Twin brothers
Originality and copy in the Americas
FELIPE PEREDA
Oh, Rome, Rome, Rome! How lost you are! It is not I, a
nobody, who says so, but rather God, who wants to transfer
his Church over here, to this city of Lima.
—Francisco de la Cruz, OP, inquisitorial trial, 15761
From very early on, the colonization of the New
World and its political and spiritual conquest entailed
the need to reproduce cults native to the old continent in
America. Frequently the new American sanctuaries
took shape from some type of link with a prototypical
image: an original image might be directly imported
into the New World, a copy might be made of it and
described as its “portrait,” or an entirely new image
might be created that simply shared the dedication
or title of another European cult. Any of these narrative
possibilities always involves a point of origin and
a destination, and therefore some sort of bond between
the metropolis and the colony, however fragile or
problematic it may be. A continuity and a transformation;
a discontinuity and a translation. Of all of these
alternative possibilities, the “copy” holds a particular
interest for art history given that the established link
depends on a process of manual reproduction or,
to put it another way, is mediated by artistic procedure.
The copy is a singular aspect of the mechanisms
of transfer between the Old and New World, one which
allows us to understand the cultural and religious
significance of the colonial process. At the same time,
the copy and its essential reverse, the concept of
originality, were seen as inevitably compromised and
transformed once placed in the service of new functions,
so that their study from this perspective illuminates
important aspects of artistic culture and the image in
I would like to thank Edilberto Flores, OSA, for his collaboration,
and Ramón Mujica Pinilla, with whom I first visited the Church of San
Agustín many years ago. I also thank Stefania Pastore for her thoughtful
and critical reading, and for the Francisco de la Cruz quotation that
opens this essay. Finally, I thank Rebecca Quinn Teresi for helping me
out with the translation.
1. “¡Oh, Roma, Roma, Roma! ¡Cuán desconcertada andas! No lo
digo yo, fulano, sino Dios, que quiere pasar su Iglesia acá y a esta
ciudad de Lima.” V. Abril Castillo and M. J. Abril Stoffels, eds.,
Francisco de la Cruz, Inquisición, Actas II-2 (Madrid, 1997), 1144.
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colonial America.2 The interest of this process, however,
is not limited to the history of colonial art. Many such
copies, such as that under consideration in this article,
do not line up easily with the theoretical models offered
by an art history shaped exclusively by European
examples. Alternative models must be sought
to respond to the specificity of the transatlantic context,
and to question the universality of the concepts
of originality and copy.
In this article I will analyze a particular case that is
extraordinarily well documented, a “portrait” of the
Santo Cristo de Burgos venerated since the late sixteenth
century in the church of San Pedro in Lima. The
unusual history of this image, as narrated in the Crónica
moralizada by the Augustinian writer Antonio de
Calancha (1584–1654), constitutes a singular case,
if not a paradigmatic one, in which the quality of the
imitation of the sacred prototype is deemed essential
for the complete “translation” of a European cult to the
viceroyalties.3 As we will see, the “twin” image that
2. Discussion of the “copy” of sacred images in America is still
limited, and not terribly attentive to processes of transfer. See
J. Cuadriello, “El obrador trinitario o María de Guadalupe creada
en idea, imagen y materia,” in El divino pintor: La creación de María
de Guadalupe en el taller celestial (Mexico City, 2001), 61–205;
C. Bargellini, “Originality and Invention in the Painting of New Spain,”
in Painting a New World: Mexican Art and Life, 1521–1821, ed.
D. Pierce (Denver, 2004), 79–91; and J. F. Peterson, “The
Reproducibility of the Sacred: Simulacra of the Virgin of Guadalupe,”
in Exploring New World Imagery: Spanish Colonial Papers from the
2002 Mayer Center Symposium, ed. D. Pierce (Denver, 2005), 43–77.
One particular category of this casuistry is the painted verdadero retrato
(true portrait), which has only received shallow attention. See A.
Rodríguez G. de Ceballos, “‘Trampantojos a lo divino’: Iconos pintados
de Cristo y de la Virgen a partir de imágenes de culto en América
meridional,” in Actas del III Congreso Internacional del Barroco
Americano, ed. J. M. Almansa and A. Aranda (Seville, 2001), 24–33;
and S. Doménech García, “Función y discurso de la imagen de
devoción en Nueva España: Los ‘verdaderos retratos’ marianos como
imágenes de sustitución afectiva,” Tiempos de América 18 (2011): 77–93.
3. For the copy as “translation,” see J. Garnett and G. Rosser,
Spectacular Miracles: Transforming Images in Italy from the
Renaissance to the Present (London, 2013), 191–219. My conclusions,
however, are contrary to their affirmation that “the perceived value of
a version of a cult image does not depend upon a notion of accurate
visual resemblance” (ibid., 195). In my opinion, from a methodological
98 RES 71/72 2019
was sent to America not only poses a challenge to
our modern concept of reproduction; its correct
interpretation also illuminates the very strategy that
the Augustinian friars pursued in order to extend its cult
in the New World. The image and its account are
inseparable; the narrative depends as much on the
image as the image depends on the chronicle that tells
its story. It is thus essential to understand the logic
underlying the text.
The Santo Cristo de Burgos within Peruvian history
The importance of sacred images within Calancha’s
Crónica is clear from its introduction.4 After establishing
the inexhaustible reserves of the Augustinian Order in
the evangelization of the New World, the chronicler
offers as an example that four of the hemisphere’s
most important miraculous images were under the
guardianship of his order: on the one hand, what
he deems the “trinity” of Guadalupe, Copacabana, and
Pucarani, and on the other, holding the place of
honor, the “tree of the cross” of his house in Lima, that
is, the Santo Cristo de Burgos, to whose turbulent tale
of reproduction and translation from Spain Calancha
dedicates no fewer than six chapters, or eighty-five
pages in the book’s modern edition (fig. 1).
The first of these chapters (bk. I, chap. 41) begins by
recounting the history of the image that served as model,
and of the value of sacred images in general. Next,
a long chapter (42) describes the Limeño friars’
determination to obtain a retrato (portrait) or transunto
(exact copy) of the image of the highest possible
accuracy.5 In the following chapter (43), the author
describes the copy’s extremely long and complicated
journey from Seville to Lima. Exhibiting the Augustinian
tendency that characterizes all of his thinking, the
chronicler interprets the cross’s voyage—from Burgos,
passing through Salamanca to Seville, and then along
the Guadalquivir River to the coast of Spain, and then
standpoint, this does not mean, as Garnett and Rosser argue, that the
traditional concerns of art history are irrelevant for understanding the
logic of the sacred image in the early modern period, but rather that
frequently, scholarship underestimates the complexity of the formal
and material qualities of sacred images.
4. A. de la Calancha, Coronica moralizada del Orden de San
Augustin en el Peru, con sucesos egenplares en esta monarquia
(Barcelona, 1638). Modern edition: Crónica moralizada de Antonio de
la Calancha, ed. I. Prado Pastor, 6 vols. in continuous pagination
(Lima, 1974–82).
5. Calancha never uses the term copia (though he does use the
verb copiar) but instead the terms transunto (trasunto in modern
Spanish), traslado, retrato, and verdadero retrato.
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its transatlantic travel to Cartagena de Indias and
Panama before at last reaching Lima—in light of the
salvific plan. Calancha interprets this journey in
providential terms in at least two different ways. First,
the obstacles that had to be overcome to obtain the
image in Castile, and to ensure it reached its final
destination in the New World, are presented as signs of
divine will. These signs can be read in the descriptions
of how these difficulties were overcome, and in turn
reveal themselves in the image’s miraculous nature. The
image thereby validates the role of the evangelizing
mission entrusted to the Augustinian Order. Second, and
perhaps less obviously, the story of the Lima “Burgos”
Crucifix as told by Calancha is nothing more than the
restaging of another, older memory, that of the very
image that it reproduced, an image that endured a
similar journey before arriving in Spain. In this sense, the
copy of the Crucifix of Burgos is a copy of the original
image in the strictest sense, but also of its biography.
Inseparable from the legend to which it owes its magical
nature, the crucifix becomes an instrument for
discerning the meaning of History, not merely the history
of the order, but that of the viceroyalty of Peru within
the historia salutis. With this elegant narrative strategy,
Calancha uses the story of the Crucifix of Burgos to
reconcile two fundamental principles of the historic
vision he inherited from Saint Augustine: on the one
hand, the unrepeatability of the Incarnation, a concept
that excludes a cyclical view of History (and the fact
that this image is a crucifix is highly significant in this
regard), and on the other hand, the providential
structure of History.6
Providentialism and imitation are the two
fundamental processes by which to interpret the story
of the Crucifix of Burgos, and thus probably also the
cults of many other sacred images initiated in the New
World. By defending the providential history of Peru
within the context of a universal history, Calancha
asserts that evangelization had begun long before the
arrival of the Spaniards (with the preaching of the
apostle Thomas).7 Consequently, the imitation of sacred
6. Here I follow A. Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific
Imagination: From the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century
(Princeton, NJ, 1986), 243–50.
7. For Calancha, as Sabine MacCormack has demonstrated, the
“universalidad de la revelación” (universality of revelation) locates
Peru at the origin of apostolic evangelization itself—in the figure of
Saint Thomas—thus contradicting the direct dependence on Spanish
preaching. S. MacCormack, “Antonio de la Calancha: Un Agustino del
siglo XVII en el Nuevo Mundo,” Bulletin Hispanique 84, nos. 1–2
(1982): 60–94.
 Pereda: Twin brothers 99

