Juan de Espinosa Medrano
Videos
Photos
Juan de Espinosa Medrano, known in history as Lunarejo, was an Indigenous cleric, sacred preacher, writer, playwright, theologian, archdeacon and polymath from the Viceroyalty of Peru. He is the most prominent figure of the Literary Baroque of Peru and one of the most important intellectuals from Colonial Spanish America.
Portrait of Don Juan de Espinosa Medrano
(Middle Portrait) Miniature of Juan de Espinosa Medrano from the Allegorical Garden of the Seminary of San Antonio Abad. The painting below the miniature features a short poem that reads: 'The Archdeacon you see here is Medrano, that giant who in the field of good letters and sciences has no equal.'
Clorinda Matto de Turner, author of a biography on Juan de Espinosa Medrano titled "Don Juan de Espinosa Medrano —that is— the Spotty-Faced Doctor" —included in Pencil Sketches of Acclaimed Americans (1890). Her biographical construction of Espinosa Medrano is now the most familiar in Peruvian popular culture and the Andean provinces in the Republic of Peru.
Church of San Cristóbal in Cusco, Peru
Luis de Góngora
Videos
Photos
Luis de Góngora y Argote was a Spanish Baroque lyric poet and a Catholic prebendary for the Church of Córdoba. Góngora and his lifelong rival, Francisco de Quevedo, are widely considered the most prominent Spanish poets of all time. His style is characterized by what was called culteranismo, also known as Gongorismo. This style apparently existed in stark contrast to Quevedo's conceptismo, though Quevedo was highly influenced by his older rival from whom he may have isolated "conceptismo" elements.
Luis de Góngora (1622), in a portrait by Diego Velázquez.
Title page of the Chacon Manuscript.