Sacsayhuaman in Early Modernity: the Invention of New Ancient Edifices

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Amidst the hills encircling Cuzco, a monument of colossal magnitude emerges, Sacsayhuaman. From its heights, the modern city can be observed. Cuzco was built upon the remnants of the pre-Columbian Inca main urban center; the modern city melds ancient foundations with transatlantic models. Yet, the edifice of Sacsayhuaman stands apart, and its presence appears untouched by the currents of modernization. Silently fading, abandoned, and depleted. Over time, it has converted from a living fortress into an Inca ruin, a relic of the past. Now an archaeological site, it stands side by side with Machu Picchu, beckoning global tourism to witness the timeless splendor of the Inca civilization.¹

This essay will examine the various ways in which art and history of the Early Modern period interpreted the Sacsayhuaman Inca building from Cuzco. By studying Italian, Andean, and Spanish visual and written sources, I analyze how this pre-Columbian edifice was conceptualized, described, narrated, and depicted. My main objective is to reveal how the reception of non-Western material culture influenced Early Modern art historical and architectural thought and provided the principles for the invention of new ancient edifices. I argue that its transformations depended also on the parallel invention of the Inca King, a royal, yet indigenous figure from the ancient past who was fundamental to Early Modern imaginings of Andean history. Finally, I will consider the implications of our efforts to include Sacsayhuaman in the database of the “Census of Antique Works of Art and Architecture Known in the Renaissance,” raising questions about how we systematize and categorize early modern antiquarian knowledge.

I will explore the Early Modern reception of Sacsayhuaman and the different cultural histories of its interpretation in three different art historical and intellectual contexts: Giovanni Battista Ramusio’s Delle navigationi et viaggi (1565), Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala’s Nueva Corónica y Buen Gobierno (1615), and Llano Zapata’s Epítome cronológico o Idea general del Peru (1778). Each exemplifies how the same building is part of very different histories of the reception of indigenous material culture.

Vitruvius, Serlio and the Incas: Architectural Thought in the Spanish Cities of Peru

The towering figure of the Roman architect Vitruvius stands at the center of the reception of ancient architecture in the Renaissance. Around Vitruvius the different modes for interacting with ancient architecture orbited: early modern translation and printing of The Ten Books on Architecture (in Latin first in 1487 and in Italian first in 1521), the study of ruins and ancient vestiges, new architectural structures built according to Roman models, and even innovative reflections on the relationship between the human body and its space, such as Leonardo da Vinci’s “Vitruvian man.” ^⁠The Early Modern reception of ancient architecture has been conceived according to these principles, created in Renaissance Italy. They offered a way to explain the material culture of the past and to engage with ancient buildings to create new architecture in their present. It is beyond discussion that Renaissance imaginings of Rome created a paradigm for the interpretation of antiquity. Because of the reach of their ideas, hand in hand with early modern European overseas expansion and transcontinental Christian evangelization, this mode of relating to the material culture of the past could be considered a global phenomenon. However, a new perspective on our art-historical understanding of ancient architecture can be traced when shifting geographies to the Americas.²

^⁠In a different geography, this art and intellectual history is accompanied by different phenomena and permits highlighting other aspects of the reception of antiquity. Exchanging the Vitruvian man for another Early Modern invention of an ideal figure, the Inca King, drives our attention to another body of architectural buildings: the pre-Columbian constructions of the Andes (known in the Early Modern period as Peru). I focus only on the Sacsayhuaman edifice in Cuzco, highlighting its depictions in Early Modern visual culture, and underscoring how its receptions created a built landscape for imagining the ideal Inca rulers. Between the intellectual histories of the European conquest and evangelization and the histories of archaeological thought about the Americas, I trace a new history of the reception of ancient architecture that involves the Andes and its transatlantic connections.³

