Power and Portraiture in a Bolivian Mining Town

Abstract

Portrait of Francisco de Paula Sanz is an unsigned, undated portrait of a Spanish-born colonial official. From 1789 to 1810, Sanz served as governor of Potosí, home to the “rich hill” that housed vast quantities of silver ore and likely site of the portrait’s creation. This context points to an Indigenous artist, or group of artists, belonging to a local guild or workshop. The absence of a signature bolsters this possibility, as it was not generally in the Indigenous tradition to autograph or single out an individual’s creation. Taken together, these details place the image at the intersection of two distinct but deeply intertwined institutions: the Indigenous artistic guild/workshops that supported the work and interests of native artists, and the viceregal government that relied on images produced by those artists to communicate its power and authority.