Figure 1. Santo Cristo de Burgos, Cathedral of Burgos, probably fifteenth century. Wood,
polychrome leather, natural hair and bone. Photo: author. Color version available as an
online enhancement.

models ought to be understood as a process of question more appropriate for discerning its fate in the
and reply, of copy and distortion, of continuity but also viceroyalty, but also offers a paradigmatic case for
of rupture.8 Interpreting the origin of the cult of this elucidating a process—or rather, a particular moment—
image as a dialectical process of imitation is not only in the origin of numerous European and American cults.9

9. I am aware that the perspective I have chosen neglects

8. B. Fuchs, Mimesis and Empire: The New World, Islam, and two important aspects of the cult of the Crucifix of Burgos that must
European Identities (Cambridge, 2001). be addressed at another time. The first concerns the reception of the

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100 RES 71/72 2019
The plot
According to Antonio de la Calancha, the copy of the
Santo Cristo de Burgos that the Augustinian friars had
obtained in Spain was ready for shipment in October of
1590, after more than a year of complicated negotiations
to overcome local resistance. The Castilian friars not only
refused to permit the creation of any kind of reproduction
of the crucifix, but, once the copy was nevertheless
made, they went so far as to confiscate it to prevent
the portrait of the Santo Cristo from being shipped to
the New World.10
Briefly, Calancha’s account says the following:
in 1588, Father Fray Antonio de Montearroyo decided
to obtain a crucifix for the monastery of San Agustín
in Lima. Antonio had arrived in the New World from
Algarve, Portugal, when he was only eleven years old,
and he had spent his first years in the Sanctuary of
Guadalupe. In that same year of 1588, however, he
had received a new post as sacristan in Lima. Especially
devoted to the Santo Cristo de Burgos, Antonio came up
with the idea of obtaining a copy of that original. The
Santo Cristo was not only the most precious image held
by the Augustinian order in Spain, but possibly the
most charismatic crucifix in Old Castile, an image
whose miracles had attracted pilgrims for over a century,
including among them several monarchs (fig. 2). The
opportunity to acquire a portrait of the Santo Cristo
presented itself to Montearroyo when he met the Basque
merchant Martín de Guzueta, who happened to be
preparing to depart for Spain.11 Antonio convinced him
to manage the project, including finding an artist
capable of executing the copy and transporting it from
the peninsula to Lima. Another Augustinian, Fray
Bautista de Torres, would set sail with Guzueta and
deal with the red tape with the friars in Burgos. To this
effect, Montearroyo wrote a letter of petition (dated
April 16, 1589) in which he specified his request: a
retrato (portrait) of the crucifix, a material relic (nail,
image from the moment of its arrival; Calancha’s chronicle is part
of this process, but only one aspect of it. Second, I only tangentially
address the retroactive effect that the dispatch of sacred images
destined for the viceroyalty might have had on the cults of the images
that were reproduced, and by extension, on the status of sacred
images in the Iberian Peninsula.
10. Calancha’s important account of the Crucifix of Burgos has
gone by practically unnoticed. A notable exception is R. Mujica, Los
Cristos de Lima: Esculturas en madera y marfil, s. XVI–XVIII (Lima,
1991).
11. For the merchant activity of Martín de Guzueta, see L. García
Fuentes, Los peruleros y el comercio de Sevilla con las Indias, 1580–
1630 (Seville, 1997), 156.
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thorn, or hairs) from the same, and a canvas depicting
the image within the sanctuary.
The petition was reviewed by the monastery’s
chapter, which decided to reject it directly. The prior
(Nicolás de Palencia) defended the negative response
in a letter that our chronicler managed to read firsthand.
Their reasons were, in short, that the miraculous nature
of the image made its reproduction impossible, first
because the tangible materials with which it was made
rendered it unrepeatable in practice, and second because
the image changed in appearance, making a mockery of
the copyist’s work:12
Making a faithful copy of this holy Image is impossible, for
how will a true copy be made of that which moves just like
a human body does, with all of its joints, arms, head, and
everything else, as if at that moment it had just died? And
thus there can be no human science capable of making a
portrait properly with respect to what this holy Image is.
Second, neither can it be sculpted, much less painted as
it is, for this is true and verified, that however many times
a person might see this Holy Image, it will always appear
different from one time to the next, and being thus, it will
not be possible to make anything that appears as its likeness,
and God wills it to be thus, so that it is revered with greater
devotion . . . and the portrait risks diminishing the devotion
to the prototype.13
Even if reproducing the crucifix were possible,
concluded the prior, it would be detrimental, as the
copy would undermine the original and its sanctuary.
To their credit, the Burgos friars’ fear was not isolated.
This last argument was heard in the same years with
regard to other important sanctuaries whose cults were
being subjected to globalization. An example to which
we will return is that of Fray Diego de Ocaña, who
12. For the extension of this topic into the seventeenth century, see
J. Portús, “Verdadero retrato y copia fallida: Leyendas en torno a la
reproducción de imágenes sagradas,” in La imagen religiosa en la
Monarquía hispánica: Usos y espacios, ed. M. C. de Carlos Varona,
P. Civil, F. Pereda, and C. Vincent-Cassy (Madrid, 2008), 241–51.
13. Calancha, Crónica moralizada, 3:607–8 (emphasis mine).
“Sacar transunto fiel desta santa Imagen, es inposible, porque ¿cómo
se sacará transunto verdadero de lo que se palpa de la mesma manera
que un cuerpo umano, i se le mueven todas sus coyunturas, braços,
cabeça, i todo lo demás, como si al punto acabara de morir? i así no
avrá ciencia umana que pueda sacar retrato al proprio de lo que es
esta santa Imagen. Lo segundo, tanpoco se puede esculpir, ni menos
pintar como es, porque esto es cierto i averiguado, que quantas veces
una persona viere esta santa Imagen, le parecerá siempre una vez
diferente de la otra, i siendo así no se podrá sacar que parezca a su
semejança, i Dios quiere que esto sea así, para que con más devoción
se reverencie . . . I con el retrato quitar por ventura la devoción del
prototipo.”
 Pereda: Twin brothers 101

Figure 2. Santo Cristo de Burgos, Convento de San Agustín, Lima, Peru. Polychrome
wood. Photo: Daniel Giannoni. Color version available as an online enhancement.

echoes similar opinions relating to reproductions of the
Virgin of Guadalupe.14
14. D. de Ocaña and A. Álvarez, Un viaje fascinante por la
América hispana del siglo XVI (Madrid, 1969), 211.
Montearroyo did not consider the case closed and
decided to enlist another Augustinian friar, Fray Rodrigo
de Loaysa, who at that same moment found himself in
Seville, where he had gone after spending more than
twenty years in the viceroyalties, with the intention of

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102 RES 71/72 2019

raising funds and alms for American monasteries. In

1586, Loaysa had taken advantage of his trip to write a
now-famous memorial in which he called the king’s
attention to the exploitation suffered by the native
population.15 If up to this point the narrative echoes
accounts of medieval translationes centering on the
unauthorized acquisition of relics (including their theft)
and the resulting intervention of the authorities, the story
now takes a surprising turn.16 According to Calancha,
Loaysa traveled to Burgos, where, skeptical about
the possibility of twisting the friars’ arms, he decided
to conspire in secret with a master sculptor named
Jerónimo Escorceto.17
Calancha reports that this artist executed the image by
studying the model surreptitiously until he achieved a
replica of identical dimensions, making it impossible
to distinguish the model from its copy, with two
exceptions: first, it was made of walnut wood rather
than “celestial” wood like its model,18 and second,
the sculptor, misled by the fact that one of the nails in
Christ’s feet had been removed for habitual ritual
bathing, believed that it only had three nails rather than
four.19 Interestingly enough, the Limeño portrait of the
Santo Cristo has feet superimposed like the original, but
they are slightly misaligned, as if to “correct” their
position (fig. 3).
Once the sculpture was completed, it was examined
and certified (on October 29, 1590) by members of
Jerónimo Escorceto’s profession (probably sculptors or
painters); it was then sent south to Seville in order to set

