Us
The Project on the Engraved Sources of Spanish Colonial Art (PESSCA) was born of a desire to document the role of prints in the production of Spanish Colonial Art. PESSCA was launched at the University of California at Davis in the Spring of 2005, where it was couched within Almagest, the web-based archive developed at Princeton University. Key to this effort was the technical help of Robert Burnett, Gabriel Unda, Earl Schellhouse, and Kirk Alexander.
Originally, PESSCA consisted of seven correspondences between prints and paintings. Little by little they grew—first to one hundred, then to two, and then to three. At that point the project spawned a site of its own. This would not have been possible without the technical help of Cody Brimhall.
Currently, PESSCA has gathered more than seven hundred correspondences.
Many people played a role in this process. Jeffrey Ruda offered early and continued advice and encouragement. Daniel Giannoni lent his enthusiastic support and put his massive photographic archive at our disposal. John F. Scott donated his collection of colonial art slides. Father Joseph MacDonnell, SJ, allowed us to use his digitized collection of images from the Evangelicae Historiae Imagines. Alison Roe offered advice on the graphic design of this site. Thomas Cummins and Ricardo Estabridis welcomed PESSCA to their seminars at Harvard University and at the Universidad Mayor de San Marcos, respectively. Carolyn Dean, Frank Salomon, Barbara von Barghahan, Concepción García Sáiz, John F. Scott, Luisa Fiocco, Ricardo Estabridis, Luis Eduardo Wuffarden, Ramón Mujica Pinilla, Brunella Scavia, Barbara Mauldin, Jaime Mariazza, Enrique Quispe , and Gistavo Tudisco offered encouragement, advice, images, correspondences, or bibliography. Celso Pastor opened to PESSCA his excellent collection of Spanish Colonial Art. And so did Aldo Barbosa-Stern, who quickly became a friend and an active supporter of the project.
In the winter of 2008 PESSCA developed a second home at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú thanks to the support of Marco Curatola, Krzysztof Makowski, Cécile Michaud, Elio Vélez, and Pepi Patrón. A year later, it inspired a major art exhibit at the Centro Cultural of this university.
Currently, PESSCA is being developed by Almerindo Ojeda and Emilie Olson, with technical support by Reid-McMahon , LLC (Davis). Major contributions to our archive have been made by Aldo Barbosa Stern and Solange Garreaud de Beck (Lima), Marcela Corvera (Ciudad de México), Agustina Rodríguez Romero (Buenos Aires), and Gustavo Adolfo Vives Mejía (Medellín).
All
contributions to PESSCA, be they scholarly or financial, will be fully and promptly acknowledged. Our contact information is given below.
Almerindo E. Ojeda, Director
Project for the Engraved Sources of Spanish Colonial Art (PESSCA)
PESSCA
210 Sproul Hall
University of California
Davis, CA 95616
