Peru plans $5 million conservation of Rondocan church

Peru’s Ministry of Culture and the Getty Conservation Institute will work together to conserve the 17th-century Church of Santo Tomás de Aquino in Rondocan, in the Cusco region. The government will finance the $5 million project, The Art Newspaper said.

The church stands in an area prone to earthquakes. The planned work will use local materials to stabilize its structure and preserve its collection of 330 historical objects; the building has adobe walls, buttresses and a wooden roof structure.

The building and its collection

Getty will provide conservation techniques and handle the structural design, said Claudia Cancino, a principal project specialist at the institute.

The collection includes an 8-painting series attributed to Bernardo Bitti, an Italian Jesuit priest and painter who introduced Mannerism, a style known for elongated figures, to Peru. The series is described as the only complete set of 8 Bitti canvases. The collection also includes sculptures from the viceroyalty era, manuscripts and silver objects used in worship.

One painting attributed to Bitti is planned to travel to the Getty campus in Los Angeles for scientific analysis and conservation.

From Kuñotambo to Rondocan

Cancino and her team came to know the Rondocan church through a similar project at Santiago Apóstol church in nearby Kuñotambo, completed in 2019. She said Rondocan’s community then asked the team to support its request for the Archdiocese of Cusco and the ministry to work on its church.

The Rondocan project includes involving residents as caretakers. In Kuñotambo, the team trained local people in building care and produced a manual in Quechua, the local Indigenous language. Cancino said even sweeping matters: dust stirred up from the floor can stick to murals.