Carpet

This rug was probably made in Arequipa –a city located in the southern highlands of Peru– at the end of the eighteenth century or the beginning of the next. It is certainly difficult to fix criteria for the dating of this type of Colonial tapestry, but everything indicates a late date. The genre is key in shaping our understanding of the way in which cultural forms were transformed into more popular traditions. The tapestry shows a series of decorative motifs that derive from early colonial rugs, which are here stylized and simplified. For example, the presence of the two-headed eagle and the lion denote recall southern Andean rugs of the seventeenth century.