Materialities in Church Mural Painting on the Silver Route: A Research Log

Abstract

The Fundación Altiplano has been working since 2002 to rescue the cultural heritage of the peoples of the Arica and Parinacota regions in the Andes and Altiplano of the far north of Chile. Among other initiatives in this period, projects have been carried out to restore churches, recover intangible heritage, and promote sustainable development. This was all coordinated in a plan to treasure and restore thirty-two Andean churches intended as a unit and a testimony of ancient trade and mission routes. In 2007, the Fundación and the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez decided to form a joint task force to research eighteenth-century murals preserved in the churches of the localities of Parinacota and Pachama in the far north of Chile (Briones and Villaseca 1983; Mebold 1983; Flores, Kuon, and Samananez 1993, 16) in the context of mural painting in the Southern Andes (Gisbert 1992; Flores, Kuon, and Samananez 1993; Gisbert 1998; Cohen Suarez 2016). From the initial investigations, the concern for the works’ materiality took center stage in the inquiry, particularly because the Foundation needed to collect information to define future restoration projects for these two churches and their murals...