The Early Modern Andes was not unaware of Italian Renaissance receptions of Roman architecture. In the Spanish cities of Peru, the printed copies of new Italian architectural treatises, such as Sebastiano Serlio’s I Sette libri dell’architettura  (1537-1551) and the Italian-styled Spanish Diego Segredo’s Medidas del Romano (1526), circulated as jealously-guarded treasures. It is known that some Spanish architects in colonial cities had copies of treatises that they did not dare to share with anyone and that working with these books in mind they made a name for themselves as masters and builders of renowned buildings that are still in use today. In these same cities, and at the same time, pre-Columbian indigenous architecture attracted the attention of the first conquerors, missionaries, and settlers. These buildings prompted reflections about the ancient past, and their dimensions and quality demanded new comparative approaches that underscored their greatness and offered new ways to theorize the global history of built environments.  Under colonial rule, some pre-Columbian buildings were repurposed, others destroyed, and others abandoned. One of the major landmarks of Inca architecture that was both abandoned and an object of admiration and awe by Spanish conquerors is Sacsayhuaman, located in one of the hills surrounding Cuzco.⁴

Sacsayhuaman was built between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the context of the greatest Inca military and political power accumulation centered in Cuzco. It is not a single-body construction, but a complex of spaces and structures. The main part is made up of three levels of zigzagging terraced walls, which rise with the hill. At the top were rooms, towers, and spaces for astronomical observation. On the opposite side of the hill, an esplanade separated the walls from another set of lower constructions. According to the reports of the early conquerors, Sacsayhuaman was used militarily during the Inca defense of the Spanish sieges. Certain archaeological surveys claim that it could have been used for ritual practices. However, beyond its use for storage, there is no material evidence of pre-Columbian military use for war. The gigantic dimensions of the stones that support the three-walled structure have been the most remarkable aspect of Sacsayhuaman’s architecture and have been described with metaphors drawn from classical mythology, such as “Cyclopean,” up to the present day.⁵

I am not interested in (nor capable of) providing new archaeological insights into Inca architecture, but rather in analyzing the complex processes involved in conceptualizing its qualities in Early Modern visual culture. I will highlight how the idea of an “Inca fortress” was created, narrated, and depicted. The idea of a “fortress” became the main metaphor to understand Sacsayhuaman as an edifice of the Ancient Americas and, across the Atlantic, its three walls became the fundamental visual trope for engravings of it as the main built landmark of the city of Cuzco. Through its evolution, the presence of ideal or mythological Inca Kings as part of the edifice was fundamental in the invention of a new ancient architectural marvel.

Inca Buildings Conquered and Depicted: Sacsayhuaman in Delle navigationi et viaggi (16th century)

In 1533, the Spaniards under the leadership of Francisco Pizarro conquered Cuzco, the main settlement of the Inca, through a combination of military force, deception, and alliances with indigenous groups. Pero Sancho de la Hoz served as a secretary to Francisco Pizarro during the Spanish conquest of the Andean region and authored a first-hand account of these events. The manuscript narrating these deeds has been lost, but the content was preserved in an Italian translation found in Giovanni Battista Ramusio’s collection Delle navigationi et viaggi (1565). This report has been thought to provide an invaluable source for understanding Incan culture, and has been translated and edited into several other languages. It offers not only a narrative of the conquest, but some of the earliest Spanish descriptions of the region, including a written sketch of the “Inca fortress.” In the Italian translation, Ramusio supplemented the narrative with an engraving depicting its main feature, the city of Cusco, titled “Il Cuscho citta principale della provincia del Peru.” This engraving by an Italian master was invented by reverse-ekphrasis: it recreated the visual aspect of Cuzco from the text.⁶

