and how well they achieved the portraits of the main characters of each scene. The series has enormous historical and ethnographic value, because it shows in detail the various social strata of Colonial Cusco, as well as many other elements of a festival that already was central in the life of the city. The most original and important Amerindian painter is Diego Quispe Tito, born in the parish of San Sebastián, near to Cusco, in 1611 and active almost until end the century. It is in the work of Diego Quispe Tito that some of the characteristics of Cuzqueña painting are prefigured, such as a certain freedom in the handling of perspective, a previously unknown role of the landscape and the abundance of birds in the leafy trees that are part of the same. The motif of the birds, especially the Amazon forest's parrot, is interpreted by some researchers to refer to the Inca nobility. The most valuable part of Quispe Tito's work is located in the church of his native town, San Sebastián. One highlight is the series of twelve compositions on the life of St. John the Baptist, in the main nave of the church. Of great mastery are also the two enormous canvases dedicated to Saint Sebastian, that of the asaetamiento and that of the death of the saint. Also famous is the series of the Zodiac that the artist painted for the Cathedral of Cuzco towards 1680. Another outstanding painter of the Cusco School is Basilio Santa Cruz Pumacallao, of indigenous ancestry like Quispe Tito, but unlike him, much more attached to the canons of Western painting within the Baroque current. Active in the second half of the 17th century, Santa Cruz leaves the best of his work in the Cathedral of Cusco, as he was commissioned to decorate the walls on the side of the choir and the arms of the transept. In the picture of the Virgin of Bethelem, located in the choir, there is a portrait of the bishop and patron Manuel de Mollinedo y Angulo who helped the development of the Cusco Painting School and the city. Such is the fame reached by the Cusqueña painting of the 17th century, which during the following century produces a singular phenomenon that curiously left its mark not only in art but in the local economy. Industrial workshops made canvases in large quantities for merchants