Chest

These two Peruvian leather-bound chests are painted on the front with large allegorical figures flanking smaller Old World aristocrats. The sides show figures with their servants, including music-making dwarfs, modeled on European representations of such entertainers at the Spanish court, on the grounds of a country estate.

The chests were most likely commissioned by a member of Peru’s privileged class for proud display in a reception room, where they would have functioned as signifiers of their owner’s erudition and education. Inside were stored fine imported textiles, which in colonial Peru were worth more than their weight in silver. The chests’ four allegories of Fire, Earth, Wind, and Water on the front panels are based on sixteenth-century Flemish prints (see illustration at right, the model for the figure of Fire), whereas the dining scene on one of the sides has a Mexican print source (see illustration at far right).