Pero Sancho’s account is the first testimony of an understanding of Sacsayhuaman as an ancient fortress (“fortezza”). The building is described as one that reminded Spanish conquerors of the most renowned buildings of Lombardy and Segovia. Its greatness is compared with other great strongholds of the ancient world: “The Spaniards who see them say that neither the bridge of Segovia nor any other of the edifices which Hercules or the Romans made is so worthy of being seen as this [one]. The city of Tarragona has some works in its ruins made in this style, but neither so strong nor of such large stones.”⁷ The text refers to Rome as an overarching paradigm of ancient greatness, but the Inca Fortress challenges it as something even more worthy of admiration. The Inca architectural landmark of Cuzco surpasses Roman greatness. At the same time, a reference to Hercules permits us to observe how antiquarianism and its classical metaphors and myths are reframed from Sacsayhuaman. In Early Modern Spanish antiquarianism, ancient buildings associated with Hercules and the Roman aqueduct at Segovia, or the Roman amphitheater at Tarragona, were considered to be some of the most magnificent architectural landmarks. Here Herculean marvels are reframed as less impressive than those of the Incas. In Pero Sancho de la Hoz’s report, Inca material culture and Pre-Columbian buildings set a new paradigm of architectonical greatness.⁸

Pero Sanchos de la Hoz’s narrative was read by Ramusio in the creation of Delle Navigationi et Viaggi (1565) as a source for designing the first Western visual imagining of Cuzco. In the engraving we can observe a walled, squared city, surrounded by mountains. This imagined Inca urban center is flat and organized like a chess board. The combination of walls plus mountains duplicates the impression of a very well-guarded city, which is also reinforced by the presence of the massive fortress at its left side.

The fortress is a standalone, salient building composed of three terraced walls forming a squared structure that grows narrower at each level. In each of the terraces, groups of armed individuals are staged on guard substantiating the idea of a military complex. At the top, another squared castle-like structure appears, with a turret in each vertex and a dome-like building on its apex. The presence of the armed individuals permits locating this depiction in time. It is an image of Cuzco as first seen by the Spanish informant: a city not yet under Spanish dominion, where the Inca government still rules. The Italian artist made a creative effort to depict a pre-Columbian urban center, drawing the main ideas from written sources in the absence of any visual reference to the appearance of an Inca construction. The Inca fortress combines western ideas of what constituted a fortified edifice with the Sacsayhuaman-specific characteristic of being three-levelled.

Though lacking Hercules, the imagining of the Inca fortress was not without myth. In the middle of the main road just beneath the first wall, a group of armed people carries a litter where a chief individual is sitting. The only written word in the engraving (beyond the title) identifies this individual as “Atabalipa,” referring to the historical figure we now call Atahualpa. The idea of the Inca ruler captured and executed by the conquerors being carried to Sacsayhuamán in a procession adds a layer of historical fiction to the engraving. The Inca Atahualpa never exerted his rule in the city of Cuzco, and when the Spaniards arrived in Cuzco, Atahualpa had already been decapitated. Yet, in this Italian invention of the city of Cuzco Atahualpa, representing the Inca sovereign, is included in relation to its great stronghold (fortezza). It shows how, through the interaction between Atahualpa as the royal figure and Sacsayhuaman as the royal military fortress, Cuzco became part of the European global cityscapes: a walled city with a royal stronghold that housed ruling kings. The next two entries exemplify how the idea of Sacsayhuaman as an Inca fortress, related to increasingly mythological Inca kings, reappeared in the next centuries in new genres and as part of different intellectual fields.⁹

Construction Mythology: The “Piedra Cansada” in the Nueva Corónica y Buen Gobierno (17th century)

In 1615, Don Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala, an indigenous Christian from the city of Huamanga, completed a manuscript that he had labored over for decades. His cosmographical, historical, and political treatise entitled El Primer nueva Coronica y Buen Gobierno reflects Ayala’s intellectual prowess and his painstaking dedication to addressing, one by one, each of the most challenging debates of the Early Modern Andes under Spanish colonial rule. It consists of two parts: the first, a treatise of the history and cosmography of the world as seen from the Andes, and the second, an account of the problems and possible solutions of the Spanish colonial government. Historically, the first part of his manuscript begins with the Biblical creation of Adam and Eve, connecting Biblical history and the history of the Roman Church with the ancient history of the indigenous Andes and the government of the Inca. The history of the Incas, where Sacsayhuaman tangentially appears, was organized according to sequential male rulers (Ingas), by a parallel line of female rulers (coya), and also by a line of male warchiefs or capitanes. Thus, Ayala offers three different, parallel timelines for Inca history. Within this paradigm a succession of ruling leaders had begun with the first Inca, Manco Capac, and ended with the beheading of Inca Atahualpa by the Pizarro conquerors.¹⁰

