Junio, by Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala

Part of El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno, Junio is one of the 12 fine-line images created by Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala to represent the Inca cycle of agricultural practices and the native people's connection to their ecological-agrarian rituals. Junio, or June, was the time for potato harvesting.

The painting's central elements are three workers involved in the process. While one of them seems to be taking care of grouping potatoes within bags and transporting them, the other two are working on picking the mature potatoes from the soil through some good ol' division of labor. The image clearly demonstrates the productivity of potatoes as a crop - just take a look at how many of them are there!

A fun fact about the Inca relationship with potatoes: these were so important and so present in their society that they used the time it took to boil potatoes to different degrees as a measure of time. Native South and Central American peoples were responsible for many important agricultural achievements and developments, including the creation of maize as we know it today and the introduction of potatoes to the Europeans.

Size conversion table

A4: 8.3" x 11.7" ≈ 21cm x 30cm

A3: 11.7" x 16.5" ≈ 30cm x 40cm

A2: 16.5" x 23.4" ≈ 40cm x 60cm

A1: 23.4" x 33.1" ≈ 60cm x 84cm