Figure 3. Santo Cristo de Burgos, Convento de San Agustín,

15. “Memorial de las cosas del Pirú tocantes á los indios,” in
Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de España, vol. 94
(Madrid, 1889), 554–605.
16. P. J. Geary, Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle
Ages (Princeton, NJ, 1990). For Spain, see M. Tausiet, El dedo robado:
Reliquias imaginarias en la España moderna (Madrid, 2013).
17. The identity of Jerónimo Escorceto is an enigma I have been
unable to solve.
18. Calancha’s use of the word “celestial” refers to the
Santo Cristo’s skinlike surface.
19. The present essay cannot accommodate an in-depth discussion
of this important detail. Suffice it to mention that the myth that the
Santo Cristo de Burgos had four nails emerged in the seventeenth
century as a result of the belief that the image was produced shortly
after Christ’s death, and therefore had to be of the oldest type known
on the Iberian Peninsula. The Santo Cristo has not four but only three
nails and was made no earlier than the fourteenth century, probably in
the fifteenth century. In the 1630s Francisco Pacheco was drawn in by
the conviction that it had four nails, but then corrected his opinion as
more evidence became available to him. For a discussion of Pacheco,
the number of nails, and the Santo Cristo de Burgos, see F. Pereda,
Crime and Illusion: The Art of Truth in the Spanish Golden Age
(London, 2018), 52–65.
Lima (detail). Photo: Daniel Giannoni. Color version available
as an online enhancement.
sail for America.20 At this point, something extraordinary
occurred that is as crucial to the story as it is difficult to
fully grasp. According to the chronicle, “[Rodrigo de
Loaysa] left Burgos for Seville with his desired
commission, most joyous to send the exact copy of
the dearest jewel in Europe to mother Lima. But though
he was able to obtain it in secret, his caution was for
naught, because knowing of the matter, the Burgos friars
dispatched a friar posthaste to Father Master Fray Luis de
León, who was the vicar provincial of Castile, and who
20. Although Calancha gives precise details, I was unable to find
the document among those of the notary Andrés de Miranda. I would
like to thank Basilio Villacorta Fernández for his help at the Archivo
Histórico Provincial de Burgos.

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was serving as Chair of Sacred Scripture at the University
of Salamanca, so that the Image would be quickly seized
by a powerful hand.”21 In the words of Calancha—and
there is no reason to doubt his testimony—Fray Luis
embargó (confiscated) the image, and it was unable to
resume its journey until he died in August of 1591.
Only then was the crucifix finally able to reach the
hands of Martín de Guzueta and be loaded in a crate
aboard the Santa María del Juncal, bound for America
in 1592.22 Calancha interprets Fray Luis’s decision to
halt the shipment as a jealous attempt to prevent the
reproduction of the crucifix from undermining the cult of
the original; he thus assumes that Fray Luis’s motivations
were in line with those of the brothers of the Burgos
monastery. This last element of the story, unfortunately, is
impossible to verify. In any case, the radical opposition
of the Castilian friars speaks to their awareness of the
symbolic capital attached to the Santo Cristo de Burgos.
Finally, Calancha describes the sculpture’s journey to
Lima—how it voyaged to Cartagena de Indias,
continued on toward Panama, sailed via the Chagres
River to the Pacific, and finally reached the coast of
Peru, where it did not land until November 1593. By
then, the image had already developed a reputation for
miracles: along its route, the boat carrying the image fell
victim to several storms—one just after casting off at the
Spanish port of Sanlúcar, another when leaving
Cartagena—emerging each time with the ship’s crew
unscathed, unlike those of the ships that sailed with it.
The original and its legend
Calancha’s account revives fundamental elements
of the story of the Santo Cristo de Burgos itself, a story
21. “Salió de Burgos para Sevilla con su deseado empleo,
goçosísimo de enbiar a su madre Lima el transunto de la joya
más estimada de Europa. Pero si procuró el secreto, no valió la
cautela, porque sabiendo la cosa los Religiosos de Burgos,
despacharon un Religioso por la posta al Padre Maestro Fray Luis de
León; que era Vicario Provincial de Castilla, i estava leyendo su
Cátedra de sagrada Escritura en la universidad de Salamanca, para
que con mano poderosa quitase la Imagen.” Calancha, Crónica
moralizada, 3:611. Fray Luis was not named vicar provincial of Castile
until August 14, 1591, but was vicar general since February 6, 1591.
Either way it necessitates a slight delay in the chronology supplied by
Calancha. See n. 82.
22. J. C. Pérez Morales, “El comercio de escultura entre Sevilla e
Indias en los siglos XVI y XVII: Reflexiones y nuevas aportaciones,” in
Actas del I Congreso Internacional sobre escultura virreinal, Oaxaca,
2008 (forthcoming), confirms Calancha’s testimony. I would like to
thank the author for providing me with a copy of his article.
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Pereda: Twin brothers 103
that was very familiar to the chronicler—as well as the
protagonists of his account—thanks to the “books of
miracles” through which the monastery of San Agustín de
Burgos had publicized its legend.23 When Fray Antonio
de Montearroyo tasked the merchant Martín de Guzueta
with obtaining a copy of the Crucifix of Burgos, it was
not long after the Augustinian monastery had printed the
second edition of its Libro de milagros (1574, updating
the first edition of 1554), which included a “biography”
of the crucifix along with a list of canonically recognized
miracles attributed to it. This “book of miracles”
incorporated the contents of the manuscript written after
the first investigation of the crucifix, which had been
undertaken in 1454 under the auspices of the city’s
converso archbishop, Alonso de Cartagena, son of
the distinguished prelate and Jewish biblical scholar
Pablo de Santa María.24
The image’s cult does not appear to be ancient but
rather, as is the case with a good number of
Christological sanctuaries in Castile, the fruit of a modern
reactivation of earlier medieval images—a process that,
as William Christian notes, seems to have accelerated
from the fifteenth century on.25 In the case of the Crucifix
of Burgos, Cartagena’s intervention coincides with
the first supplicatory procession that I have been able to
identify,26 which supports my hypothesis that the image’s
cult was precipitated in the middle of the century in the
23. For the origins of the legend of the Santo Cristo de Burgos, see
F. Pereda, “La conversión por la imagen, y la imagen de la conversión:
Notas sobre la cultura figurativa castellana en el umbral de la Edad
Moderna,” in Cartografías visuales y arquitectónicas de la modernidad:
Siglos XV–XVIII, ed. S. Canalda, C. Narváez, and J. Sureda (Barcelona,
2011), 227–41. See also F. Pereda, Images of Discord: Poetics and
Politics of the Sacred Image in Fifteenth-Century Spain (London, 2018).
For its history, see N. López Martínez, El Smo. Cristo de Burgos