The fortress appears listed in Ayala’s work among other “great fortresses” of the Inca, including: Sacsaguaman, Pucamarca, Suchona Callis Pucyo, and Curicancha. However, the author recalls the deeds of Urcon Inga, the ninth in a line of ten Inca warchiefs, and refers to a myth about a construction process: the story of the piedra cansada. The piedra cansada is a massive boulder near the Sacsayhuaman archaeological site in Cuzco that, according to an indigenous local narrative referred to by the author Inca Garcilaso de la Vega in his Comentarios Reales de los Incas (1609), protested its own use in the construction of the fortress. In the story, as it was being carried by workers and was about to reach the fortress, the boulder cried tears of blood, refused to move any further, and stayed where it is found today. In Ayala’s version we read that Inca Urcon, “the son of Topa Yga Yupanqui, was in charge of making people move the boulders from Cuzco to Guanoco. It is said that the boulder became tired and did not want to move anymore, and this boulder cried tears of blood.”¹¹ This story, as is the case in many other Inca narratives, provides agency to the lithic element and makes its inability to reach the construction site the main aspect of the story.¹²

Writing a historical narrative of the Incas, Ayala was also interested in adding chronological and genealogical references. According to him, the deeds of Inca Urcon had taken place under the Inca kingship of Guayna Capac Inca, which, also according to Ayala, had begun in 1410 and ended in the year 1496.¹³ The narrative of the historical figure’s life includes the story and the illustration of the piedra cansada as part of his efforts to locate this particular episode within a specific moment of Pre-Columbian, Andean chronologies. Ayala associates the events related to the piedra cansada to the constructions accomplished by Inga Urcon. The piedra cansada episode is a mythical-historical landmark of the vita of a particular historical figure.  In his illustration, entitled “El Noveno Capita[n] INGA VRCON,” Guamán Poma de Ayala portrays the Inca warlord and the boulder, not the fortress. Both are the main agents that shape the story of the construction of the fortress. The warchief appears in an Inca attire, wearing a crown and earplugs, a shirt decorated with squared Inca iconography, and a mantle. In his right hand he holds a staff with which he commands the workers that carry the boulder, over which he stands. The identity of the boulder is highlighted with a manuscript note: “lloro sangre la piedra” (the stone cried blood). The tears are depicted as streams of blood flowing out of multiple holes in the boulder. One of the workers looks back to take note of the supernatural event. In contrast to the Italian master, Ayala has no interest in depicting any single fortress. In the Nueva Coronica y Buen Gobierno, created in a context that was simultaneously interested in the evangelization of indigenous Andeans and the writing of pre-Columbian histories, it is the supernatural event that took place during the constructions of a fortress that is more historically relevant and worthy of being depicted. It permits Ayala to narrate the life of an Inca warchief able to mobilize numerous workers in the construction of an edifice, and the ability of a mythical stone to rebel against becoming part of an edifice.¹⁴ 

Ancient Buildings in New Cityscapes: Mapping the Ruin of Cuzco (18th century)

Lastly, I will analyze an illustration titled “Vista de la Fortaleza” included in the 1776 manuscript Epítome cronológico o Idea general del Perú composed by the creole scholar Jose Eusebio Llano Zapata. This eighteenth century manuscript compiled recent geographical and natural historical works about Peru. There are two copies of it, Llano Zapata’s, and a colored one found in the General Archive of the Indies in Seville (ES.41091.AGI//MP-PERU_CHILE,220), which has been considered to be from 1778 and created by the captain Ramón de Arechaga y Calvo. However, there is no solid information to trace their relationship. We can only infer that an illustration of the Inca Fortress of Cuzco was created at some point in the 1770s, and that at least two copies of it (one black and white, one colored) were made and included in different compilations on the geography and natural history of Peru.¹⁵

