Diego Quispe Tito

DIEGO QUISPE TITO (Cuzco, Peru, 1611 - 1681)
"The Trinity".
Oil on canvas partially gilded. Relined.
It preserves the signature with the initials.
Measurements: 152 x 100 cm.
In this Trinity, Diego Quispe Tito, capital figure of the Cuzco School and one of the most singular artists of the Andean baroque, displays a theological vision of great symbolic power and careful plastic invention. The work represents the Trinitarian mystery under a rare and doctrinally complex iconography: God the Father holds the cross on which the crucified Christ hangs, while the dove of the Holy Spirit hovers between the two, configuring a vertical and solemn image that emphasizes the substantial unity of the three divine persons. The golden triangle framing the head of the Father visually reinforces the dogma, turning geometry into an affirmation of faith.
The composition, of marked frontality and hieratism, is inscribed in the counter-reformist tradition that promoted images that were clear in their message and effective in their devotional impact. However, far from limiting himself to repeating European models, Quispe Tito reworked the sources, particularly the Flemish engravings that circulated profusely in the viceroyalty, to endow them with a sensibility of his own. The golden background and geometric motifs that structure the upper space evoke a timeless and sacred, almost iconic dimension, while the broad landscape below, with walled cities, hills and meticulously described vegetation, introduces the painter's characteristic stamp: an exuberant and detailed nature that connects the celestial with the created world.
The body of Christ, with its stylized anatomy and soft luminous modeling, still reveals Mannerist echoes in its elegant elongation, a trait that refers to the artist's first period. Nevertheless, the textile richness of the pluvial mantle of God the Father, with its meticulous embroidery and golden sparkles, as well as the almost miniaturist attention to ornamental details, belong to the master's maturity, when his style emancipates itself from local conventions to assert a language of its own. The partial gilding of the canvas intensifies the sacral dimension and gives the pictorial surface a precious character, close to sumptuary art.
Diego Quispe Tito, of probable indigenous noble origin, began his pictorial activity around 1627 and achieved great prestige in Cusco from the 1660s, especially for the cycles made for the temple of San Sebastián. His signature in 1667 - "Quispi Tito inga inbentó"- explicitly vindicates his inventive capacity and his cultured condition, in a gesture of authorial affirmation unusual in the Andean viceroyalty. A disciple in the tradition of Gregorio Gamarra, and indirect heir of Bernardo Bitti, he knew, however, how to distance himself from the dominant style to inaugurate a new sensibility, where the great landscapes populated with flora and fauna acquire prominence and become emblematic of Cuzco painting.