribution asks, How is the reality of that shared environment shaped by the painted image? How does collective participation in the construction of a fictional past shape the present? How does this dance of desire configure the actual performance of daily life? How are social roles cast and recast, imposed and implied, as each group visualizes itself in its image, that illusionary mask contained within the pictorial frame, the mask which drives colonial reality? By examining one colonial painting, its pendant, and multiple copies, this essay will explore the multivocal aspects of Matrimonio as an expression of the political and social pretensions of individuals and institutions, how those desires shaped the composition and reception of the painting; and how, in turn, the painting shaped colonial reality.
Colonial society is, by its very...