Gentlemen of Esmeraldas
Andres Sanchez Gallque, Gentlemen of Esmeraldas (The Art Archive/American Museum Madrid.)
In 1599 Andres Sanchez Gallque, an indigenous artist from Quito, the former Inca capital located high in the Andes, painted a group portrait of three men who had climbed up from the Pacific coast province of Esmeraldas to sign a treaty with the colonial government. The three men, Don Francisco de Arobe and his two sons, Pedro and Domingo, were maroons, descendants of escaped slaves who swam ashore following a shipwreck in the 1540s. They were in Quito to sign a treaty agreeing not to ally with pirates. The Spanish honorific title “Don” was used for all three men since they were recognized as indigenous chiefs. As it happened, Don Francisco de Arobe was the son of an African man and a native woman from Nicaragua. Other Esmeraldas maroons had intermarried with local indigenous inhabitants.
In exchange for agreeing to defend the coast against intruders, the Arobes were sent to a professional tailor in Quito and given a wide variety of luxury textiles, including ponchos and capes made from Chinese silk brought to Acapulco by the Manila galleon, then south to Quito via
Panama. The maroon leaders also received linen ruff collars from Holland and iron spearheads, probably from the Basque region of northern Spain. Their own adornments included shell necklaces and gold facial jewelry typical of South America’s northwest Pacific coast. The painting was sent to Philip III in Madrid as a memento of peace.
It is now housed in Spain’s Museo de America.
Source: Kris Lane, Quito 1599: City and Colony in Transition (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2002.)
World History