(Burgos, 1997), and M. J. Martínez Martínez, “El Santo Cristo de
Burgos y los cristos dolorosos articulados,” Boletín del Seminario de
Estudios de Arte y Arqueología de Valladolid 69 (2003–4): 207–46.
For its cult, see L. M. Calvo Salgado, Milagros y mendigas en Burgos y
La Rioja 1554–1559 (Logroño, 2002).
24. For a collation of the manuscript and the printed edition, see
Pereda, “La conversión por la imagen.”
25. W. A. Christian, “De los santos a María: Panorama de las
devociones a santuarios españoles desde el principio de la Edad Media
hasta nuestros días,” in Temas de Antropología Española (Madrid,
1976), 49–105.
26. This procession was held on August 30, 1455, in supplication
for protection against a pestilence that had been devastating the city.
The image of the Virgin was taken from the cathedral’s high altar and
carried on a platform to the Augustinian monastery. Archivo de la
Catedral de Burgos, RR. n. 14, fol. 168. Alonso de Cartagena would
die the following year (1456) upon returning from a pilgrimage to
Santiago de Compostela.
104 RES 71/72 2019
context of the Jewish minority’s assimilation.27 The
specifically anti-Jewish aspects of the legend would
fade with time, but not the belief in the power of the
Santo Cristo to bring about conversions. When the story
of the Crucifix of Burgos was picked up for the first time,
hardly a decade later (in 1467, in the travel journal of
the Bohemian noble Leo von Rozmitál),
̌ it already
amalgamated various elements from other sources, in
the first place from the legendary Crucifix of Beirut,28
and in the second place from the Volto Santo of Lucca,
which partly reincarnated the legend of the former at
least since the twelfth century.29 Like the Volto Santo,
the Crucifix of Burgos was also said to have come from
Palestine by sea, just as it was said to have been made
by Nicodemus, the mythical disciple of Jesus who had
been with him during the Passion. However, the legend
of the Crucifix of Burgos incorporated original, or at least
independent, elements from an early date, elements that
proved fundamental for its American replica, especially
the mediation of sailors (or merchants) who served as
instruments of its transfer.30
The legend was officially established by the
Augustinians in the first edition of the “book of
miracles,” which included the following fundamental
elements: one, the hermits of San Agustín, knowing of
a merchant from Burgos who was heading to Flanders,
27. Pereda, “La conversión por la imagen.”
28. See esp. M. Bacci, “‘Quel bello miracolo onde si fa la festa del
santo Salvatore’: Studio sulle metamorfosi di una leggenda,” in
Santa Croce e Santo Volto: Contributi allo studio dell’origine e della
fortuna del culto del Salvatore (secoli IX–XV), ed. G. Rossetti (Pisa,
2002), 7–86, “Nicodemo e il Volto Santo,” in Il Volto Santo in Europa:
Culto e immagini del Crocifisso nel Medioevo, ed. M. C. Ferrari and
A. Meyer (Lucca, 2005), 5–40, and “‘Ad ipsius Cristi effigiem’: Il Volto
Santo come ritratto autentico del Salvatore,” in La Santa Croce di
Lucca; Il Volto Santo: Storia, tradizioni, immagini (Lucca, 2003), 115–
30. See also J.-M. Sansterre, “L’image blessée, l’image souffrante:
Quelques récits de miracles entre Orient et Occident (VIe–XIIe siècle),”
in Les images dans les sociétés médiévales: Pour une histoire comparée
(Brussels, 1999), 113–30, and M. Bacci, “The Berardenga
Antependium and the Passio Ymaginis Office,” Journal of the Warburg
and Courtauld Institutes 61 (1998): 1–16.
29. For the legend of the Volto Santo, see esp. M. C. Ferrari,
“Imago visibilis Christi: Le ‘volto santo’ de Lucques et les images
authentiques au Moyen Age,” Micrologus 6 (1998): 29–42. For the
image’s diffusion, see J.-C. Schmitt, “Cendrillon crucifiée: À propos du
Volto Santo de Lucques (XIIe–XVe siècle),” in Le corps des images:
Essais sur la culture visuelle au Moyen Âge (Paris, 2002), 217–71.
30. According to the oral accounts recorded by Von Rozmitál,̌
some sailors had found it on the high seas. A questionable document
reproduced by Father Henrique Flórez (España Sagrada, vol. 27
[Madrid, 1772], 497–99), which he dates to 1473, already identifies a
mercader (merchant) from Burgos who reportedly found it floating at
sea on his way home from Flanders. See also López Martínez, El Smo.
Cristo, 18–19.
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requested that he bring them a “buena joya” (fine jewel)
for the monastery; second, the merchant forgot, boarding
his ship with empty hands; next, a storm pummeled the
ship on its return; and finally, immediately after the
storm, a “caxa a manera de ataud” (box in the form of
a coffin) was discovered, inside of which the Crucifix
appeared. Finally, the merchant returned to his
hometown unharmed, where he delivered the Crucifix
to the Augustinians.31
While the legend’s general structure originates in
accounts specifically tied to crucifix cults, certain
elements—from the mediation of the merchant, or its
accidental oversight, to the storm calmed by the image’s
mediation—can be found in much earlier legends
associated with Marian icons, in particular that of the
icon of Sardonay as told in the Cantigas de Santa María
(Cantiga 9), and even more precisely in the version of
the same tale in the collection of miracles by Gautier de
Coincy (lib. 2, no. 21).32 In these Marian tales, however,
it is friars rather than merchants who are responsible
for transporting the images. Their transformation into
merchants sailing to Flanders appears to be related to the
precise setting of the legend, Burgos, and its important
trade with the Netherlands, and perhaps also to the
geographical origin of the image, as the Low Countries
had traditionally provided many of the most important
sculptors (imagineros, in their terminology) working
in late medieval Castile.33
In either case, the reproduction of the Burgos image
for the Lima monastery encompasses not only the
material copy of the model but also the complete
transfer of the legend, upon whose faithful repetition
the continuity of its miraculous dimension entirely
depended: the order, the mediation of a merchant,
the round-trip oceanic journey, as well as the miracles
of calming the storm and rescuing the crew, are all
elements repeated in both tales. It is not only that the
31. Hystoria de como fue hallada la ymagen del sancto Crucifixo,
que esta en el monasterio de sancto Augustin de Burgos: con algunos
de sus miraglos [sic]. Dirigida al muy alto y muy poderoso principe de
España, don Phelippe (Burgos, 1554), fol. 12. Libro de los milagros
del sancto Crucifixo, que esta en el monasterio de sant Agustin de la
ciudad de Burgos (Burgos, 1574), fols. 5–6.
32. W. Mettmann, ed., Cantigas de Santa María (Madrid, 1986),
1:79–85; Gautier de Coincy, Les Miracles de Nostre Dame, ed. V. F.
Koenig (Geneva, 1966–70), vol. 4. In both cases, however, the
protagonist is a monk on pilgrimage to Jerusalem; see O. Manzi and
F. Corti, “Viajeros y peregrinos en las Cantigas de Santa María,” Temas
Medievales 5 (1995): 69–89.
33. The Santo Cristo de Burgos could, in fact, be of Netherlandish
manufacture, but its origin still awaits serious research. I have collected
the known information in Pereda, Images of Discord.

