ABSTRACT
Angels are a perennial feature of Christian art and they appear in many forms, and although they are mentioned often in the Old and New Testaments, their visual features are not consistently specified. Artists of the Italian Renaissance, taking inspiration from Greco-Roman and early Christian sources, often depicted them as winged infants, or putti. As Catholicism accompanied Spanish colonization in the Andean region of South America, so too did the representation of angelic figures. In a pair of woven tapestries likely created to adorn a Christian church in what is now Peru or Bolivia, a series of putti are depicted holding the Instruments of Christ's Passion. 1 Their appearance is inspired not only by European classicism but also offers a meditation on an alternative Andean classicism.
