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This study examines the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe in the colonial Andes during the second half of the sixteenth century. It focuses on a pair of sculpted copies of the Extremaduran Virgin venerated in Pacasmayo, on the northern coast of Peru, and in Guápulo, near Quito. Neither of these sculptures survives in its original form. Written sources, including the foundational narratives of the new cults, attribute the images to Spanish or Spanish-born artists, crediting an unnamed Sevillian as the author of the imported Pacasmayo Virgin and Diego de Robles, a Sevillian immigrant established in Quito, as the author of the Virgin of Guápulo. Robles was also responsible for the closely related and unusually well-preserved Virgin of El Quinche. That none of these images resemble the Spanish Guadalupe, a diminutive late twelfth-century sculpture of the enthroned Virgin and Child, is a fact that deserves consideration. This article analyses the routine insistence on similitude as a means of transferring sacrality and power from originals to copies, highlighting both religious practices and material processes.