chronicler interprets the circumstances of the journey
as a providential sign, but also that the friars themselves
seem to have proceeded with the express intention to
duplicate the legend. It is clear that the motives of
Antonio de Montearroyo, who constructed this
mythology, are completely inseparable from those
of Antonio de Calancha, who recorded it.
Comparing the two narratives also illuminates the
friars’ resolve to obtain a copy of this particular
prototype. The Augustinians of Peru, as the sources
demonstrate, did not want a copy of just any image
from the old continent, nor of just any miraculous image
held by their order, but a portrait of the Santo Cristo de
Burgos specifically. I believe the reasons for this are
varied. Since at least the mid-fifteenth century, the
Crucifix of Burgos was recognized as a charismatic
image, and its miracles multiplied continuously, not only
in the form of wondrous healings but also in its
demonstration of signs of life.34 Though the Augustinians
proved themselves prudent in denying that those
miracles could be manifest in its “cuerpo orgánico”
(organic body),35 the terms in which the Burgos prior
had phrased his argument for the impossibility of
copying the crucifix—the image’s changing face—speak
for themselves. This profound and calculated ambiguity
would become fundamental in the management of
the cult of miraculous images in Spain, just as in the
viceroyalties. Rodrigo de Loaysa himself, in a fat treatise
on Christology that he published years later in Seville,
and in which is contained an erudite debate on the cult
of images, was emphatically against attributing any form
of particular virtud (virtue) to images, a stance difficult to
reconcile with his responsibility for the “theft” of the
copy of the Burgos Crucifix.36 The paths of theory and
practice do not always run parallel in the treatment
34. For more on this phenomenon, see W. A. Christian, “Images as
Beings: Blood, Sweat, and Tears,” in Divine Presence in Spain and
Western Europe 1500–1960 (Budapest, 2012), 45–96.
35. Hystoria de como fue hallada la ymagen del sancto crucifixo
(1554), fols. 18–19. See also J. C. Pérez Morales, “‘Haz que tu pecho
protervo, llueva lágrimas copiosas de firme arrepentimiento . . . ’: El
Cristo Sevillano de San Agustín y su procesión rogativa de 1737”
(forthcoming).
36. “Dos cosas dize aquiel santo Concilio [Trent], que confirman
grandemente nuestra doctrina. La primera, que no adoramos las
imagines, porque en ellas aya alguna virtud, por la qual merezcan ser
adoradas; esto es, por si mismas, y sin consideracion de lo que
significan, y assi dize que no ay en ellas alguna divinidad, o virtud
[emphasis mine] por la qual las podamos adorar; . . . Lo segundo dize,
que la razon, porque las adoramos es por lo que significan, y
representan . . . De manera, que los originales que representan son los
terminos, y el blanco, y el hito, y paradero de la tal adoracion, y ellos
son la causa principalissima de la adoracion que les hazemos”; R. de
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Pereda: Twin brothers 105
of cult images, but perhaps even less so in the case of
the Burgos crucifix. The signs of life that were shown
in and through the Santo Cristo would convert it into
a paradigmatic example of divine favor for sacred
images,37 though also, of course, into the perfect target
for Reformation critics.38
The importance attributed to the model is further
illustrated by another anecdote in which the concept of
the copy was affected by the new context of transatlantic
trade. When Martín de Guzueta negotiated the copy of
the crucifix, he first offered Montearroyo an easier and
less burdensome solution than coming to Burgos to wear
down the friars’ resistance: to reproduce another Christ,
the Santo Cristo of the monastery of San Agustín in
Seville, also known as that of the Puerta Carmona.39 This
charismatic image had uncertain origins, but there was
no shortage of, in the words of the local chronicler
Alonso Morgado, “confusas tradiciones” (mixed-up
traditions) attributing New World origins to it40—a
process inverse to the myth we are now exploring.
What’s more, the work had been reproduced a few years
before by one of the sculptors based in Seville who was
most actively exploiting the Peruvian market, Juan
Bautista Vázquez;41 therefore it is not impossible that
Guzueta would even have had an artist in mind.
Loaysa, Victorias de Christo nuestro redemptor y triunfos de su esposa
la santa Yglesia (Seville, 1618), fol. 298. At the same time, however,
Loaysa proves to be decidedly in favor of a Thomist theory of
adoration, according to which the image should receive the same
type of cult as its referent (latria, in the case of the crucifix). The
discrepancy between image theory and practice represented by Loaysa
was common in the territories of the Catholic Monarchy. The
Tridentine doctrine adopted by the Third Council of Lima is analyzed
in T. Cummins, “El lenguaje del arte colonial: Imagen, ékfrasis e
idolatría,” in Encuentro Internacional de Peruanistas (Lima, 1998),
2:23–44.
37. “Muchas maravillas haze el Señor de cada día en los devotos
de aquella sancta reliquia, parte, porque los herejes deste tiempo se
confundan, viendo como honra Dios sus imágenes que ellos
desprecian.” J. Román, Chrónica de la Orden de los Ermitaños del
glorioso padre Sancto Augustín (Salamanca, 1569), fol. 56.
38. C. de Valera [1588], Tratado del Papa, ed. I. Colón Calderón
(Seville, 2010), 18–19.
39. J. M. Gutiérrez Pérez, “El Cristo del Convento de San Agustín
en Sevilla,” in Conventos Agustinos (Actas del Congreso, Madrid,
20–24 de octubre de 1997), ed. R. Lazcano (Rome, 1998), 1:27–61.
40. A. Morgado, Historia de Sevilla (Seville, 1587).
41. Ten years earlier, he had made a copy for the funerary chapel
of a Sevillian bachiller in the church of San Pedro, where it can still be
found (though it was heavily restored in the nineteenth century). See
C. López Martínez, Desde Jerónimo Hernández hasta Martínez Montañés
(Seville, 1929), 103–5. In 1584, the sculptor had made an agreement
with two merchants to find places for his works in the viceroyalties;
ibid., 142. See also Pérez Morales, “El comercio de escultura.”
106 RES 71/72 2019
However, Montearroyo declined this offer and insisted
on obtaining a copy of the Crucifix of Burgos. That
of Burgos, and no other, had to be the model.
The difficult business of copying
Calancha is precise regarding the status of the portrait
of the Crucifix of Burgos obtained by Montearroyo,
asserting that in comparison with the original, it was
“en todo igual, semejante i uniforme” (the same in every
way, alike and uniform).42 The new image was expected
to achieve the same miraculous effects in the New
World that the old one had on the peninsula.43 What,
then, were the conditions that ensured its effectiveness?
What type of copy could guarantee the success of such
a transfer?
It is clear that the authority of the prototype was
firmly connected to its legend. Its miraculous virtue,
its mysterious origins, its outlandish arrival, and its
sacred authority are all inseparable elements. As I have
pointed out, the scope of its imitation was not limited to
the visual, but encompassed the reactivation of its
history and a shared horizon of intentions. The legend,
and not just the image, had to be transferred to the New
World if the virtue of the prototype was to be
reproduced in the copy. My analysis coincides with
anthropologists’ explorations of the “Law of Similarity,”
according to which, in the famous formulation of Sir
James Frazer, “like produces like.”44 As several authors
have demonstrated, the homeopathic effects of
reproduction cannot be attributed to a merely
mechanical conception. Alfred Gell, among others, has
demonstrated that the law of similarity is inseparable
from the more ample logic of its agents’ intentions,
which the British anthropologist emphatically called the
“strength of desire.”45 And Michael Taussig, in another
42. Calancha, Crónica moralizada, 3:610–11.
43. “i fuese causa su vista de borrar en las ánimas retratos del
demonio, i pintar de nuevo retratos de Dios en los coraçones”;
Calancha, Crónica moralizada, 3:593. Compare Augustine, Serm. 62,
De verbis Domini, chap. 11. This is a commonplace. See, e.g., José de
Acosta’s De procuranda indorum salute: J. de Acosta, Obras, ed. F.
Mateos (Madrid, 1954), 561. The dialectic of persuasion-coercion is
pervasive in the missionary policy of these years; see S. MacCormack,
“‘The Heart Has Its Reasons’: Predicaments of Missionary Christianity
in Early Colonial Peru,” Hispanic American Historical Review 65
(1985): 443–66.
44. J. Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion
(1890; repr., New York, 1940).
45. A. Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford,
1998), 101: “Magic is possible because intentions cause events to
happen in the vicinity of agents.” See also S. J. Tambiah, “Form and
Meaning of Magical Acts: A Point of View,” in Modes of Thought:
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important discussion, has noted that likeness or
resemblance is rarely perceived exclusively through
vision, isolated from other senses, particularly the sense
of touch; as a consequence, Taussig advocates for a
break with the “tyranny of the visual” and toward a
more synesthetic approach.46
These anthropological perspectives invite an
understanding of the process of imitation in the
amplified sense: the Augustinians’ expectations did not
constitute a mere context of the commission but rather
were a necessary condition of the image’s virtue.47 This
does not mean that the quality of the reproduction was
by any means irrelevant—indeed quite the contrary. Just
as the artifact’s effectiveness is inseparable as much from
the will of the agents as from the narrative to which
the image and prototype pertain, both highlight the
important role played by the quality of the imitation.
Not only Calancha’s testimony, but also comparison
between the two sculptures, demonstrates that imitation
was absolutely essential for the fulfillment of the copy’s
function. This circumstance does not easily align with
the model supplied by certain anthropological
approaches, nor with recent work on the concepts
of authenticity and copy in early modern visual culture.
According to the most recent discussions, “originality”
in the modern sense of the term is defined by opposition
but also by a mutual dependence upon the concept
of the copy.48 Contrary to the premodern image, the
modern work of art is established as a new point
of origin to which any exact reproduction is referred to
in terms of its status as a copy, and potentially as a
falsification. The exactitude of modern copies, in Europe
at least from the sixteenth century, particularly when
seen in opposition to the approximated character of
medieval copies, highlights precisely that the prototype
Essays on Thinking in Western and Non-Western Societies, ed.
R. Forton and R. Finnegan (London, 1973), 199–229.
46. M. Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the
Senses (New York, 1993), 44–58, quote at 57.
47. Different strategies of mimesis or representation could function
simultaneously and probably always acted in a mutual interrelation.
One refers, for example, to material continuity (in fact, in the case
currently under consideration, the first request for a reproduction
was accompanied by a request for some sort of relic). Another, which
in this case does not appear to have been involved, but which may
have played an important role on other occasions, is the moral quality
or religious charisma of the author. For the latter, see Ocaña and
Álvarez, Un viaje fascinante, 210.
48. For the purposes of our discussion, I use “original” and
“authentic” as synonyms, understanding that the latter implies an
irreplaceable point of origin.

