In a previous post we mentioned Cecilia Vicuña's quipus: Andean recording and numbering devices used to keep accounts or record events, quipus consist of knotted strings made of cotton and other fibers. For the Chilean artist, activist and poet the quipu is "a poem in space, a way to remember, involving the body and the cosmos at once". Centuries before Vicuña, the mysterious Neapolitan alchemist Raimondo di Sangro, Prince of Sansevero, was spellbound by quipus.
In 1751, Raimondo di Sangro, printed on his private press the "Lettera Apologetica" (also known as "Letter in Defence of the Academician Esercitato of the Crusca containing his Defence of the book entitled Letters of a Peruvian woman concerning the hypothesis regarding the Quipu addressed to the Duchess of S**** and published by the same"), a rather bizarre yet colourful esoteric text inspired by quipus.
The "Lettera Apologetica" was a complete novelty for those times as it was printed in different colours, but it also contained some rather radical messages. In the "Apologetica" the prince of Sansevero - moving from the publication of the Lettres d’une péruvienne (1747) by Françoise de Graffigny, an exotic epistolary novel whose main character, according to the writer, had used the quipu for some of her missives - defended this ancient communication system.
In reality Raimondo di Sangro was using the quipu as a pretext to spread the pantheist message, support the need for free thought, support unorthodox theories on the origin of the world and proclaim hostility to the interference of the Church and to the introduction of Inquisition Courts in the Kingdom of Naples. His contemporaries believed that, between the lines of the "Apologetica", the prince was also spreading the values of freemasonry and principles from the cabalistic and esoteric traditions.
We may not know for sure what di Sangro had in mind, but from the typographical point of view, the "Apologetica" was incredibly innovative since it was printed in four colours with a single turn of the press, a new surprising invention by the prince himself. The text is accompanied by foldable illustrations that include the graphical representations of the main signs or "Master Words" of the ancient Inca language; the translation of a Peruvian song into quipus and a transliteration of the Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, German and English alphabets in quipu.
The "Lettera Apologetica" didn't get much luck, censors of the Congregation of the Index of Prohibited Books got angry about its esoteric contents and principles contrary to the doctrine of the Church and, in 1752, condemned the work as infected by "foul plague" prohibiting it. The Prince of Sansevero tried to get the book removed from the list of forbidden books highlighting he had written it in an ironic key, but never managed to do so.
The quipu could be an intriguing idea for a fashion collection, for what regards both garments and accessories (it could be used for prints but also for knotted techniques) - anybody interested in the quipu challenge in fashion, moving from Vicuña's installations or Raimondo di Sangro's esoteric translations into quipus?
Comments