Colonial Pottery

Room 3, Vitrine 28

Ceramic
Peruvian Northern Coast
Conquest Epoch (1532 AD)
ML010870, ML017536, ML017537, ML031857

With the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors elements from European culture were introduced into Andean art.

At first the ceramics produced echoed the Inca designs of double-chamber, double spout and bridge vessels. European influence in these pieces can be seen in the yellow, brown or green glaze which was produced with a lead varnish and higher temperature kilns. Ceramics that imitated the metal pans of Europe were also produced.

One of the subjects represented in pre-Columbian art is the feline attacking a deer or a man carrying a subdued deer. After the Spanish conquest a variation on this theme appeared: a powerful man carrying a feline. For the first time in Andean art the feline god appears overpowered and defeated as if it were a deer, thereby reflecting the effect upon indigenous religious beliefs of the process known as the extirpation of idolatries.