This book, both a new reflection on indigenism and the first monograph dedicated to Francisco Laso, explores the emergence of the modern image of the Indian and the "Andean world" in nineteenth-century visual culture. Through a careful reading of Laso's works in the broad context of the art and literature of the period, the book identifies a decisive break in the long history of representations of indigenous peoples that begins with the conquest. He links this transformation to the emergence of the modern concept of culture, which redefined both the artistic field and the very notion of what is indigenous. As an abstraction produced through indigenist discourse, an icon of authenticity and a densely racialized cultural concept, this figure of the Indian remains to this day a central axis of the national imaginary.