Cuzco, Peru – This highland city is showing off with renewed pride its colonial-era crown jewel of architecture after 16 years of reconstruction and restoration work on La Merced church and convent.
The project was possible thanks to the economic and technical assistance provided by the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation, whose Spanish initials are AECI. Having concluded its work, the agency is now prepared to turn over management of the property to the religious Order of Mercedarians.
Declared a national monument in 1972, the 17th-century complex is home to among the most beautiful baroque cloisters in the Americas, a collection of paintings from the Cuzco school and priceless gold and jewel carvings, according to the those involved in the restoration project.
At a cost of some $2 million, the AECI restored 300 canvases, 200 sculptures and 20 altarpieces and completely rebuilt the structure of the church and convent.
According to the AECI’s director of cultural heritage in Peru, Juan de la Serna, “the only thing left is to set up the museum and library.”
Highlighting the difficult and meticulous work involved in restoring the structure, De la Serna told EFE that, when the project began, restorers discovered “a complex in ruins, with abandoned cells and unsanitary storage areas for valuable artwork, chicken coops and bathrooms.
“The new spaces will serve for conferences, ceremonies and exhibitions” and will become a must-see attraction for the thousands of tourists who every day visit Cuzco, the former capital of the Inca Empire.
“It’s a jewel that we have to care for and maintain and now its future is in our hands,” a grateful Father Cesar Quiroa, head of the Order of Mercedarians in Cuzco, told EFE.
La Merced features an impressive whitestone main cloister with a cedar wood, coffered ceiling and a large collection of canvases that recreate the lives of the founder of the order, St. Peter Nolasco, and St. Augustine.
It also contains works by renowned Andean artists like Tadeo Escalante, who is credited with painting the murals of the cell used by Father Salamanca, a Mercedarian religious man regarded by many as a saint.
To reconstruct the murals, the specialists examined one by one the different samples of paintings scattered throughout the cell, whose vault had been partially demolished.
In the sacristy, the antique larders (cupboards) were recovered and pieces that had broken off were restored.
One of the complex’s most prized rooms is one that houses the collection of jewels, including the “monstrance of the Most Holy,” a large cross on a pedestal made of solid gold from the Cuzco mines and those of Bolivia’s Potosi.
The piece contains 1,518 precious stones including rubies, emeralds and topaz, as well as 615 pearls, one of them in the form of a mermaid and considered the second-largest in the world.
The work, which is some 1.3 meters high, was displayed in a procession each year on the Feast of Corpus Christi until 1949, when it was decided that, because of its great value, it was best to keep it behind a glass casing.
Also featuring the crown of the Kingdom of Aragon, the cross was made in 1610 by Spanish goldsmith Luis Ayala de Olmos, while the pedestal was created in 1812 by Juan de la Piedra, a native of Cuzco.
Other unique items in the same room include a representation of Christ with eyes made of ivory that was sculpted in the Philippines; a gold- and silver-plated garment; a lectern constructed out of mother-of-pearl, tortoise shell and gold; shells inlaid with silver and solid gold tabernacles.
Also located in this room-museum is the complex’s most important painting, “La Coronation of the Virgin” (The Coronation of the Virgin) by Italian Jesuit Bernardo Democrito Bitti, a protege of Michelangelo.
The church, meanwhile, contains about 20 altarpieces, all of them restored, and houses the tomb of Gov. Diego de Almagro, who arrived in Peru along with fellow conquistador Francisco Pizarro, but was eventually captured and executed following a confrontation with two of Pizarro’s brothers over control of Cuzco.
Valuable sculptures and high reliefs are also highlights of the church, which contains a large cedar wood choir.
It has taken more than a dozen years for the La Merced complex to recover its past splendor, but now it has regained its luster as one of the cultural and tourist highlights of this former, mythical capital of the Inca Empire.
