Representations of the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega by José Sabogal

Abstract

Garcilaso de la Vega left Peru in 1560 and lived in Spain for more than a half century. Visual artist José Sabogal (1888-1956) returned to Peru after spending years in Europe and Argentina. First he moved to Cuzco, where the Inca was born, and then he became the herald of Indigenism toward the end of the 1920s. Sabogal was instrumental in dignifying popular art as cultural patrimony. From a youthful expressionism he turned to allegorical representation. It is at this stage of his trajectory when he painted a fresco of Garcilaso. In 1949 he created the best known painting (lienzo) of the Inca. I supplement the iconographic analysis with the iconological one in order to compare the features of the chronicler and the painter, revealing Sabogal’s implicit message.