is irreplaceable.49 According to this recent scholarship, it
is impossible to escape this logic. “The copied artwork,”
writes Christopher Wood in a generally incisive book,
“no matter how faithful, can never substitute for
the original.”50
Contradicting this assumption, the efforts of the
Augustinian friars of Lima—which were ultimately
successful, as we will soon see—yielded something
very different from a simple “falsification”: the “portrait”
of the Crucifix of Burgos executed by the mysterious
Jerónimo Escorceto, and the other contemporaneous
copies of that same image for which we have
documentary evidence, were minutely precise copies,
extending the imitation from iconography to what we
would today call their style, and even their materiality.51
At the same time, however, for these and for many other
American examples, the exactitude of the replica did not
amount to a forgery but was instead the necessary
condition of producing a new original.
49. C. S. Wood, Forgery, Replica, Fiction: Temporalities of German
Renaissance Art (Chicago, 2008); A. Nagel and C. S. Wood,
Anachronic Renaissance (New York, 2010), esp. 117, 109–22, 275–87.
A similar explanatory model is found in T. Lenain, Art Forgery: The
History of a Modern Obsession (London, 2011), esp. 74–76. In Amy
Powell’s alternative explanation, the model of “substitution” functioned
not diachronically or vertically, but rather horizontally, through the
image’s belonging to a group of similar holy images. Although the
images of the Crucifix of Burgos doubtlessly participate in this idea
of communion with a type, what is singular in this case is as much the
quality of the reproduction as the miraculous nature of the product. A.
Powell, “A Point ‘Ceaselessly Pushed Back’: The Origin of Early
Netherlandish Painting,” Art Bulletin 88 (2006): 707–28. While the
former theory complicates the historicist outline of Vasarian tradition,
it replaces it with a new form of teleologism in the face of which the
Iberian and Ibero-American worlds behave like aberrations.
50. Wood, Forgery, Replica, Fiction, 16. According to this
explanatory model, the mechanisms of the substitution of sacred
images in the medieval West conformed to the maintenance of a
certain familiarity between copy and prototype. Likewise, the
appearance of the modern concept of the copy took place in the
fifteenth century as part of a growing process of differentiation between
two incompatible categories of images: “works of art” versus “cult
images.” For this “medieval” concept of the copy, see G. Constable,
“Forgery and Plagiarism in the Middle Ages,” Archiv für Diplomatik,
Schriftgeschichte, Siegel- und Wappenkunde 29 (1983): 1–41.
H. Kessler, “Copia,” in Enciclopedia dell’Arte Medievale, vol. 5 (Rome,
1994), 264–77; N. Zchomelidse, “The Aura of the Numinous and Its
Reproduction: Medieval Paintings of the Savior in Rome and Latium,”
Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 55 (2010): 221–57; and
Lenain, Art Forgery, with an ample bibliography. The emergence of the
“exact copy” in the fifteenth century is, however, poorly understood
and rarely discussed.
51. The copy made by Juan Bautista Vázquez el Viejo, for
example, was reportedly “según y en la forma que está . . . el Santo
Crucifijo”; López Martínez, Desde Jerónimo Hernández hasta Martínez
Montañés, 104.
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Pereda: Twin brothers 107
A second example very close to the one currently
under consideration will help enrich our discussion. A
few years after the episode recounted here, the
Hieronymite friar Diego de Ocaña visited San Agustín in
Lima, coming from the Iberian sanctuary of Guadalupe
in Extremadura, the home of an eminent cult statue of
the Virgin. Ocaña, who tells us that his Spanish brothers
were opposed to allowing copies of their image to be
made, writes that upon his arrival in Lima, the members
of a confraternity of the Virgin of Guadalupe asked him
to paint a copy of the statue with the express intention
of redirecting the alms from the Extremaduran sanctuary
into the convent’s coffers: “it was necessary and
advisable that I make an image of the same size as
the one in Spain, and more beautiful and richer than
the ones that had been made over here; and as I, who
was making it, was a friar of that same house, they took
the image that I made to be a true original while the rest
were [just] portraits.”52 Just as with the Crucifix of
Burgos (even if in that case the copy was a sculpture),
here original and copy are, to our surprise, traveling
companions, the meticulous reproduction of the image
together with the virtue contributed by the author
supplying the “originality.” Neither the image painted
by Diego de Ocaña in the appearance of the statue from
Extremadura nor the sculpture the friars had brought
from Burgos years before could thus be described as the
American link in a chain of substitution whose original
was in Spain, nor as falsifications of their models. How,
then, should we understand their status?
While our modern model of reproduction corresponds
to a hierarchical logic (original → copy), other alternative
schemes continued functioning in the territories of
the Catholic Monarchy. In contrast with the “paternal”
relationship in which the copy depends on the authority of
the original as a child is engendered by its parent, the logic
followed by the Augustinian friars is better understood
according to a “fraternal” model of synchronic
brotherhood (original ↔ original): that is, a relationship
between identical twin brothers. The distinction recalls
Augustine’s commentary on Genesis 1:26,53 which
was popularized by Thomas Aquinas.54 Both Augustine
52. “fue necesario y convino que yo hiciese una imagen del
mismo tamaño que la de España, y más linda y rica que las que acá
estaban hechas; y como yo, que la hacía era fraile de la misma casa,
tuvieron a la imagen que yo hice por verdadero original y a las demás
como retratos”; Ocaña and Álvarez, Un viaje fascinante, 210.
53. W. Dürig, Imago: Ein Beitrag zur Terminologie und Theologie
der römischen Liturgie (Munich, 1952), 36–42.
54. Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I, q. 93, art. 1. See also J. Wirth,
Qu’est-ce qu’une image? (Geneva, 2013), 13–14.
108 RES 71/72 2019
and Aquinas (and with him the Scholastic tradition)
carefully distinguished between three different concepts:
the image (imago), and from it, likeness (similitudo)
and equality (aequalitas), the latter emphasizing that two
things could be equal without one being the “image” of
the other—two eggs in Aquinas’s example, as well as two
twin brothers. This notion of aequalitas stands in contrast
to similitudo, which always implies a formal dependence
on the model, and as such a certain inequality.
This distinction had been crucial in the
pretypographic culture of the Middle Ages,55 as symbolic
strategies of nonvisual replication were established that
permitted the “translation” or export of an object, a
building, or even a landscape to a different location,
without the intervention of the original.56 The Via Crucis
provides one such example: the stations of the cross
gave Christians the opportunity to transport themselves
to the Holy Land without even leaving their homes.57
While formal reproduction only assured likeness, the
distance between the stations could be made identical
with those in the Holy Land, resulting in an “equality”
between prototype and “copy” through measurement,
without recourse to formal similarity.58 Both categories—
similitudo and aequalitas—are then distinct as much
intellectually as practically.
In my opinion, it is precisely this reasoning that
lies behind the terms used by Calancha to describe the
Crucifix of Burgos in relation to its model (“en todo
igual, semejante i uniforme”): it was not a copy but
rather its trasunto (a juridical term for an exact replica),
or, more clearly, its traslado (a term which can mean
55. One of the effects of typographic culture is the possibility
of ensuring a fidelity of reproduction impossible to achieve by
nonmechanical means; see W. M. Ivins, Prints and Visual
Communication (Cambridge, MA, 1969).
56. For more on this logic, see J. Z. Smith, To Take Place: Toward
Theory in Ritual (Chicago, 1987), 74–94.
57. An example close to that under consideration is the Via Crucis
established in Seville by the Duke of Alcalá, in which the importance
of the “equality” of measurements is profusely documented. See
F. Pereda, “Measuring Jerusalem: The Marquis of Tarifa’s Pilgrimage in
1520 and Its Urban Consequences,” in “Tales of the City: Outsiders’
Descriptions of Cities in the Early Modern Period,” ed. F. Nevola and
F. Bardati, special issue, Città e Storia 7, no. 2 (2012): 77–102. My
thoughts here depend upon Richard Krautheimer’s groundbreaking
article “Introduction to an ‘Iconography of Mediaeval Architecture,’”
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942): 1–33.
58. Although the identification of equality with measurements
seems to have been born in a pretypographic culture, examples can be
found in the seventeenth century, such as Vicente Carducho’s Diálogos
de la pintura [1633], ed. D. G. Cruzada Villaamil (Madrid, 1865), 262.
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“transfer,” but also exact copy).59 In describing the “true
portrait” of the Crucifix of Burgos in terms of likeness
and form on the one hand, and of equality on the other,
Calancha was leaning on a Scholastic vocabulary that
contemplated two different forms of relationships,
whereas the modern spectator only notes two
contiguous grades of a single category. In the years
in which our story takes place, the same terms had been
remembered by Gabriele Paleotti in his famous
Discourse on Sacred and Profane Images (1582), but
the direct source of the operation can be found much
closer.60 Rodrigo de Loaysa himself, who must be
considered the intellectual author of the portrait of the
Santo Cristo de Burgos, used this same reasoning in his
own Christological treatise, distinguishing, just as
Aquinas had, between a relationship of “similitude”
that implies a genetic hierarchy and one of “equality” by
which two objects share the same qualities, without
any possible distinction between them.61 This logic (and
this Christology) not only explains the emphasis on
exactitude in the portrait of the crucifix but also
illuminates the reasons for the Burgos friars’ resistance
in permitting it and, finally, the very meaning of the
operation undertaken by the Augustinians in Peru.
In conclusion, the operation launched by Loaysa, and
later masterfully narrated by Calancha, did not rely on
a distinction between originality and copy as mutually
exclusive concepts. On the contrary, both Loaysa and
Calancha considered originality and reproduction to be
simultaneously possible, even complementary,
conditions. The maneuver described here participates as
much in the medieval as in the postmedieval system of
copying, without fully subscribing to either. And besides,
both systems are mutually and insidiously contaminated.
To clarify this last point, I will compare the evidence
provided by the Crucifix of Burgos with the explanation
of the phenomenon of falsification outlined in Thierry
Lenain’s recent book, Art Forgery (2011). In this
ambitious book, Lenain presents the “exact copy” as an
essentially modern phenomenon in two senses: first,
insofar as it is the result of the secularization of a
property that had once been exclusive to relics, now
59. In Covarrubias’s dictionary of 1611, the definition of trasladar
carries both meanings: first, “passar de un lugar a otro alguna cosa de
consideración como trasladar el cuerpo o reliquias de algun santo,”
and second, “. . . vale copiar. Y este se llama traslado.” S. de
Covarrubias, Tesoro de la lengua castellana, o española (Madrid,
1611), fol. 52.
60. G. Paleotti, Discorso intorno alle immagini sacre e profane
(Vatican City, 2002), 17.
61. Loaysa, Victorias de Christo, 290–92.

