The Other Procurators: Artistic Circulation, Interoceanic and Interregional Journeys of the Society of Jesus in the Viceroyalty of Peru

Vanina Scocchera, Ph.D.

By integrating global, regional, and local scales, the project reconstructs the networks that sustained artistic exchanges between Europe and the Americas, enabling the Society of Jesus to endow its foundations with an unprecedented visual prestige.

Through an approach grounded in material culture and connected histories, this project examines the activities of agents of the Society of Jesus between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as cultural mediators in the construction of sacrality in early modern South America. By integrating global, regional, and local scales, the study seeks to reconstruct the networks that sustained artistic exchanges between Europe and the Americas, enabling the Society of Jesus to endow its foundations with an unprecedented visual prestige.

Among its specific objectives is the identification and characterization of the different types of procurators who promoted the circulation of European devotional images and objects alongside viceregal productions. The project also aims to map the places of origin, intermediaries, and workshops involved in the production of these images and objects. Through an analysis of the iconographies, materials, and techniques privileged by the Jesuits in shaping a Baroque aesthetic and an Ignatian spirituality, the study examines the symbolic value of these works from religious, cultural, and socio-economic perspectives.