Inca Civilization: Art, Architecture, and Textiles mod 9 done

The Weaving Tradition

The weaving tradition was very important to the Incas, who created beautiful and elaborate woven headdresses.
Royalty was clearly distinguished through decorative dress.
Inca emperors wore woven hats trimmed with gold and wool tassels or topped with plumes or showy feathers.
Elaborate feather decorations for men included headbands made into crowns of feathers, collars, and chest coverings.
Wealthy Inca men wore large gold and silver pendants on their chests, disks attached to their hair and shoes, and bands around their arms and wrists.
Inca women adorned their cloaks with a metal fastening called a tupu, decorated with paint, silver, gold, or copper bells.

Metalwork of the Inca

The Incas were well-known for their use of gold, silver, copper, bronze, and other metals for tools, weapons, and decorative ornaments.
They drew much of their metalworking style from Chimú art, using metals for utilitarian purposes, ornaments, and decorations.
Copper and bronze were used for basic farming tools or weapons.
Gold and silver were reserved for ornaments and decorations in temples and palaces of Inca royalty.
Gold was especially revered for its sun-like reflective quality, related to the Inca worship of the sun and the sun god, Inti.
Despite the abundance of precious metals, the Incas valued fine cloth more than metal.
The Incas utilized helmets, spears, and battle-axes made of copper or bronze.
Gold and silver were used for ornaments and decorations and reserved for the highest classes of people, such as the emperor.
Palaces of Inca emperors were filled with precious metal objects.
Thrones were ornately decorated with metals, and royalty dined on gold and silver tableware.
Religious icons, ceremonial knives, cups, and ceremonial clothing were often inlaid with gold or silver.

Spanish Conquest and Its Effects on Incan Art

Many aspects of Inca culture were systematically destroyed or irrevocably changed by Spanish conquistadors.
The Inca population suffered a dramatic and quick decline, largely due to illness and disease.
Cities and towns were pillaged, resulting in the loss of vast quantities of precious objects.
The art of the region was greatly impacted, beginning to reflect Christian themes alongside traditional Inca themes.
Francisco Pizarro was a Spanish conquistador who was responsible for destroying much of the city of Cusco in 1535.
The Spanish also brought with them new techniques, such as oil painting on canvas, which fused with native traditions.
Examples of this fusion can be seen in the works of the Cusco, Quito, and Chilote Schools.

Conquest and Fall of the Inca

The Spanish Conquest was catastrophic to the Inca people and culture.
The Inca population suffered a dramatic decline largely due to illness and diseases such as smallpox.
It is thought that 60-90% of the population of the empire, notably the Central Andes, suffered a population decline.

The Incan Weaving Tradition

Inca textiles were widely manufactured for practical use, trade, tax collection, and decorative fashion.
Textiles were widely prized within the empire because they were easily transported.
Cloth and textiles were divided by class, with llama wool used in more common clothing.
The finer cloths of alpaca or vicuña wool were reserved for royal and religious use.
Specific designs and ornaments marked a person's status and nobility.
The weaving tradition was very important to Incas in the creation of elaborate woven headdresses.
Wealthy Inca men wore large gold and silver pendants hung on their chests, disks attached to their hair and shoes, and bands around their arms and wrists.
Inca women adorned themselves with a metal fastening for their cloak called a tupu.

Chimú Textiles

The Incas were highly regarded for their textiles which were influenced by the artistic works of the pre-Inca Chimú culture.
The Chimú, who arose about 900 CE, were conquered in a campaign led by the Inca ruler Tupac Inca Yupanqui around 1470 AD.
The Chimú embellished their fabrics with brocades, embroidery, fabric doubles, and painted fabrics.
Textiles were sometimes adorned with feathers, gold, or silver plates.
Colored dyes were created from plants containing tannin, mole, or walnut; these dyes also came from animals like cochineal and minerals like clay, ferruginosa, and mordant aluminum.
Garments were made of the wool of four animals: the guanaco, llama, alpaca, and vicuña animals.
Clothing consisted of loincloths, sleeveless shirts, small ponchos, and tunics.

Textiles in the Inca Empire

Textiles were widely prized within the Inca empire, partly because they were easily transported, and were widely manufactured for tax collection and trade purposes.
Cloth and textiles were divided among the classes in the Inca empire.
Awaska was used for common clothing and traditional household use and was usually made from llama wool.
Qunpi, a finer cloth, was divided into two classes: it would either be made of alpaca wool and collected as tribute for use by royalty, or it would be woven from vicuña wool and used for royal and religious purposes.
The finest textiles were reserved for the rulers as markers of their status.
Inca officials wore stylized tunics decorated with certain motifs, and soldiers of the Inca army had specific uniforms.