Recent studies on the history of 18^th century science have highlighted the intellectual revolution that took place in the Americas in that period, including new intellectual circuits with local and international figures, new visual and written production, and centred in the metropolitan cities of the Americas where new ways of creating science appeared in dialogue with French, German, and British illustration. These new intellectual figures also had a renewed interest in pre-Columbian architecture, especially, with ancient buildings that had been forgotten and not repurposed for new usages or modified with Spanish structural changes.  These buildings became the object of a new scientific appreciation and seen as ancient remains of a distant past to be studied without any relationship with the present: as vestiges separated from the modern cities by a distant time, and home of idealized, glorious Incas different from the conflictive indigenous population organizing massive upheavals in the cities of the southern Andes.¹⁶

This way of demarcating time in an archaeological way is for me the most salient aspect of the “Vista de la Fortaleza.” On the left we can see the Spanish city of Cuzco, a modern city with western styled buildings and squares, including a big church. On the center and the right side, we see the hill that rises above Cuzco. On the hill we can see the different buildings that make up the Sacsayhuaman complex. It is not seen as a single fortress, but as a composition of many different buildings. Each of them tagged with a letter which is identified in the legend found in a text box. A semi-circular complex on the left side is made up of three terraces, and on the right are walls in a zigzag shape, also in three elevated terraces. Both structures surround the hill. These ruined vestiges of an abandoned buildings are not anymore related to the contemporary life of the city beneath it. Additionally, and what provides these destroyed walls with a historical identity and with the character of ancient architecture, are the human figures depicted, none of them in the cityscape of Cuzco. We find spread over the ruins sixteen Incas, two of them depicted alone and the rest divided into four groups. The solitary ones are hunting with throwers each on the top of a three-walled terrace, and group of two childlike ones climb to the top of a bedrock. The remaining three groups, each centered on a ruler or sovereign, are dressed in full Inca attire and seem to take part in a procession or royal promenade. A group on the top of the hill is centered on a female ruler, covered with a baldachin by a subordinate, while the other two members of the company appear to entertain her with hunting. A group of three descending through the hill appears to be a couple of ruling figures accompanied by a musician. In the lower part of the hill, another couple is accompanied by an baldachin-bearer and two musicians, one playing a wind instrument and the other a percussion one. In the depictions of these two rulers, two of the main visual tropes of Early Modern imaginings of the Inca come together: the depiction of local mantles with tocapu and cloaks, and the European, portrait-like stance of the figure with a staff. It is impossible not to trace a connection between the male figure holding the staff and a shield and the figures I previously mentioned: Urcon Inga and Atahualpa. In the “Vista de la Fortaleza,” anachronistic Incas are inhabitants of a ruin. Both humans and architectural structures are simultaneously being observed by another group of people: three men dressed in fully modern fashion, with boots, hats, and overcoats located in the lower middle part of the image. They point at the ruined site, observing it from the present as an emblem of the past, turning it and its Inca inhabitants into objects of archaeological study. In the inscription found at the bottom of the drawing, Sacsayhuaman is even explicitly described as an ‘antique monument’ (monumento de la antigüedad), a military fortress made of strong walls, and as an edifice ruined by time, abandonment and plundering. Many of its greatest stones, we read, had been removed to serve as foundations of new churches and houses.¹⁷

Sacsayhuaman and the Census: The Archaeological Side of the Renaissance

This study of art and intellectual history reveals a multifaceted reception of antiquity, influenced by unique contexts. By replacing the Vitruvian man with the Inca King, an idealized figure of the Early Modern period, attention shifts to pre-Columbian structures in the Andes, specifically the Sacsayhuaman edifice in Cuzco. The concept of an Inca city with a fortress transcends the Atlantic and becomes incorporated into compendiums of global cities. The Inca King assumes an idealized role, granting authenticity to the city landmark by emanating a regal essence to the surrounding landscape: from agents of construction to vestiges of the past. I focus on the interconnections between European conquest, evangelization, and archaeological discourses, showing how the Early Modern approach to pre-Columbian material culture creates a series of new principles, figures, tropes, and myths that determine the art and literature of archaeological thought. 

