Quadro del Peru

The Quadro’s primary author was José Ignacio de Lequanda (Vizcaya 1748 – Cadiz 1800). The illustrations were made by Louis Thiebaut from many sources, including the so-called Trujillo del Perú Codex (1782–85) and the Malaspina Expedition (1789-1794). Lequanda resided for most of his productive life in Lima, where he contributed to the Mercurio Peruano (1791–94). The material of the Quadro is oil on canvas but it is distinguished by its unusual dimensions (331 cm × 118 cm) and composition: 195 scenes with 381 figures surrounded by explanatory text. In addition, the framed canvas is crowned and gilded with twin cornucopias graced by a sheaf of arrows, symbolising the bounty or ‘treasure’ of the New World under Hispanic Monarchy. The two central geographical images (an east-up map of central Peru, and below it a profile view of the rich mines at Hualgayoc) form an axis that represents the new economic centre of 18th-century Peru, which had shifted from Potosí to the region adjacent to Lima. The central region united three major ecological and productive zones. In the Quadro, this vertical economic geography is represented by the unfolding of a concentric sequence of niches populated by fishes and amphibians, small and large quadrupeds, simians, and humans. The latter is divided in two classes, ‘civilised’ (or coastal and highland) and ‘savage’ (or Amazonian), with each composed of 16 ‘nations’. Birds occupy the perimeter of the Quadro, seemingly lifting the entire canvas on their wings. In a word, the Quadro is a tableau that reveals in a synoptic visual field what today we call ‘biodiversity’ but which in enlightened circles of the times was called ‘the idea of Peru.’ This ‘idea’ held that Peru was a mirror of the universe and the crown jewel of Hispanic Empire.