Fragment from the Shoulder of a Tunic (Uncu) (1550-1625): Artwork and History

Fragment from the Shoulder of a Tunic (Uncu) (1550-1625) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as Colonial Inca Inca or Indigenous Viceroyalty of Peru, likely near Cuzco (now probably Peru, possibly Bolivia).

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

This textile was cut from the shoulder area of an Inca or Indigenous man’s tunic, called an uncu in Quechua. The maker wove the cantuta flowers in opposite directions so they would remain upright when the garment was worn. The cascades of rectangles that define the yoke were invented during the Spanish Colonial period, possibly reinventing a style from an earlier regional culture that had been conquered by the Incas. The faint line within the red threads is a diagonal break that reveals the cloth was woven in sections—a time-saving approach used after the Inca Empire’s strict rules for creating textiles waned. This tunic waistband fragment in our collection was also part of the same garment. A third piece of the same tunic is in the collection of The Textile Museum in Washington, DC (91.8).

Object facts

• Title: Fragment from the Shoulder of a Tunic (Uncu)
• Date: 1550-1625
• Artist attribution: Colonial Inca Inca or Indigenous Viceroyalty of Peru, likely near Cuzco (now probably Peru, possibly Bolivia)
• Place of origin: Peru
• Medium: Cotton and wool (camelid), single interlocking tapestry weave with eccentric wefts
• Dimensions: 24.8 × 38.7 cm (9 3/4 × 15 1/4 in.)
• Type: Costume and Accessories
• Department: Textiles
• Reference number: 1924.459

Collection credit

Bessie Bennett Endowment

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.