Watermarks in GkS 2232 4to

and in the Two Martín de Murúa Manuscripts

by Ivan Boserup and Rolena Adorno

(First published on this website November 5, 2002. Revised 15 October 2003)

1. GkS 2232 4to

The watermarks in the autograph manuscript of the Nueva corónica y buen gobierno of Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala were first described in 1979-80 and 1980: “Latin cross superimposed upon a shield under which the initials AA and sometimes IA appear” (Adorno 1979-80, 16; Adorno 1980, xxxiii). Reference was made to Briquet #5677-5704. Among these, Briquet #5693 (Madrid, 1566) has the initials IA.

In connection with the digitization of the manuscript in 2000-2001, a third watermark was identified: a Latin cross upon a shield under which the initials GM appear. The same stylized initials are found in Briquet #5691 (dated 1564) and #5692 (Milan, 1600) (Adorno 2002, 15-16).

Photos of specimens of the three watermarks are reproduced here: see Figures 1-3. The specimens chosen for each one are their first occurrences in the manuscript on the innermost sheet of a quire. All the subsequently appearing watermarks have been collated with the specimen photos. Information pertaining to the distribution of the three watermarks over the whole manuscript has been integrated into the codicological survey of GkS 2232 4to (Boserup and Adorno 2002; see also Adorno 2002, 15-16).

The three watermarks have also been mentioned and sketched by Augusta E. Holland (Holland 2002, 44 and 173). Her report, however, can be amended. That is, she calls the Latin cross “Greek”, and she renders the F above the shield of the AA watermark as “EJ”, and the D above the shield in the GM watermark as “D (or P)”.

2. Watermarks in the Murúa Manuscripts

In addition to Guaman Poma’s Nueva corónica y buen gobierno, one other Peruvian chronicle is known to have been conceived as an illustrated book, the Historia del origen y genealogía real de los reyes incas del Perú, or Historia general del Pirú, of Fray Martín de Murúa. Guaman Poma and Fray Martín were contemporaries. Guaman Poma participated in the making of illustrations that appear in manuscripts of Murúa’s chronicle, but in the Nueva corónica y buen gobierno, in the chapter on “Earlier Chronicles”, he severely criticized Murúa’s work for failing to give accounts of the origin of the Incas, their right to rule, and their end (Guaman Poma p. 1090). We lose sight of both Murúa and Guaman Poma in 1616.

Murúa’s chronicle is attested in two partly autograph manuscripts, known as the Poyanne and the Wellington, respectively, each representing an unfinished redaction. The complexity of their relationship and their history has been analyzed brilliantly by John H. Rowe and summarized by Anton von Euw (Rowe 1979; see also Rowe 1987; von Euw 1982). Unlike the quarto-size manuscript Copenhagen GkS 2232 4to, both Murúa manuscripts are folio-size. Contrary also to GkS 2232 4to, the illustrations in both of the Murúa manuscripts are colored.

2.a. The Murúa Manuscripts

The earliest redaction, Historia del origen y genealogía real de los reyes incas del Perú, bears the date 1590. It is known through the Poyanne manuscript, so called because of its earlier location at the Jesuit College in Poyanne, in Southern France. It is preserved today in the private collection of Mr. Sean Galvin (Ireland). This early version of Murúa’s work was most recently published in 1946 by Constantino Bayle (Murúa 1946). His edition, however, is not based on the original Poyanne manuscript, but on a copy of it preserved in the Jesuit College in Loyola, Northern Spain, known as the Loyola manuscript. The Poyanne manuscript was long considered as lost, but its existence in a private collection outside Spain was known to John H. Rowe (Rowe 1979). Traces of the manuscript had been found by Juan Ossio as early as 1971 (Ossio 1984, 567), and in the late nineteen eighties he identified its present location and owner (Ossio 1999, Section III). In 1997 Ossio was able to consult the manuscript, and he subsequently reported on it (Ossio 1998, 274). Although the scholarly world was informed about the discovery, the Poyanne manuscript has not yet been made available to general scholarly examination. A handful of the 112 reported illustrations have been published (Ossio 1998 and Ossio 2001), but no comprehensive description of the manuscript has appeared to date. An unknown number of the illustrations have been identified as having been made by Guaman Poma.

The later version of Murúa’s work, known as the Historia general del Pirú and bearing the date 1613, is known through the Wellington manuscript, so named because of its possession by the Dukes of Wellington throughout most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Since 1983 it has been available to scholars in the Department of Manuscripts of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California. The call number is MS. Ludwig XIII 16. Its earliest known provenance is the Colegio Mayor de Cuenca in Salamanca, Spain. This version was published in 1962-1964 by Manuel Ballesteros Gaibrois (Murúa 1962-1964). The Wellington manuscript includes interpolated sheets with full-page drawings - by Guaman Poma and others - that were originally part of the Poyanne manuscript.

2.b. Watermarks in the Poyanne Manuscript

The watermarks in the Poyanne manuscript have been described thus by Juan Ossio: “El total de folios es de 150 sin embargo los que señala el mismo autor es 145. Cada cual es de papel de trapo y tiene un sello de agua que representa una mano con una flor sobrepuesta y en cuya palma se ven las letras “PD”; asimismo una cruz encajada en una configuración circular en forma de pera que encima tiene las letras “MA”” (Ossio 1999, Section IV b). If reversed in order to display the letters as “AM,” this watermark potentially could be identical to the watermark registered as #5677 (Genova, 1565) by Briquet.

