Museo Pedro de Osma

This guide to Museo Pedro de Osma in Lima looks at the armed archangel, a genre invented by painters in and around Cusco in the late 1600s with no ancestor anywhere in European art. You'll hear how the crack of Spanish harquebuses and the gleam of silver armor read to Andean eyes as a divine visitation, and how local artists borrowed a conquistador's plumed hat and raised weapon to dress heaven itself. The mansion's rooms hold enough of these paintings to fill one entirely.