Pero Sancho’s account stands as the earliest testimony recognizing. Sacsayhuaman as a building created in the past and as a fortress that can be compared to ancient buildings. Descriptions liken the structure to renowned buildings in Lombardy and Segovia, surpassing even the mighty strongholds of the ancient world. Rome, regarded as the epitome of ancient greatness, is challenged by Sacsayhuaman, garnering greater admiration. Notably, the inclusion of Hercules reframes antiquarianism, with Sacsayhuaman eclipsing the architectural marvels associated with the legendary hero. In Early Modern Spanish antiquarianism, where Hercules’ exploits and other wonders were highly regarded, Sacsayhuaman establishes a new standard of architectural magnificence, showcasing the splendor of Inca material culture and pre-Columbian structures.

In Guamán Poma de Ayala’s illustration, titled “El Noveno Capita[n] INGA VRCON,” the focus shifts from the fortress itself to the Inca warlord and a mythological boulder that was central to the narrative of its construction. The warlord commands workers carrying the boulder, displaying his royal authority and his capacity to build. The boulder acquires agency by refusing to move and shedding tears of blood. Ayala’s portrayal and narrative prioritize the historical relevance of this supernatural event during the fortress’s construction, highlighting a fundamental aspect of pre-Columbian approaches to material culture and the Christian missionaries’ preoccupation with indigenous perceptions of edifices. Beyond the mere portrayal of a building, the mythical narrative puts into scene the leadership of the Inca warlord and the defiance of a supernatural stone. 

The eighteenth-century map of Cuzco, “Vista de la Fortaleza,” offers an intriguing archaeological representation of an ancient era. It showcases the modern Spanish city of Cuzco on the left, featuring Western-style buildings, squares, and a prominent church. The central and right sections depict the hill overlooking Cuzco, revealing the diverse structures constituting the ruined Sacsayhuaman complex. A collection of Inca figures in various attires perform different activities such as hunting and playing music, consolidating the idea of Sacsayhuaman as a vestige of the times of an ancient royalty. It is not anymore a living edifice, or a landscape of mythical narratives, but a ruin to be explored through historical research, and to be observed with a modern gaze.

As a Census x Hertziana fellow, along with Professor Kathleen Christian, we attempted to include Sacsayhuaman in the Census database. The transformation of the information presented in this article into data served as evidence of the complexities surrounding various receptions of antiquity. Sacsayhuaman is not merely an object; it is an architectonical landscape traversed—as is seen in this article—by multiple layers of interpretation and depiction. While the data concerning location and materiality were easily incorporated, the chronologies of creation and reception, suitable for the Renaissance, did not align with the histories of the ancient Americas. Early Modern interpreters viewed Sacsayhuaman through the lens of antiquity, not by excavation or other archaeological practices, but by association and assimilation. By the eighteenth century the site, which was built during the time of the Italian Quattrocento, could even be referred to as an ‘antique monument’. Such a conceptualisation poses a challenge to the categories laid out in the Census database by calling into question the coherency and universality of Early Modern concepts of ‘antiquity’ and antique ‘monuments’. It demands instead a focus on how new ancient buildings were invented through different antiquarian practices, which is the case for Sacsayhuaman. 

The principles traditionally applied in studying the reception of the Renaissance, as established in the 19th and 20th-century German academy, do not align with our findings. These principles focused on identifying ancient pieces studied by Renaissance artists and scholars, establishing objective links with ancient art and architecture, and tracing authentically antique works known in Renaissance Europe. However, the transatlantic, mythological, and landscape connections we have explored defy these categorizations. They call for new perspectives in understanding the relationships forged during early modernity with pre-modern pasts. Perhaps this approach will spark new inquiries and ideas, extending the study of the European Renaissance to encompass phenomena that are better highlighted by other intellectual geographies.

