Abstract

This article discusses the production conditions of colonial Potosí iconography, particularly that elaborated by architects who knew the Villa Rica first-hand, either as travelers or as residents of the city. At the crossing between the field of visual culture and the reflection on genres and textual typologies, a review of images that emerged from the xvi to the xvii centuries is proposed. Such images depict the fixation of a certain way of seeing. Against the common determination of addressing conventional forms of representation of Potosí and its Cerro Rico, a reiterated encounter with a shared experience of the surrounding space is shown as the reason for the repetition of these images. The result, represented in a double conical profile of Cerro Rico and Huayna Potosí (or little Potosí), and the presence of a small conical hill located to the right of the observer’s vision range, accounts for communication exercises of a shared and familiar experience