(b Cuzco, 1611; d Cuzco, 1681). Peruvian painter. He came from a noble Inca family and worked throughout his life in the district of San Sebastián, where his house still shows his coat of arms painted on the door. His earliest signed work is an Immaculate Conception (1627; Lima, priv. col.), with gilding in the manner of that by native Americans of the CUZCO SCHOOL of painting. Nevertheless, the elongated forms reveal Quispe Tito’s knowledge of Mannerist painting. The Italian Jesuit Bernardo Bitti is recorded as active in Cuzco, where his works would certainly have been seen by Quispe Tito; and while young, Quispe Tito would have known Luis de Riaño (1596–1667), a painter from Lima who had been trained in the workshop of another Italian, Angelino Medoro, who worked in Peru. Quispe Tito was also influenced by Flemish engravings. Even so, his paintings achieve a personal style in the use of gilding and spacious landscapes filled with birds and angels. The paintings that make up his series St John the Baptist (Cuzco, S Sebastian), signed in 1663, although based on engravings by Johannes Stradanus and Cornelis Galle (i), were transformed by his own personal vision. In 1667 he painted several scenes from the Life of Christ (Potosí, Mus. N. Casa Moneda), which were sent to Potosí. Quispe Tito’s best known work is the series of Signs of the Zodiac in Cuzco Cathedral, dated 1681. This consists of copies of a series of engravings by Jan Sadeler I and Adrian Collaert (1560–1618), which were designed to encourage the popular worship of the miracles of Christ in place of the stars; each sign of the Zodiac corresponds to one of the parables of Christ. The engravings were commissioned specifically to be sent to Peru, where the worship of the sun, the moon and the stars was still clandestinely practised.

• Quispe Tito, Diego
  • Cuzco school
  • Peru, §II: Indigenous culture
  • Peru, §IV, 1: Painting, graphic arts and sculpture, 1532–1822