Getty to conserve Church of Rondocan and its eight Bitti paintings

By Marcus Bennett

Peru’s government will finance a $5 million conservation project at the Church of Santo Tomás de Aquino, also known as the Church of Rondocan, starting in 2027.

The five-year project pairs the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) with the Peruvian Ministry of Culture. It will strengthen the 17th-century church in the Andes and preserve 330 historical objects. Rondocan is the name of the town in the Cusco region where the church was built.

Eight of those objects are paintings by Bernardo Bitti (1548-1610), an Italian Jesuit priest who introduced Mannerism to the Viceroyalty of Peru in the 16th century. At 340 square metres and 3,400 metres above sea level, the church holds a concentrated record of Andean art while facing the seismic forces of its high-altitude setting.

The GCI plan calls for seismic stabilisation using local materials. The building stands in an earthquake-prone area and has the features of other churches in the Andean highlands: 1.2-metre-thick adobe walls, buttresses and a wooden truss roof.

Claudia Cancino, a principal project specialist at the GCI, told The Art Newspaper: “We provide all the advanced conservation techniques available, and we handle the structural design of the project.”

The work will address more than the structure. César Ccorimanya Mayta, the parish priest at Rondocan for the past 17 years, said: “The project is not only about the temple and its walls. It’s about the cultural and spiritual heritage of the church.”

What does the conservation project change for Rondocan?

For the building, it means seismic stabilisation and structural strengthening. For the collection, it means conservation of 330 objects and scientific analysis of one Bitti painting. For residents, it means training in daily care.

The GCI became familiar with Rondocan through a similar project at the Church of Santiago Apóstol in nearby Kuñotambo, completed in 2019. Cancino and her team trained local people in building care, including the deceptively simple task of cleaning floors.

Cancino explained: “You have to understand how to sweep the church and with what, because if you stir up too much dust it sticks to the murals.” The Kuñotambo team also produced a manual in Quechua, the local Indigenous language.

By treating local people as caretakers rather than spectators, the programme links technical conservation to the daily routines that keep an occupied church in use over time. During the Kuñotambo work, the community asked the GCI for support so it could ask the Archdiocese of Cusco and the Ministry of Culture to work on Rondocan.

One Bitti painting will travel to Los Angeles for scientific analysis and conservation on the Getty campus. Bitti arrived in Peru in 1575 and made paintings for churches in Lima and Cusco. When the Spanish Crown expelled the Jesuits from the Americas in 1767, the Jesuits’ works were sold.

It is believed that Rondocan’s then parish priest bought Bitti paintings in Cusco and arranged their transfer to the church. Less than two decades ago, discovery of the only complete series of eight Bitti canvases renewed interest in studying his work.

The wider collection includes viceroyalty-era sculptures, manuscripts and silver liturgical objects. Cancino said: “The art collection in this small town in the middle of nowhere is breathtaking.”

Fernando López Sánchez, Peru’s vice minister of cultural heritage, said in a statement: “This church is much more than a historic building. It is part of the community’s memory, identity and everyday life.”

The five-year programme begins in 2027. Its practical test is whether the structural work protects the church and its 330 objects while community training keeps daily care in local hands.