converted into a sine qua non condition of art; second,
because it implies an aesthetic attitude toward the
formal qualities of the object—even its beauty—which
is foreign to if not incompatible with relics. Curiously,
as Lenain himself points out, exact copies of medieval
images—the Keramion being among the most famous
examples—are not explained by a process of manual
imitation but rather by a mechanical impression; on the
rare occasions in which a medieval source mentions
the identical imitation of a model by human hands, the
result is described in terms of falsification, not as a new
original.
The example now under consideration deviates
profoundly from the discourse of the copy that Lenain
calls “modern,” nor can it be described as the survival
of a medieval practice. It partakes of both systems. The
efforts of Escorceto and his Augustinian patrons can be
explained as an attempt to push likeness to the limits
of equality. This demanded what might be called an
attitude of critical distance: the crucifix they had
proposed to copy was original insofar as it was created
in the past at a precise moment by a precise author.62
Transferring its originality implied contending with the
vicissitudes of its history, as we have seen, but also
reproducing the image in such a way that the original
and the copy were perceptually indistinguishable. At
the same time, the extent of “identity” between the
two images did not lay in either contiguity or material
contagion, nor in contamination, as in the medieval
examples;63 rather, here it depended uniquely and
exclusively on the artist’s capacity to replicate the
original style of that older image.64 The appearance
62. Here I follow Nelson Goodman’s definition of forgery,
expanded by Sándor Radnóti: “A forgery of a work of art is an object
falsely purporting to have both history of production, as well as the
entire subsequent general historical fate requisite for the (or an) original
work”; S. Radnóti, The Fake: Forgery and Its Place in Art (Oxford,
1999), 116, citing N. Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a
Theory of Symbols (Indianapolis, 1976), 122.
63. As mentioned above, the most notable difference between the
two crucifixes was, according to Calancha, that of the material—wood,
in the case of the copy; wood and polychromed leather in the original.
What’s more, the failure to obtain the relic (hair, nail, etc.) that had
originally been requested does not seem to have depleted the copy’s
charisma. However, we know that the “true portraits” of the Crucifix of
Burgos—life-size canvases that were extremely popular in Spain
between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—were possible, as
long as they “touched” the original. In my opinion this demonstrates
that there were different, competing systems of reproduction in play—
one more reason to avoid a teleological model.
64. I understand authenticity to be the result of an attitude toward
certain aspects of two works in comparison, rather than an intrinsic
quality. Here I follow Goodman, Languages of Art, 99–123, and also
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Pereda: Twin brothers 109
of the copy demonstrates that its maker did not
understand style as a generic quality of the image (as
seems to have occurred in an earlier period) but rather
as an individual characteristic of it.65 It is particularly
evident that the copyist of the Santo Cristo considered
specificity or individuality of style not to be a purely
visual characteristic, but rather one indissolubly bound
to an object’s materiality. Thus, while Escorceto was not
able to reproduce the prototype’s polychrome leather
(which in any case he had no way of being aware of),
the sculptor did supply his portrait with natural hair like
that of the original instead of imitating it sculpturally.66
In harmony with the interpretive model put forth by
Lenain, the copy made by Escorceto demanded the
consideration of the original as a “relic,” but in
contradiction with Lenain’s proposal, the resulting
image, though having been executed by a purely
manual (artistic) procedure, was not a forgery of an
original but rather, to a certain extent, a new and no
less authentic relic. The careful study and reproduction
of the appearance of the original put in motion by
Loaysa and executed by Escorceto resulted in a paradox:
the transfer of the original, rather than its falsification.67
By surreptitiously inserting the image maker into the
Burgos sanctuary to obtain a “true portrait” of the crucifix,
resulting in two works as alike as two drops of water or
two eggs, Loaysa aspired to physically “translate” the
Crucifix of Burgos to the New World without any
apparent spiritual reduction of its twin brother. His
objective was to find a path negotiating between
evangelical Catholicism and the local specificity of the
Peruvian church. If my interpretation is correct, this story
should not be interpreted as an episode in the expansion
of the cult of the Santo Cristo de Burgos, but, from the
perspective of its authors, as a true translatio; of course,
this does not change the fact that from the perspective of
the Castilian “victims,” the same procedure could be seen
as a deliberate act of sabotage.68
R. Neer, “Connoisseurship and the Stakes of Style,” Critical Inquiry 32
(2005): 1–26. These analyses, however, subsume the materiality of the
image into their visuality, thus obscuring an important aspect of
authenticity.
65. See R. Wollheim, “Pictorial Style: Two Views,” in The Concept
of Style, ed. B. Lang (Ithaca, NY, 1987), 183–202.
66. My opinion on this aspect of American copies has been
enriched by discussion with María Lumbreras.
67. As a marginal note, it seems important to highlight that the
distinction between art and relic obscures more than clarifies the
process we are analyzing.
68. See Covarrubias, Tesoro, fol. 50: “TRADUZIR, del verbo Latino
traduco, is, por llevar de un lugar a otro alguna cosa, o encaminarla.”
At least in Calancha’s account, it is not suggested that the Burgos
110 RES 71/72 2019
Finally, that the prototype was attributed to the hand
of Nicodemus is without a doubt no accident. The
significance of the entire operation was, it seems
obvious to say, Christological. In Calancha’s
providentialist reading, the arrival of the “true portrait”
of Christ in the Americas was designed as a seminal
moment in the history of Redemption.
The political significance of the transfer
Discerning the true story of these events behind
the moralized reading proposed by Calancha is in some
sense an impossible task, but the historical context of
the episode offers sufficient elements to link it to
jurisdictional tensions within the order itself, and to the
politics of evangelization in the viceroyalty.69 In 1583,
hardly five years before Montearroyo’s arrival in Lima,
Bishop Alfonso Mogrovejo had adjourned the
Third Council of Lima, opening a new chapter in the
evangelization of Peru.70 As various authors have
demonstrated, the council was marked by a growing
skepticism toward the possibility of building bridges
between Christianity and Andean traditions, between the
Gospel and a culture, and even a language, considered
to be intrinsically idolatrous. Sabine MacCormack has
pointed out that in the sermons published in Quechua
and Aymara in the wake of the council, some terms are
left in Castilian, indicating a lack of confidence in the
possibility of translating certain concepts to the local
culture.71 One of these terms is imagen (image).72
The choice of a peninsular model copied in Spain at
the hands of a Spanish artist doubtlessly reflects the
prejudice about the untranslatability of Christian images
as well as words in the last decades of the century,
although the Augustinians themselves negotiated their
Augustinians ever considered the copy as a forgery of the original they
guarded, only that the creation of its twin brother would diminish the
importance of the Burgos cult.
69. The economic cost of the work and its transfer would have
necessitated that the effort take on an institutional character, a reality
that the chronicler dramatizes by attributing it to the initiative of a
single friar.
70. J. C. Estenssoro Fuchs, Del paganismo a la santidad: La
incorporación de los Indios del Perú al catolicismo 1532–1750 (Lima,
2003), 243–310; P. Tineo, Los concilios limenses en la evangelización
latinoamericana (Pamplona, 1990).
71. S. MacCormack, “Gods, Demons, and Idols in the Andes,”
Journal of the History of Ideas 67 (2006): 641.
72. “Sermon XIX: En que se reprehenden los hechizeros, y sus
supersticiones, y ritos vanos. Y se trata la differencia que ay en adorar
los Christianos las ymagenes de los Sanctos, y adorar los infieles sus
ydolos, o guacas,” in Tercero cathecismo y exposicion de la doctrina
christiana, por sermones (Lima, 1585), fols. 108v–117r.
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own image politics in various ways according to local
contexts, especially after the Third Council of Lima. In
1589, while Montearroyo was in Lima preparing to
receive the shipment of the portrait of the Santo Cristo,
the Augustinian friars placed two important thaumaturgic
sanctuaries under their guardianship: that of the Virgin of
Copacabana,73 and that of the Virgin of Pucarani, both
images made by the hands of an artist “de sangre real
de los Ingas” (of Incan royal blood), Francisco Tito
Yupanqui.74 As is well known, Tito Yupanqui had
encountered numerous difficulties in obtaining the
necessary license to make cult images; however,
not only did the Augustinians not consider the fact that
the image had been sculpted by an indigenous artist to
be an obstacle, but far from repressing this memory,
they placed the image’s authorship at the center of its
local identity.75
The contemporary case of the Crucifix of Burgos
is symptomatic of the important evangelizing function
of miraculous images that the Augustinian order was
beginning to recognize, but also of their diverse ways
of promoting them. Contrary to the Andean cults of
Copacabana or Pucarani, the Crucifix of Burgos
followed a different logic defined not only by its location
within the order’s Limeño seat but also by the particular
tensions that the order was experiencing as a result
of its American expansion. The best interpreter of these
problems may have been Rodrigo de Loaysa himself,
who, at the same time as he was cooking up the plan of
how to “steal” a copy of the miraculous crucifix from the
Burgos friars, denounced the deficiencies of the colony’s
political and religious government before Philip II,
73. For the Virgin of Copacabana, see esp. S. MacCormack, “From
the Sun of the Incas to the Virgin of Copacabana,” Representations 8
(1984): 30–60. See also V. Salles-Reese, From Viracocha to the Virgin
of Copacabana: Representation of the Sacred at Lake Titicaca (Austin,
TX, 1997), esp. 17–44; C. Dean, “The Renewal of Old World Images
and the Creation of Colonial Peruvian Visual Culture,” in Converging
Cultures: Art and Identity in Spanish America, ed. D. Fane (Brooklyn,
NY, 1996), 171–82; L. E. Alcalá, “Beginnings: Art, Time, and Tito
Yupanqui’s Virgin of Copacabana,” in The Arts of South America
1492–1850, ed. D. Pierce (Denver, 2010), 141–68; V. K. Davidson,
“Tito Yupanqui and the Creation of the Virgin of Copacabana:
Instruments of Conversion at Lake Titicaca,” in Imagery, Spirituality
and Ideology in Baroque Spain and Latin America, ed. J. Roe and
M. Bustillo (Newcastle, 2010), 29–44; S. MacCormack, “Human
and Divine Love in a Pastoral Setting: The Histories of Copacabana
on Lake Titicaca,” Representations 112 (2012): 54–86.
74. Calancha, Crónica moralizada, 4:1951–83 (bk. IV, chaps. 13–
14).
75. MacCormack, “Human and Divine Love in a Pastoral Setting,”
73. On the work, see A. Ramos Gavilán, Historia del santuario de
Nuestra Señora de Copacabana (1621; repr., Lima, 1988).

