When art historian Lisa DeLeonardis looks back at the Santa Cruz de Lancha Jesuit complex in 17th-century Peru, she sees resilience. 

For 137 years, the provincial house and its two haciendas faced off with earthquakes, tsunamis, disease, and even pirates. Over and over in the port city of Pisco, Jesuits, Andeans, and African enslaved workers rebuilt, once even helping to move the entire city farther inland. What can this history tell us about those living through it, asks DeLeonardis in a forthcoming book project; and what can it tell us about the art and science of place-making? 

Architecture with meaning

As Austen-Stokes Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Art, DeLeonardis has devoted her career to architecture as a visual medium, studying both how it is built and used, and the meanings people gather from it. Half of her research has focused on ancient Andean and Incan architecture and the other half on the early modern period, expanding beyond considerations of style and space to questions about the experience of landscape, light, and natural catastrophe. 

In Santa Cruz de Lancha: Architecture and the Making of Place in Eighteenth-Century Peru, DeLeonardis plumbs ruins, landscapes, and meticulous records to reveal the kinds of decisions leaders made under duress, and the priorities that guided them, including the Jesuit emphasis on education. She explores the use of quincha—a construction system made of natural materials such as wood, cane, or giant reed—which withstands earthquakes better than . e stone usually used for grand churches. And she analyzes the effect of combining architectural skills and choices from Rome, Indigenous Peru, and Africa. The thread running through all of it is the constant threat and reality of destruction, which creates a series of discrete chapters of history instead of an unbroken stream. That allows DeLeonardis to study different people under different circumstances and offer more textured interpretations. 

“It really reveals the social fabric of colonial Peru,” she says, “and it’s much richer, much more complicated than just reciting what happened. There’s more of a mosaic to consider, where you can look at these distinct pieces and craft it all together.” 

Pisco as a place

As a port city, Pisco was vulnerable not only to tsunamis and earthquakes, but also to the Flemish, English, and French pirates looking for a share of the gold, silver, and emeralds that were making their way from the Peruvian and Bolivian interiors toward European shipping routes. Not always content to wait for the bounty to come to them at sea, pirates began attacking the ports, where they burned cities, raided treasuries and stores of brandy and wine, and kidnapped and massacred residents. Even the priests were recruited into the military to stand guard. 

By the 18th century, some of the enslaved workers had bought their freedom. Travelers and religious pilgrims alike found respite in the haciendas. Today the books, art objects, and interplay between desert and building—all created by three cultures working together to hold natural and human forces at bay— continue to offer glimpses into Pisco as a place, and into the elements that make it the particular place that it is.