Tupu (pin)

This pin, used to secure a woman’s shoulder cloth or mantle, features a tapering shaft surmounted by a repoussé and chased plaque in the shape of a double-headed eagle. The upper part of the shaft, which is engraved with leaf designs, widens to form a base for the plaque. The scrolls attached to the either side of the upper shaft visually balance the object and also serve as hooks to which chains and other decorations may have been attached. Here, only a single complete chain, attached to the left-hand scroll and decorated with a blue bead, remains; a fragment of chain is attached to the right-hand scroll. At the junction of the shaft and the plaque is a blue, faceted paste (leaded glass) gem held in place with thirteen prongs.

The plaque (or head of the pin) takes the form of a double-headed eagle perched on two large leaves. The eagle’s tail feathers rest on a six-petaled flower that supports and connects the leaves. Each of the eagle’s heads is topped by a crest or a crown, and the two heads are joined by a larger crown. Short, straight engraved lines give texture to the crown and to the eagle’s wing and tail feathers, while curved lines suggest the layers of overlapping feathers that cover the eagle’s body and legs.

Archaeological and other evidence confirm that Andean women have used stick pins to secure and decorate their clothing since at least the early first millennium A.D. Women inserted large pins, called tupus in Quechua (one of the indigenous languages of the Andes), into their untailored, wrap-around dresses (acsus) at the chest, just below the shoulders, with the pointed ends facing up, to hold the garment in place. Tupus were worn in pairs, and each pin was connected to its counterpart with a chain or cord. Women used a single smaller pin, called a ttipqui, to secure their mantles (llicllas), which were worn draped across the back and around the shoulders, the ends meeting and overlapping across the chest; the ttipqui was inserted diagonally into the cloth to hold the lliclla in place. Guaman Poma de Ayala, a native Peruvian born shortly after the Spanish invasion of the Inca Empire, included illustrations of Inca women wearing both types of pins in his manuscript, Nueva corónica y buen gobierno, completed in 1615 and now in the Danish Royal Library (GKS 2232 quarto).

The finest Precolumbian tupus and ttipquis were made of locally extracted and smelted gold and silver, though other metals, including copper and bronze, were also used. The heads of Inca pins were often hammered into flat circular or oval discs, as in two gilt silver pins in the Metropolitan’s collection (64.228.702-703). Other geometric and figural shapes, such as birds and monkeys, were also common across the ancient Andes (see, in the Metropolitan’s collection, 64.228.613-626, 1987.394.601-602, 1974.271.39, and 1987.394.549).

After the Spanish invasion in the 1530s, Andean women continued to use pins to secure their garments, though clothing and pin styles changed, as did metalworking techniques. In many regions acsus were gradually replaced by European-style blouses and skirts. Llicllas, however, survived and are still worn by many Andean women today. While the function of garment pins has thus been consistent across the pre- and post-invasion periods, pins from the latter era are most often used as ttipquis. Garment pins also appear a variety of new shapes, including spoons (1982.420.13), shells, flowers (1982.420.12), suns, and large birds such as peacocks, turkeys, and eagles. Some nineteenth-century pins, known as picchis, are associated with Aymara communities in the Lake Titicaca region; they have very short shafts, heads often executed in the round, and pendants in the shape of fish with articulated bodies (see, for example, the collection of pins at the Museo de Arte de Lima, Peru). Post-invasion pins are predominantly made of silver, using techniques, like repoussé and engraving, which were rarely employed for ancient Andean pins (though repoussé was regularly used for other objects, such as the Chimú silver disks in the Metropolitan’s collection, 66.196.44 and 1978.412.144). In addition, they often feature European-style decorations and imagery, such as floral and vegetal designs, interlace, scrolls, mermaids, human figures, and faceted stones and paste gems. The latter, made from molded or cut leaded glass, were especially popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in both Europe and the Americas. Although less costly than precious gemstones, the finest paste gems were of a very high quality and were highly valued.

The rough execution of the head of the Metropolitan’s ttipqui, coupled with the relatively low quality of its blue paste gem, suggests that it was made for a less exclusive consumer than were the finest tupus and ttipquis—often dated to the eighteenth century—preserved in museums and private collections in Peru. These qualities also point to the nineteenth century, perhaps post-independence (which Peru won in 1824), when some of the viceregal social structures began to break down, thus allowing for broader access to goods that were once considered luxuries.

Curious, though, is the iconography of the double-headed, or bicephalous, eagle, which hearkens back to the long-defunct Spanish Habsburg dynasty (the last Habsburg king of Spain, Charles II, died in 1700). This particular iteration of the motif, in which each head is adorned with a crown (which, in the Metropolitan’s pin, also recalls a peacock’s crest) and a larger crown is placed over both heads, was associated with the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who ruled Spain as Charles I; other bicephalous eagle pins, including examples in the Brooklyn Museum (42.1275.291 and 41.1275.285), eschew one, two, or all three of the crowns. The double-headed eagle is an ancient European imperial motif, and the Holy Roman Empire embraced its symbolic richness: the eagle’s two heads look simultaneously east and west, and can be understood to evoke both secular and spiritual power. The three crowns of Charles V’s arms allude to his several monarchical titles (the two small crowns) and to his imperial title (the all-encompassing large crown).

Viceregal Andean culture reflected and incorporated the diverse—and sometimes contentious—beliefs of its indigenous, creole, Spanish, and other populations. Thus, there are several possible explanations for the lasting impact of the Habsburg eagle motif in the Andes. Since Spanish Habsburg kings and their viceroys governed the region for over 150 years, beginning shortly after Spain’s invasion of the Inca Empire in the 1530s, the eagle may have been understood as an identifying symbol of post-contact Andean culture. Furthermore, as objects (especially prints) that featured the double-headed eagle circulated across the Andes, artists may have simply perceived the motif as one of many decorative options available to them. Finally, the Habsburg eagle may have been embraced by indigenous Andeans as a veiled reference to the raptor imagery found in the region’s visual arts—textiles, architectural sculpture, ceramics, metalwork—as far back the ancient Cupisnique (1500-500 B.C.), Chavín (1000-500 B.C.), Moche (1-800 A.D.), Wari (400-1000 A.D.), and Tiwanaku (400-1100 A.D.) cultures. Although birds of prey appear infrequently in later Chimú (1100-1470 AD) and Inca art, feathers, usually from rainforest birds from the Amazon Basin, were incorporated in ceremonial and ritual tunics, headdresses, and other clothing from these periods (see, for example, 59.135.8 and 1987.394.655). An object like the Metropolitan’s double-headed eagle ttipqui may have been especially appealing to a woman who, following Peru’s independence in 1824, sought to embrace the rich and complex visual traditions that were unique to her homeland.

Kate E. Holohan, 2016
Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas

Further Reading
Esteras Martín, Cristina. Platería del Perú virreinal, 1535–1825. Madrid: Grupo BBV and Lima: Banco Continental, 1997.

Phipps, Elena, Joanna Hecht, and Cristina Esteras Martín. The Colonial Andes: Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530–1830. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004.

Vetter Parodi, Luisa María and Paloma Carcedo de Mufarech. El tupo: Símbolo ancestral de identidad femenina. Lima: Gráfica Biblos S.A., 2009.