2.c. Watermarks in the Wellington Manuscript

The watermarks in the Wellington manuscript are not mentioned in the description in the printed catalogue of the Ludwig Collection (von Euw 1982), but they are described as follows in the Fact Sheet of the Getty Museum’s Department of Manuscripts: “Watermark of a latin cross surrounded by a pointed oval, the letters GM appear below. Similar to Briquet #5691 (dated 1564) and #5692 (Milan, 1600)” (Fact Sheet ca. 1992). This description pertains, however, only to the main or “original” part of the manuscript; it has not been attested in the quires added at the front of the codex in Murúa’s time nor in the interpolated Poyanne-sheets, mentioned above.

Although similar to the GM watermark in GkS 2232 4to, the GM watermark of the Wellington manuscript differs from it insofar as the shield is surmounted by a capital A, not by a capital D.

3. Conclusion

Although paper manufactured in the same paper mill (initials AA) was used in GkS 2232 4to and in the Poyanne manuscript, and paper from the GM paper mill was used in GkS 2232 4to and in the Wellington manuscript, the available evidence suggests that for the production of the three known Peruvian illustrated manuscripts, the authors – Guaman Poma and Martín de Murúa – did not use paper derived from a common stock.

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank Dr. Thomas Kren, Curator of Manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum, for admission to examine the Wellington manuscript in January 2002. We are especially grateful to Associate Conservator of Manuscripts Nancy K. Turner, Department of Paper Conservation, the J. Paul Getty Museum, who on our behalf has ascertained – on the basis of scanned photographs of GkS 2232 4to – the substantial differences reported above between the AA and GM watermarks in the Wellington manuscript and in GkS 2232 4to. We thank Dr. Karen Skovgaard-Petersen, Senior Researcher at the Royal Library, for her incisive reading and helpful comments on our work.

Works cited

Adorno, Rolena. 2002. A Witness unto Itself: The Integrity of the Autograph Manuscript of Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno (1615/1616). Fund og Forskning 41: 7-106 [Also on the Guaman Poma website]

–. 1980. La redacción y enmendación del autógrafo de la Nueva corónica y buen gobierno. In El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala. John V. Murra and Rolena Adorno, eds. Quechua translations by Jorge L. Urioste. 1: xxxii-xlvi.

–. 1979-80. The New Chronicle and Good Government: A New Look at the Royal Library’s Peruvian Treasure. Fund og Forskning 24: 7-28. [Also on the Guaman Poma website]

Boserup, Ivan, and Rolena Adorno. 2002. Codicological Survey of Copenhagen, Royal Library, GkS 2232 4to – Quires, Sheets, and Watermarks. [Also on the Guaman Poma website]

Briquet, C. M. 1968. Les Filigranes. Dictionnaire historique des marques du papier dès leur apparition vers 1282 jusqu’en 1600. A Facsimile of the 1907 Edition with Supplementary Material Contributed by a Number of Scholars. Allan Stevenson, ed. (“The New Briquet Jubilee Edition”). 4 vols. The Paper Publication Society. Amsterdam.

Fact Sheet on MS. Ludwig XIII 16. Unpublished report. Ca. 1983, updated ca. 1992. Department of Manuscripts. The J. Paul Getty Museum. Los Angeles, California. 5 pp.

Guaman Poma de Ayala, Felipe. 1980. El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno. John V. Murra y Rolena Adorno, eds. Quechua translations by Jorge L. Urioste. Siglo Veintiuno, México. Rpt. 1989, 1992.

Holland, Augusta Emilia. 2002. The Drawings of El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno. An Art Historical Study. Ph. D. Dissertation (May, 2002), The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico. 317 pp.

Murúa. Martín de. 1962-1964. Historia general del Pirú. 1613. Manuel Ballesteros Gaibrois, ed. 1-2. Instituto Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Madrid.

–. 1946. Historia del origen y genealogía real de los Reyes Incas del Perú. 1590. Constantino Bayle, ed. Biblioteca “Missionalia Hispanica.” Instituto Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Madrid.

Ossio Acuña, Juan M. 2001. Guaman Poma y Murúa ante la tradición oral andina. Íconos 4, 2000-2 (Lima 2001), 44-57.

–. 1999. Tras la huella de Fray Martín de Murúa. Paper Presented at the Primer Congreso Internacional de Peruvianistas en el Extranjero. Harvard University 29 April 1999. www.fas.harvard.edu/~icop/juanossio.html

–. 1998. El original del manuscrito Loyola de fray Martín de Murúa. Colonial Latin American Review (New York) 7:2, 271-278.

–. 1984: Una nueva versión de la crónica de fray Martín de Morúa. Revista de Museo Nacional (Lima) 46 (1982): 567-575.

Rowe, John Howland 1987. La mentira literaria en la obra de Martín de Murúa. Libro de Homenaje a Aurelio Miró Quesada Sosa (Lima). 2: 753-762.

von Euw, Anton. 1982. XIII 16 Martin de Murúa: Historia general del Perú. In Anton von Euw and Joachim M. Plotzek, Die Handschriften der Sammlung Lundwig. Museum der Stadt Köln. Köln. 3: 309-315.

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