Abstract

In late seventeenth-century Cusco the Escuela Cusqueña experimented a relevant change of style. This paper will argue that this transformation process, so-called "mestizo style/' is extremely related to two apparently unconnected events. The first one refers to the separation of Spanish and native artists from the guild structure; the second revolves around the emergence of a subversive movement opposed to the colonial government based on Christian millenarianism and eschatological Andean currents of thought. Through the analysis of the iconographic program of the painting La profecía by Juan Zapaca Inca and his circle of painters, this paper will interwove the events related to the guild's fracture and the emergence of this anti-government movement with the iconographic program of the painting. Within this context, attention will be paid toa visual narrative that reinterprets European models, an understanding of representation that breaks chronological evolution, and the introduction of a mythical time where the biblical paradise transforms in an Andean Arcadia with sibyls, archangels and prophets announcing the profound renewal of the present world.