Peru Exhibits The Painting of The Marriage of Beatriz Clara Coya to Martin Garcia De La Loyola At The Museo del Prado in Madrid
In the city of Madrid, the International Fair of Contemporary Art ARCO MADRID 2019 was held. Peru was the guest country, presenting for this exhibition a painting that was devised by the Jesuits of Cusco. It depicts two marriages that linked the Inca royal line with that of two patriarchs of the Society of Jesus. The first wedding (Cusco, 1572), joined the Spanish captain Martín García de Loyola, nephew of Saint Ignatius who defeated Túpac Amaru I—the last rebel Inca who was also converted by a Jesuit doctrine-maker before his execution—to the Inca princess Beatriz Clara Coya, daughter of Sayri Túpac and brother of the defeated monarch. The second marriage (Madrid, 1611) corresponds to the mestizo daughter of both, Ana María Lorenza de Loyola Coya to Juan Enríquez de Borja, grandson of Saint Francis of Borja.
The exhibition, although successful, caused comments from prestigious magazines such as the New York Times where Maya Jaggi, believes that “behind the harmony in the composition of the canvas is a history of defeat and devastation. In spite of it, the union marks the birth of the mestizo culture whose art had not been recognized until this moment.
Un regard to this canvas, Alba Choque Porras, presents an analysis of the life of Beatriz Clara Coya de Loyola, from a different point of view. She analyzed Clara Coya from the portrait of the famous marriage she contracted with Martin Garcia de Loyola who is in the church of the Company of Jesus of Cusco. The author, makes her interpretation through his costume, headdress, jewelry, etc of this image.
This image of the last princess of Tahuantinsuyo, is part of a collective portrait and is the most important testimony of the position and transcendence of the original elites during the Viceroyalty of Peru. In seventeenth-century Viceregal Peru, the portrait of the Inca nobles was used for two purposes: the first for political purposes, to control and persuade the indigenous masses themselves, who saw in these representations the followers of the leaders of the Incas; and the second was to highlight their own class privileges, to reaffirm their belonging to the Inca nobility against the new Spanish government.
There is a whole history behind this canvas, which leads us to rethink our past and helps us understand what happened in the colonial era.
Today the canvas returned to the Museum of Osma and for its return a special ceremony was held at the museum facilities.