1. Michael J. Schreffler: Cuzco: Incas, Spaniards, and the Making of a Colonial City, New Haven 2020 [↩]
2. Tod A. Marder: ‘Vitruvius and the Architectural Treatise in Early Modern Europe’, in: Companion to the History of Architecture 2017 pp. 1-31; Ingrid D. Rowland: ‘Vitruvius and his Influence’, in: A Companion to Roman Architecture, 2013, pp. 412-425; Peter N. Miller: ‘Major Trends in European Antiquarianism, Petrarch to Peiresc’, in: The Oxford History of Historical Writing, 2012, p. 244; Indra Kagis McEwen: Vitruvius: Writing the Body of Architecture, Cambridge, Massachusetts 2004; Alain Schnapp, Lothar von Falkenhausen, Peter N. Miller, and Tim Murray: World Antiquarianism: Comparative Perspectives, Los Angeles 2013. [↩]
3. Terence N. D’Altroy: The Incas, 2nd ed., Chichester 2015. [↩]
4. Carolyn Dean: A Culture of Stone: Inka Perspectives on Rock, Durham/London 2010; and ‘Creating a Ruin in Colonial Cusco: Sacsahuamán and What was Made of it’, in: Andean Past Vol. 5.1, Article 12, 1998; J. C. G. Mantilla: ‘Tiahuanaco and Sacsayhuamán: Creating Early Modern World Histories through Pre-Columbian Andean buildings’; Romana Radlwimmer (Ed.): Relating Continents. Coloniality and Global Encounters in Romance Literary and Cultural History, Berlin 2023 (forthcoming), pp. 225-249; Susan Verdi Webster: ‘Vantage Points: Andeans and Europeans in the Construction of Colonial Quito’, in: Colonial Latin American Review Vol. 20, no. 3, 201,1 pp. 303-330; Susan Verdi Webster: ‘Materiales, modelos y mercado de la pintura en Quito, 1550-1650’, in: Procesos. Revista ecuatoriana de historia, 2016, pp. 37-64; I draw the terms ‘admiration and awe’ from Antonio Urquizar Herrera: Admiration and Awe: Morisco Buildings and Identity Negotiations in Early Modern Spanish Historiography, New York 2017. [↩]
5. Brian S. Bauer: Ancient Cuzco: Heartland of the Inca, Austin 2010; Krzysztof Makowski: Urbanismo andino: centro ceremonial y ciudad en el Perú prehispánico, Lima 2016; Luis Arocena: La relación de Pero Sancho, Buenos Aires 1986; Maarten Van de Guchte: ‘Sculpture and the Concept of the Double among the Inca Kings’, in: RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics Vol. 29. No.1, 1996, pp. 256-268; ‘Sacsahuamán’ in: Encyclopedic Dictionary of Archaeology, Cham 2021. [↩]
6. Franklin Pease: ‘Pedro Sancho de la Hoz’, in: Guide to Documentary Sources for Andean Studies, 1530-1900, ed. by. Joanne Pillsbury, Norman 2008; Michael J. Schreffler: ‘Inca Architecture from the Andes to the Adriatic: Pedro Sancho’s Description of Cuzco’, in: Renaissance Quarterly Vol. 67 no. 4, 2014, pp. 1191-1223; Alan Covey: Inca Apocalypse, Oxford 2020; Esperanza López Parada: ‘El mapa y el Imperio: la representación de la ciudad de Cuzco’, in: Humanismo, mestizaje y escritura en los Comentarios reales, ed. by Carmen De Mora, Madrid 2010, pp. 169–190. The English translation of Ramusio’s text is only about Pero Sancho and the Incas, completely cut off from the Italian work: Pero Sancho de la Hoz: An Account of the Conquest of Peru, transl. Phillip Ainsworth Means, New York 1917. [↩]
7. Sancho de la Hoz, 1917, p. 156. [↩]
8. Sabine MacCormack: On the Wings of Time: Rome, the Incas, Spain and Peru, Princeton 2007; Pamina Fernández Camacho: ‘What Identity for Hercules Gaditanus? The Role of the Gaditanian Hercules in the Invention of National History in Late-Medieval and Early-Modern Spain’, in: The Exemplary Hercules from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment and Beyond, Leiden 2020, pp. 175-193; and Francisco Javier and González García: ‘The Legendary Traditions about the Tower of Hercules (A Coruña, Spain)’, in: Folklore 2014, pp. 306-321. [↩]
