Saint Rose of Lima with Child Jesus

Beatified in 1668 and canonized three years later, Saint Rose of Lima became one of the pillars of the vindications of the criollos. Her image rapidly passed to Cusco and was used as a symbol of shared identity by mestizos and natives. The different associations of the image of the saint did not obscure her devotion from being adopted by diverse social and ethnic groups. Perhaps because of this, in the late seventeenth century the Cusco workshops produced numerous images of the saint, such as this one, that repeats her usual iconography, which had by then been fixed. Rose appears with the Child Jesus in her arms, referring to her frequent mystical visions. Both are placed in a garden of Paradise of Flemish inspiration that seems to allude to a celestial setting rather than the saint’s family orchard.