“Fair Grain, and fine colors of flowers, that burn not what they stain”: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Uses of Indigo and Cochineal in the Andes

Abstract

This is how Father José de Acosta recorded the arrival of anil and cochineal in Peru from the New Spanish area toward the end of the sixteenth century, implying their scarcity in southern parts and their privileged place in the work of dyeing. Although Central American anil was held in highest esteem by painters, Andean manuscript and printed sources record that this dye was commonly found in the region in the wild and that it was continuously distributed from a wide variety of sources across the whole Viceroyalty of Peru (Siracusano 2005). Around 1530, describing the customs of the inhabitants of Cuzco, Pedro Sancho de la Hoz had testified to the presence of various dyes and pigments: “They had many colors, blues, yellows, and browns, and many others to color clothes” (Becco 1992, 270). Anil, it is well known, was one of the colorants most commonly used for dyeing clothes, so we may assume the chronicler had it in mind when he mentions blues. Some sources attest the harvesting of anil in the area of colonial Tucumán a few years later and its use as payment in kind for taxes. Royal Excise books are likewise crowded with references to the import and export of anil, as well as other colorants and pigments, in cities like Lima, Potosi, or La Plata (Sucre), by merchants’ trade in it there.2 The large-scale mass production of canvases in the workshops of Cuzco, especially in the eighteenth century, may have justified the choice of this material...