9. In the sixteenth century, the city was disputed between him and his half-brother Huascar, both claiming to be Inca rulers, that is, capac or sapa Inca according to María Rostworowski: Historia del Tahuantinsuyu, Lima 2015. Also, there are some other European engravings of Cuzco, found in Cieza de León, 1553, Du Pinet, 1564, and Montanus, 1671. [↩]
10. Rolena Adorno: Guamán Poma: Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru, Austin 2000; see the introduction by Franklin Pease, Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala: Nueva corónica y buen gobierno, Vol. 2. ed. by Franklin Pease GY, and Jan Szemiński, Mexico 1993; Gonzalo Lamana: ‘Conocimiento de Dios, razón natural e historia local y universal en la” Nueva corónica y buen gobierno” de Guamán Poma de Ayala’, in: Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana 2014, pp. 103-116; Juan Ossio: En busca del orden perdido: La idea de la Historia en Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala, Lima 2014. [↩]
11. ((Guaman Poma, Nueva corónica y buen gobierno (1615), Copenhagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, GKS 2232 4º, folio 160 [162] EL NOVENO CAPITÁN, Ynga Urcon. [↩]
12. See the chapter by Carolyn Dean in Arte Imperial Inca: sus orígenes y transformaciones desde la Conquista a la Independencia, Ramón Mujica Pinilla (ed.), Lima 2020; Inca Garcilaso de la Vega: Comentarios Reales de los Incas, Lisbon 1609. Both Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and Martin de Murúa also include accounts of the Piedra Cansada in their works. On lithics and evangelization, see Laura León-Llerena, ‘Y dice que adora piedras’: Guamán Poma de Ayala y la construcción discursiva de la materialidad de las idolatrías indígenas’, in: Letras, Vol. 91, no. 133, 2020, pp. 233-252. [↩]
13. Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno (1615/1616), Copenhagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, GKS 2232 4°, “El Onceno Inga” 114 (114). [↩]
14. Víctor Peralta Ruiz: ‘Las genealogías incas y su significado histórico y político entre los siglos XVIII y XIX’ en Mujica Pinilla (ed.) 2020. [↩]
15. In addition to Llano Zapata, another image of Sacsayhuaman was created in that period by the German Thaddäus Haenke, 1793. [↩]
16. Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra: How to Write the History of the New World: Histories, Epistemologies, and Identities in the Eighteenth-century Atlantic World, California 2001; Daniela Bleichmar: Visible Empire: Botanical Expeditions and Visual Culture in the Hispanic Enlightenment, Chicago/London 2012; Mark Thurner and Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra (eds.) The Invention of Humboldt: On the Geopolitics of Knowledge, New York 2022; Joanne Pillsbury and Lisa Trever: ‘The King, the Bishop, and the Creation of an American Antiquity’, in: Ñawpa Pacha Vol. 29, no. 1, 2008, pp. 191-219; Rivasplata Varillas and Paula Ermila: ‘La arqueología precientífica en el Perú en el siglo XVIII’ in: Letras históricas, Vol. 13, 2015, pp. 221-252; Charles F. Walker: The Tupac Amaru Rebellion, Cambridge, Massachusetts/London 2014. [↩]
17. The inscription is transcribed in the Census record. On the Inca hunting visual trope, see José Cárdenas Bunsen: ‘La legislación eclesiástica, el cabildo indígena del Hospital del Cuzco y la relación entre Murúa y Guamán Poma’ in: Letras, Vol. 91, no. 133, 2020, pp. 163-186; on the origins of the Inca litter visual trope, see Thomas B. F. Cummins: ‘The Indulgent Image: Prints in the New World’, in: Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World, ed. by Ilona Katzew, Los Angeles 2011, pp. 200–223. [↩]

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