Paper Short Abstract:

The ethnographic part of this painting is offered in 32 images at the top (2 groups, one of 'savage nations' and another of 'civilized nations'), complemented with numerous texts. There ample space is dedicated to the ancient history of Peru, the Incas, as well as of contemporary Peru.

Paper Abstract:

There is in the National Museum of Natural Sciences, Madrid, a large painting (331 x 118,5 centimeters) which was made with the information offered by a Basque economist –José Ignacio Lequanda– with long experience in Peru, from which a long text of more than 60 pp. is collected, in pen on white, on geography, economics, Peruvian natural and civil history. In this painting, the text occupies the role of the internal frame – passepartout – of some 195 boxes, where 194 animals and 148 plants typical of the Peruvian landscape are collected distributed around an approximate area of ​​6 square meters. These drawings are due to Louis Thiebaut, a painter belonging to a famous French family who adorned several works of Illustrated science.

In this painting the ethnographic part is offered in 32 images (2 groups of 16 people, one of 'savage nations' and another of 'civilized nations') that appear prominently at the top, with an identifying subtitle in each case; but it is strategically complemented with numerous texts. There, ample space is dedicated to the ancient history of Peru –the Incas–, as well as to the different populations of contemporary Peru, differentiating between the territory of the savages (the eastern jungle or 'royal mountain'), and the urban areas of each province of the viceroyalty. Although the informative emphasis corresponds to the socioeconomic part, with proposals of its good political administration, we are offered a 'distant look' at its ethnic origins and the geographical and natural context of the territory.