In her monograph regarding the colonial Andean transition from three-dimensional statues of Christ and the Virgin Mary to two-dimensional imagery, Maya Stanfield-Mazzi argues that Andean beliefs became interwoven with Christian religiosity starting in the sixteenth century. Based on the idea that all Andean deities were given a physical form, the author asserts that Christian divine imagery stepped into a vacuum created by the colonial evangelical destruction of mummies and huacas (Andean sacred figures). Catholic imagery, such as the Christ of the Earthquakes credited with stopping tremors, grew even in the former Inca capital of Cusco. As a result, Stanfield-Mazzi concludes, “it is nearly impossible to isolate any purely non-Christian Andean beliefs, just as it is difficult to find Christian practices not informed by the Andean tradition” (177).
The strength of Stanfield-Mazzi's book lies in her meticulous approach to material transformation. She asserts that with Spanish colonization, a new, independent artistic tradition sprung up in the Andes “under the imperative of visualizing the Christian religion” (2). By analyzing images, bultos (statues), and miracle narratives Stanfield-Mazzi explains how Christian imagery became rooted in Andean realities. Painting and other visual imagery was useful to Andean parishioners who “must have memorized” prayers phonetically, but was based, as was the Virgin of Pomata, on Spanish sculpture of the late Renaissance (67) as well as the inspirations of regional Spanish-trained artists. Stanfield-Mazzi argues that less-accomplished Spanish or mestizo artists trained in the peninsular style (such as those active in mining city of Potosí) may have created the statue. In contrast, Francisco Tito Yupanqui, a descendant of Inca colonists around Lake Titicaca, created the Virgin of Copacabana statute and supposedly engaged in Christian religious instruction. Like other native men who became sculptors by the late sixteenth century, Tito Yupanqui was a central participant in transforming the Christian Andes. Illustrating the integration of European aesthetic into Andean religiosity, Stanfield-Mazzi explains how Andeans donated European textiles to the saint in exchange for miracle work in a process of re-sacralization of the landscape, deepening scholarly knowledge of the Andeans who participated in the evangelization of the Americas.
Proving the popularity of Andean Catholicism, Stanfield-Mazzi points to the survival, even to the present, of cults to colonial statues such as Christ of the Earthquakes, and other regionally specific images. By the late sixteenth century, the statues were working local miracles such as bringing back the dead, lighting their own lamps, and changing their facial expressions (119). The relationship between the viewers and the deity drew on European ideas of loyalty and worship as well as Andean reciprocity, with the practice of miracle painting as a form of the devoted's gratitude. In statue painting, created as early as the 1670s in Cusco and into the eighteenth century in Bolivia and Ecuador, rather than looking up to a statue, these works “usually show a beneficiary looking up at a vision of the statue” (139). While European antecedents were evident, by the late seventeenth century, the statue painting became a uniquely Andean form (144). In addition to signaling devotion with images of roses, statue paintings of the Virgin of the Rosary also included the local cantuta flower as well as feathers and colors included in the paintings of the Virgin of Pomata to convey Christian Andean meanings as well as local identities (158). The illumination (provided by mirrors, gold, and silverwork) of the statues “communicate the earthly and supernatural qualities of Christ and Mary as manifested at specific sites in the Andes” (167) including domestic spaces pointing to how Catholicism became rooted in local and regional practices.
However, in order to ground her assertion that colonial Catholic images had bicultural resonance (113), Stanfield-Mazzi needed to provide the perspective of the local community. How did Andeans who populated the scholarly works of Kenneth Mills, Irene Silverblatt, and Sabine MacCormack engage with the material transformations of the sacred landscape described by Stanfield-Mazzi? By moving away from the passive voice and toward (even hypothetical) suppositions of causes and effects grounded in Andean historical understandings of terrain and ideology (including distinguishing Andean from Inca), Stanfield-Mazzi could have more successfully explained how Andeans transformed their world into Catholicism.
Stanfield-Mazzi's analysis is at its best when she connects material evidence with proof of specific historical agency. She argues that the Andean goddess Copacabana was subsumed and revised into the imagery of the Virgin (41) while Andeans employed previous materials for Christian worship to create an early Christian visual culture that included European and local elements. Focusing on the more gradual Dominican conversion techniques in Pomata (Chucuito) as well as their intentions to protect native populations from the Potosi mita (a forced colonial labor service), Stanfield-Mazzi argues that the initial stage of reconfiguration was incomplete as “material and visual traces of native religion were slowly disappearing” (56). In a similar vein, Stanfield-Mazzi emphasizes the “invisible” hybrid nature of Cusco's cathedral that was built by native artisans with former Inca materials with the assistance of the local artists. With this example and others, she describes how European Renaissance elements meshed with Andean traditions. Stanfield-Mazzi successfully confronts popular myths such as one that circulated regionally about a statue that had supposedly been sent by the Spanish king as well as the Sevillian origin of a nearby Christ image in the Andean town Mollepata. In doing so, she emphasizes the local construction of these Catholic saints. In this way, Stanfield-Mazzi joins scholars such as Gabriela Ramos, Juan Carlos Estenssoro Fuchs, and others in exploring how Andeans brought Christianity to the Andes.
