Inca Art and Architecture
Architecture was the art in which the Incas had made the most progress. At Cuzco they drained the ground, confined the two mountain streams which flow through the city within…
From “A History of Peru” by Clements R. Markham, 1892.
Architecture was the art in which the Incas had made the most progress. At Cuzco they drained the ground, confined the two mountain streams which flow through the city within masonry walls, and erected edifices on the reclaimed ground, which still remain as witnesses to their taste and skill. They had before them the cyclopean ruins of their ancestors, and their earliest style of building is an imitation of the megalithic work on a smaller scale. The walls were built with polygonal shaped stones, with rough surfaces, but the stones were much reduced in size, as compared with the more ancient edifices. Rows of doorways with slanting sides and monolithic lintels occupy the facade, while recesses of similar character, and square windows, occur in the interior walls.
The later style of Inca architecture replaces the polygonal stones by stones laid in regular courses, but varying in length. No cement or mortar of any kind was used, the buildings depending for their stability on the accuracy with which the stones were fitted to each other. The palaces and temples were built around a court yard, and a hall of vast dimensions, large enough for ceremonies on an extensive scale, was included in the plan of most of the buildings. The dimensions of the Ccuri-cancha, which was the palace of the earlier Incas, and afterward the temple of the Sun, were two hundred and ninety-six feet by fifty-two. Serpents are carved in relief on some of the lintels of the Cuzco palaces.
The height of the walls of the Cuzco edifices was from thirty-five to forty feet, and the roofs were thatched. There are many ruins throughout Peru, both of the earlier and the later styles, and they serve to indicate the approximate date of Inca conquests, in regions where there was no earlier indigenous architecture. Mr. Squier has borne witness that "the world has nothing to show in the way of stone cutting and fitting to surpass the skill and accuracy displayed in the Inca structures at Cuzco."
The Incas had also made progress in the metallurgic, ceramic, and textile arts. Gold was obtained in immense quantities by washing the sands of the rivers of Caravaya. Silver was extracted from the ore by means of blast furnaces called huayra. Copper was abundant in the Collao, and enabled the Peruvians to use bronze extensively. Skilful workers in metal fashioned the vases and other utensils for the use of the Inca and of the temples, forged the arms of the soldiers, and the implements of husbandry and stamped or chased the breastplates, head-gear, pins and girdles.
Spinning, weaving, and dyeing employed a great number of people. There were rich dresses interwoven with gold or made of gold thread; fine woolen mantles and tunics ornamented with borders of small square gold and silverplates; cotton cloths and tapestry worked in complicated though graceful patterns, and dyed with brilliant colors, and fabrics of aloe fibre and sheep's sinews for breeches. Coarser cloths of llama wool were also made in great quantities.
But the potter's art was perhaps the one which exercised the inventive faculty of the Peruvian artist to the greatest extent. The ancient pottery is found buried with the dead in great profusion. The shapes are remarkable for their grace and elegance, and there is a certain severity and simplicity in the Inca style which contrasts most strikingly with the exuberant fancy of the potters of a different race on the coast of Peru, as will presently be seen. The only animals imitated in pottery by the Cuzco artists were llamas, and the llama cotiopas are numerous. The greater part of the famous Centeno collection, made at Cuzco,* consists of vases and drinking cups of graceful design.
Some of the vases are of great size, measuring over three feet in height. Generally they are encircled by simple geometric patterns in bands, sometimes with rows of birds and insects in minute designs. The vases are also molded in the form of human faces, generally showing so much individual character as to leave the impression that they are portraits. A vase representing the coca harvest is in the form of a sitting woman with coca branches and leaves around her.
The Inca artists also made fine stone dishes with serpents carved around them; and cups of wood.
There are two richly painted wooden cups, in the Centeno collection, in the form of the heads of jaguars. On one is painted the representation of a battle between an Inca army using slings, and the savages of the eastern forests armed with bows and arrows. Below there is a band of the various animals of the forests brightly painted. It is, however, but a small remnant of the objects of Peruvian art that has survived, and from which we can form some idea of the advances the Incas had made in civilization. Their finest works were probably in the precious metals, and were melted down by the conquerors.
Markham, Clements R. A History of Peru, Charles H. Sergal & Company, 1892.
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