Enrique Arrieta

One of the most important in American Art, began in the town of Cuzco, Peru - a city which was the capital of the Incan Empire and has existed for nine centuries. It spread across all of the Andean area as an aesthetic expression of society in the times of the Viceroyship. During Spanish colonization from the 16th to the 18th centuries, Flemish and Italian as well as Spanish versions of the Madonna, the Saints, and the Crucifixion arrived in the New World. These were used to illustrate with clear and didactic images the preaching of religious sermons.

The Cuzco School's works were painted by the indigenous people of Peru who had been taught by such Spanish masters as Loyola. Two traditions existed simultaneously in painting in Cuzco: that of the indigenous people and that of the Spanish masters influenced by Netherlandish Art and Late Gothic Art. Native painters gradually moved away from the purely European style and created paintings of unique extraordinary beauty and great originality by mixing the religious with the naive and with Andean imagery. This style of painting turned into a popular art form. Some of the most popular representations of this art include "The Virgin Mary", "The Virgin With The Child", "The Cuzco Madonna", "The Holy Family", and sumptuously dressed archangels armed as soldiers of heaven such as "Saint Michael", Saint Raphael" and "Saint Gabriel".