3-074-498 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Gold ornaments from the graves of the Incas of Peru - breastplate in the form of the sun, 1883. Item from '...a very interesting and unique collection of gold ornaments from the "Huacas" or graves of the Incas of Peru. They were obtained by Senor Don Leocadio Maria Arango, of Medellin, during a residence of thirty years in that country, but have now passed into the collection of Lady Brassey... Gold, in the figurative language of the people, was the substance of "the tears wept by the Sun."... Fig. 4 is a small golden breast-plate, in the shape of the sun, worn as a pendant'. From "Illustrated London News", 1883.