Susan Webster’s latest book, Finding Caspicara: Double Identities, Hidden Figures, and the Commerce of Sculpture in Colonial Quito, was born out of the chance discovery of papers related to Manuel Caspicara, one of colonial Quito’s most heralded—and yet mysterious—Indigenous sculptors. Although the papers are relatively limited in scope, they enabled Webster to strip away the myths that had accrued around Caspicara over the centuries and produce the first firm attribution of an artwork to the sculptor to date. In truth, however, the book is about much more than a single artist. It is, as its subtitle suggests, an account of how sculptures were made, sold, and integrated into the ritual lives of those living in late-colonial Quito and the broader Andean region.
The book begins with a detailed account of how Caspicara was invented in art historical literature by intellectuals fueled by nationalist sentiment or a desire to increase the value of their collections. In the second chapter Webster reminds readers that although many scholars point to the polychrome surface of dozens of statues in Quito to anchor their attribution to Caspicara, polychrome statues were carved and painted by entirely different artists during the viceregal period.
The third chapter, the strongest of the book, delves further into the colonial taller (workshop) and brings Caspicara into greater focus by unpacking the two previously published archival accounts that mention the artist by name. Reading the documents against the grain, Webster shows that the sources describe Caspicara not as an independent and triumphant master artist, as we might have hoped, but instead as a laborer forced to work within the workshop of a Creole artist (Don Josef Riofrío) who leveraged his power and debt peonage to entrap and exploit Indigenous and Mulatto artists in Quito. This snapshot of Caspicara ensnared within the actual systems of colonialism are enough to burst the historiographic bubble that authors had inflated around the sculptor over the last two centuries.
In the next few chapters, Webster offers a foundation upon which a new, more accurate image of the artist could be reconstructed. The fourth chapter detours away from Caspicara to introduce readers to the technical aspects of creating sculpted body parts (hands, feet, busts, masks) that patrons purchased and assembled into life-size statues. In the fifth chapter Webster reveals why this aspect of the craft matters. Using previously unknown letters from the archive, she unfurls the central story of the book—the commissioning of a sculpted work (the bust of Jesús Nazareno) from Caspicara by Miguel Josef de Valencia and his nephew Antonio Tejada. Webster pieces back together Valencia’s demands and the artistic and commercial networks that helped to deliver the Jesús Nazareno to him in the city of Popoyán, where he integrated it and the other statues he purchased into confraternal rituals. Using a series of historical accounts and formal analysis, Webster ultimately tracks down the statue in Popoyán, and in so doing, delivers the first artwork we are certain to have been created by Caspicara. This achievement, made possible by tireless work in the archives and determined fieldwork in Popoyán, serves as a triumphant apex for the book.
The final three chapters resituate the Jesús Nazareno within its historical context. Webster begins by examining statues that may have inspired its creation, then shifts focus to four copies of the work, which she attributes to Caspicara and other artists following its completion. She next revisits archival documents to trace the history of additional statues Valencia had created in Quito and later shipped to Popoyán. In the ninth chapter, Webster explores the Holy Week processional rituals for which most of the statues discussed in the book were originally made. Returning to the theme of her earlier book, Art and Ritual in Golden Age Spain, she offers fresh insights from the perspective of the New World.
Finding Caspicara offers readers a rich trove of facts and historical narratives that deliver them to late colonial Quito. At times, the back and forth between Caspicara and the broader artistic and ritual context detracts from the book’s flow, and less expert readers might find some of the deep dives into the historiography, sculptural antecedents, or search for copies to move slowly. Ultimately, however, Webster’s commitment to detailed analysis and context delivers a book that not only transforms our understanding of Caspicara and his oeuvre, but also the broader field of colonial polychrome sculpture. Her careful and thorough analysis, as well as her eloquent assessment of many of the issues that have held back previous scholarship on polychrome sculpture (which is outlined particularly well in chapter nine), should inspire others to pick up where she left off. Ultimately, this book is a must read for all of those who are interested in Caspicara, Quito, or polychrome sculpture across the Spanish empire.
