Drawings of the twelve Incas of Peru, ca. 1830

Drawings, in color, of the twelve Incas of Peru. Brought to the United States about 1830. Each drawing contains either at the top or the bottom of the page, a short summary of the reign of the Inca. Possibly from the work of Huamán Poma de Awala. [See: Natural History Magazine, Aug-Sept, and Oct, 1961].

Title/description created by Clevy Lloyd Strout, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Spanish, University of Tulsa, 1962.

Around 1750, an artist in Peru created a series of portraits of former lncan rulers of this region. Each depicts a single member of the nobility standing in royal dress, with distinctive local landforms and lncan architecture in the background. By depicting lncans' status and power before their conquest by Spain, such portraits served as sources of pride for later audiences. This work is from a 19th-century set of small paintings copying the earlier series.