Art and Vision in the Inca Empire
Andeans and Europeans at Cajamarca

This book offers a new, art-historical interpretation of pre-contact Inca culture and power and includes over sixty color images.

Adam Herring (Author)

9781107094369, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 22 May 2015

258 pages, 10 b/w illus. 61 colour illus. 2 maps
26.2 x 18.6 x 1.8 cm, 0.75 kg

In 1500 CE, the Inca empire covered most of South America's Andean region. The empire's leaders first met Europeans on November 15, 1532, when a large Inca army confronted Francisco Pizarro's band of adventurers in the highland Andean valley of Cajamarca, Peru. At few other times in its history would the Inca royal leadership so aggressively showcase its moral authority and political power. Glittering and truculent, what Europeans witnessed at Inca Cajamarca compels revised understandings of pre-contact Inca visual art, spatial practice, and bodily expression. This book takes a fresh look at the encounter at Cajamarca, using the episode to offer a new, art-historical interpretation of pre-contact Inca culture and power. Adam Herring's study offers close readings of Inca and Andean art in a variety of media: architecture and landscape, geoglyphs, sculpture, textiles, ceramics, featherwork and metalwork. The volume is richly illustrated with over sixty color images.

1. Llamas and the logic of the gaze
2. Under Atawallpa's gaze
3. Chessboard landscape
4. Qori: a place in the sun
Conclusion: fount of beauty.

Subject Areas: Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], History of the Americas [HBJK], Art of indigenous peoples [ACBK], History of art / art & design styles [AC]