Characteristics of Inca Architecture

Inca architecture is widely known for its fine masonry, which features precisely cut and shaped stones closely fitted without mortar ("dry").
Most Inca buildings were made out of fieldstones or semi-worked stone blocks and dirt set in mortar; adobe walls were also quite common, usually laid over stone foundations.
The material used in Inca buildings depended on the region; for instance, in the coast they used large rectangular adobe blocks, while in the Andes they used local stones.
The most common shape in Inca architecture was the rectangular building without any internal walls and roofed with wooden beams and thatch.
There were several variations of this basic design, including gabled roofs, rooms with one or two of the long sides opened, and rooms that shared a long wall.
Rectangular buildings were used for quite different functions in almost all Inca buildings, from humble houses to palaces and temples.
There are some examples of curved walls on Inca buildings, mostly in regions outside the central area of the empire.
Two-story buildings were infrequent; when they were built, the second floor was accessed from the outside via a stairway or high terrain rather than from the first floor.
Wall apertures-including doors, niches, and windows-usually had a trapezoidal shape; they could be fitted with double or triple jambs as a form of ornamentation.
Other kinds of decoration were scarce; some walls were painted or adorned with metal plaques, and in rare cases walls were sculpted with small animals or geometric patterns.

Kancha

The most common composite form in Inca architecture was the kancha, a rectangular enclosure housing three or more rectangular buildings placed symmetrically around a central courtyard.
Kancha units served widely different purposes as they formed the basis of simple dwellings as well as of temples and palaces; furthermore, several kancha could be grouped together to form blocks in Inca settlements.
The central part of the Inca capital of Cusco consisted of large kancha, including Qurikancha and the Inca palaces.
The best preserved examples of kancha are found at Ollantaytambo, an Inca settlement located along the Urubamba River.

Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu is a 15th century Inca citadel situated on a mountain ridge 7,970 feet above sea level.
It is located in the Cusco region above the Sacred Valley, which is 50 miles northwest of Cuzco.
Most archaeologists believe that Machu Picchu was built as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438–1472).
Often mistakenly referred to as the "Lost City of the Incas" (a title more accurately applied to Vilcabamba), it is the most familiar icon of Inca civilization.
The Incas built the estate around 1450 but abandoned it a century later at the time of the Spanish Conquest.
Although known locally, it was not known to the Spanish during the colonial period and remained unknown to the outside world until American historian Hiram Bingham brought it to international attention in 1911.
Machu Picchu was built in the classical Inca style, with polished dry-stone walls.
Its three primary structures are the Inti Watana, the Temple of the Sun, and the Room of the Three Windows.
Most of the outlying buildings have been reconstructed in order to give tourists a better idea of how they originally appeared.
The site is roughly divided into an urban sector and an agricultural sector, and into an upper town and a lower town.
The temples are in the upper town, while the warehouses are in the lower.
The architecture is adapted to the mountains: approximately 200 buildings are arranged on wide parallel terraces around an east-west central square, and the various compounds are long and narrow in order to exploit the terrain.
Sophisticated channeling systems provided irrigation for the fields.
Stone stairways set in the walls allowed access to the different levels across the site.
The eastern section of the city is thought to have been residential, and the western section, separated by the square, is believed to have been for religious and ceremonial purposes.
This western section contains the Torreón, a massive tower which may have been used as an observatory.

Spanish Architecture After the Conquest

After the conquest and the destruction of the city of Cusco, the Spanish built new structures over much of the Inca architecture.
The Coricancha ("Golden Temple" or "Temple of the Sun," named for the gold plates covering its walls) was the most important sanctuary dedicated to the Inti (the Sun God) during the Inca Empire.
Over the foundation of the Coricancha, Spanish colonists built the Convent of Santo Domingo in the Renaissance style.
The Convent exceeds the height of many other buildings in the city.
The Barrio de San Blas neighborhood includes houses built over Incan foundations, along with the oldest parish church in Cuzco.
The church, built in 1563, houses a carved wooden pulpit that is considered the epitome of colonial era woodwork in the city.
The Convent and Church of la Mercad, founded in 1536, was a Spanish complex that was destroyed in an earthquake in 1650 and rebuilt in 1675.
Modeling the Baroque Renaissance style, it contains choir stalls, paintings, and wood carvings from the colonial era.
The Spanish Cathedral of Santo Domingo was built in phases between 1539 and 1664 on the foundations of the Inca Palace of Viracocha.
The cathedral presents late-Gothic, Baroque, and Plateresque interiors.
It also has a strong example of colonial goldwork and wood carving and is well known for a Cusco School painting of the Last Supper depicting Jesus and the 12 apostles feasting on guinea pig, a traditional Andean delicacy.
The Plaza de Armas, known as the "Square of the Warrior" in the Inca era, has been the scene of several important events in the history of this city, such as Pizarro's proclamation of conquest over the city and the scene of the death of Túpac Amaru II, the indigenous leader of the resistance.
The Spanish built stone arcades around the plaza that endure to this day.
La Iglesia de la Compaña de Jesus was built by the Jesuits over the foundations of the palace of the Inca ruler Huayna Capac.
It is considered one of the best examples of the colonial baroque style in the Americas.
Its façade is carved in stone, and its main altar is made of carved wood covered with gold leaf.

Textiles of the Inca

The Incas were highly regarded for their textiles, influenced by the artistic works of the pre-Inca Chimú culture.