Catholic Presence and Power: Jesuit Painter Bernardo Bitti at Lake Titicaca in Peru

Abstract

Bernardo Bitti was an Italian Jesuit and painter who traveled to the viceroyalty of Peru at the end of the sixteenth century to make altarpieces in the service of the order’s conversion campaigns. He began his New World career in Lima, the viceregal capital and then, over a span of thirty-five years, traveled to Jesuit mission centers in cities throughout Peru, leaving a significant imprint on colonial Peruvian painting. In 1586, Bitti was in Juli, a small town on Lake Titicaca in southern Peru, where the Jesuits had arrived a decade prior and continually faced great resistance from the local population. In this paper, I will argue that Bitti’s paintings were tools implemented by the Jesuit missionaries seeking to establish European, Christian presence in the conflicted city. Thus, Bitti’s contribution at Juli can serve as but one example of how the Jesuits used art as part of their methodology of conversion.