An early version of this paper was presented under the title "Defining National Painting: Francisco Laso's Inhabitant of the Cordillera of Peru at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1855" in the session "Drawing on the Past: Pre-Columbian and Native American Imagery, Sources and Issues in the Modern Arts" at the forty-seventh International Congress of Americanists, New Orleans, 8 July 1991, and later in my dissertation, "The Creation of the Image of the Indian in Nineteenth-Century Peru: The Paintings of Francisco Laso (18231869)." I would like to thank Beverly Adams and Katy Siegel, whose suggestions, even at a distance, helped me to formulate the ideas presented in this essay. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own. 1. Alfredo Bryce Echenique, Permiso para vivir (Antimemorias) (Barcelona, 1993), p. 20. 2. Fernando De Szyszlo, "Reflections with Fernando De Szyszlo," interview with Ana Maria Escallon, in Mario Vargas Llosa et al., Fernando de Szyszlo (Bogota, 1991), p. 27. 3. Octavio Paz, 'tJose Guadalupe Posada y el grabado latinoamericano," Los privilegios de la vista: Arte de Me'xico, vol. 3 of Mexico en la obra de Octavio Paz (Mexico City, 1987), p. 188.