placing special emphasis on the scant local knowledge
of the colonial authorities.76
While the doctrine generated after the Third Council
of Lima and the problems associated with the colonial
government offer a general context for the copy
of the Crucifix of Burgos, the administration of the Order
of Saint Augustine in the Indies supplies an even
more relevant one. The chronology provided by
Calancha, which spans from 1588 to 1593, coincides
elegantly with the development of tense relations
between the Augustinian community in Peru and its
vicars provincial in Castile. Only two years before
Montearroyo decided to swindle the Burgos friars out of
a copy of their crucifix, the Augustinian prior general in
Rome had given a patent that removed Peru from
Spanish jurisdiction (on August 13, 1586).77 One year
later, for reasons the chronicler does not disclose, that
same prior general revoked the order, now reducing the
Peruvian friars’ autonomy but with the condition that
the American province’s vicar would count on the
experience of at least four years in the Indies, while
retaining the exclusive privilege of sending friars to
America.78 The complete segregation of the province of
Peru from the province of Castile would not be achieved
until July 1592, just a few months before the crucifix
disembarked on the Pacific coast.79 Thus, the three years
of negotiations focused on the American province’s
autonomy coincided with the three long years of
the image’s transoceanic journey.
In December of 1593, the crucifix was finally
installed in its home in Lima, placed in a setting that
meticulously reproduced that of the Castilian prototype:
“The holy Crucifix was installed on its Cross in the form
and in the same material as the Burgos prototype,
following in every detail what was specified in a
76. G. Martínez, “Rodrigo de Loayza y su ‘Memorial de las cosas
del Pirú tocantes a los indios,’” Archivo Agustiniano 76 (1992):
303–24.
77. Calancha completely dissociates both episodes, though they
have a clear relationship of dependence; Crónica moralizada, 4:1662–
72 (bk. III, chap. 39). For the institutional history of the Augustinians in
Peru, see L. Gutiérrez Arbulú and J. Campos y Fernández de Sevilla,
La orden de San Agustín en el Archivo del Arzobispado de Lima
(El Escorial, 2012); S. Álvarez Turienzo, ed., Evangelización en
América: Los Agustinos (Salamanca, 1988); and B. Uyarra Cámara,
“La orden de san Agustín en la evangelización del Perú,” Revista
Peruana de Historia Eclesiástica 2 (1992): 153–90.
78. F. de Armas Medina, Cristianización del Perú (1532–1600)
(Seville, 1973), 165–66.
79. Calancha, Crónica moralizada, 5:2073–90 (bk. III, chap. 22,
“Refierese el aver salido esta provincia de la subordinacion de
España”).
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Pereda: Twin brothers 111
testimony and certificate, so that in every way this Image
might resemble its model.”80 As far as we know, only
one aspect of the prototype’s cult was altered. While the
Castilian friars celebrated the image’s feast on September 14,
the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, in Lima
they began celebrating it on Holy Thursday. It might be
said that the Limeño twin thus acquired its own saint’s day.
In light of our reconstruction of the events, the ceremony
of its consecration in Lima was not a means of vicariously
honoring its model but of refounding its cult in the New
World. The creation of its portrait, the celebration of its
transfer, the plagiarizing of its legend, and, in a particularly
brilliant fashion, the moralization of its history by
Calancha’s pen, are all episodes in the same maneuver
of supplantation.81
***
To conclude, I would like to return briefly to the
episode of the detention of the Crucifix of Burgos in
Spain. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the
second obstacle that the Augustinians in Lima had to
overcome was the seizure of the image on the orders of
the vicar provincial, Fray Luis de León, at the request of
the Burgos monastery’s prior.82 The news surprised Fray
Luis at a moment when his teachings at the University
of Salamanca were largely preoccupied with the
eschatological significance of the discovery of
America.83 In his allegorical commentaries on the Song
80. “Púsose el santo Crucifijo en su Cruz con la forma i de la
materia que está el prototipo de Burgos, egecutando en todo lo que un
testimonio i certificaciones advertían, para que por todas maneras se
asemejase esta Imagen a su dechado.” Calancha, Crónica moralizada,
3:621.
81. On Calancha’s role as “champion” of criollismo, and on
criollismo in general within the Augustinian order during the
seventeenth century, see B. Lavallé, “Recherches sur l’apparition de la
conscience creole dans la vice-royauté du Perou: L’antagonisme
Hispano-Creole dans les Ordres Religieux (XVIème–XVIIème siècles”
(PhD diss., Université de Bordeaux III, 1982), 1:501–31. I would
like to thank Guillermo García Montúfar for the reference.
82. Fray Luis was vicar general since February 6, 1591, and on
August 14 of the same year he was made vicar provincial at the
chapter of Madrigal, although he would die only a few days later.
See J. Rodríguez Díez, “Presencia de Fray Luis de León en el gobierno
de la provincia Agustiniana de Castilla,” Revista Agustiniana 32
(1991): 791–857.
83. L. de León, Escritos sobre América, trans. A. Moreno Mengíbar
and J. Martos Fernández (Madrid, 2010). See also L. Pereña, “Fray Luis
de León y la evangelización de América,” in Fray Luis de León: IV
Centenario (1591–1991) (Madrid, 1992), 435–44; and S. Álvarez
Turienzo, “Fray Luis de León ante el descubrimiento y la
evangelización americanos,” in Evangelización en América, 141–98
(the latter two with fundamentally hagiographic approaches).
112 RES 71/72 2019
of Songs (8:8), the Book of Job (28:4), and above all on
the Book of the Prophet Obadiah (In Abdiam prophetam
[Salamanca, 1589]), Fray Luis passionately hunted down
evidence in the scriptures anticipating the discovery
of a new continent. Convinced by Benito Arias Montano
of the location of the mythical Ophir in Peru,84 Fray Luis
identified the Spanish with those descendants of Sefarad
prophesied to possess “las ciudades del Sur, es decir . . . el
Nuevo Mundo” (the cities of the South, that is to say . . .
the New World).85 Just a year later, however, he granted
license for the publication of one of the major milestones
of American history, the Historia natural y moral de
las Indias, which the Jesuit José de Acosta had begun
writing in Peru.86 The differing approaches of these
84. See J. Romm, “Biblical History and the Americas: The Legend
of Solomon’s Ophir, 1492–1591,” in The Jews and the Expansion
of Europe to the West, 1450–1800, ed. P. Bernardini and N. Fiering
(New York, 2001), 27–46. My thanks to Adam Beaver for the
reference. In more general terms, see Z. Ben-Dor Benite, The Ten Lost
Tribes: A World History (New York, 2013).
85. León, Escritos sobre América, 77.
86. J. de Acosta, Historia natural y moral de las Indias [Seville,
1590], ed. E. O’Gorman (Mexico City, 2006).
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two authors is extraordinarily significant. Much like
Calancha would do almost half a century later, Acosta
distanced himself from the prophetic vision of biblical
scholars—including, of course, Fray Luis himself—giving
way to a progressively “ethnographic” interpretation of
America. It is impossible to know the precise reasons for
which Fray Luis de León halted the shipment of the
Crucifix of Burgos to America, or whether those reasons
were simply identical to those of the Burgos prior.87 At
the same time, however, the intellectual debate of those
years highlights the Peruvian Augustinians’ intelligence
in understanding that in order to hear the signs of the
times it no longer sufficed to examine the scriptures: it
was also necessary to read them in light of a new reality.
87. Given the irony, if not cheeky sarcasm, with which the
Salamancan Hebraists in Fray Luis’s circle (such as Cantalapiedra and
el Brocense) criticized the artist’s iconographic errors—including that
of representing Christ with three nails, “habiendo de estar con quatro
clavos crucificado” (A. Tovar and M. de la Pinta Llorente, eds.,
Procesos inquisitoriales contra Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas
[Madrid, 1941], 83)—it is difficult to imagine that Fray Luis himself
would have held any enthusiasm for the image’s authenticity. For the
problem of the number of nails as related to the authenticity of the
image, see Pereda, Crime and Illusion, 52–56.