Saints Painted by an Indigenous Peruvian

At a flea market JS purchased a small painting on canvas featuring two figures of saints. She never before saw such an unfortunate looking canine, and needed this work!!

First, congratulations JS, you scored. This is a late 18th early 19th century Cuzco School painting originating from Peru. The work looks slightly na?ve, as if painted by an artist with little classical art training. And this is indeed the case.

Spain “founded” Peru, in Colonial terms, in 1542 as a Viceroyalty until 1824. As a means of Colonial evangelization, they enlisted Spanish, Italian, and Flemish painters to come paint religious works in newly erected churches. These artists left Europe during the emergence of a new genre of art, the Mannerist School. If you remember El Greco, you picture the mannerist style: elongation of figures, flattening of perspective, symbolism. But the transplants brought their training in the bedrock of Classical European Realism called the Academic style.

The Cuzco School

In 1688 the indigenous painters who worked in the workshops of European painters for decades left the Artist’s Guild. Indigenous and mestizo painters never attain the positions held by Europeans. Dissenting painters formed their own school, The Cuzco School, forging their own path.

These artist rejected the staid academic realism of their former bosses. Instead they painted images that told a story in symbols and colors. They used archetypes such as the Saints, but colored them with local features and clothing. Often they dressed holy figures in rich brocades accented with gold, painted in reds, ochers, greens, blues, and white. If a scene was to be spotlit, it virtually WAS, as paintings contained light pictured from heaven itself. Notice the clouds opening and light spewing forth in JS’s painting.

In JS’s painting we see an older bearded figure in a pallium (papal cloak). A vested apostle holds the keys of heaven. The keys are the attribute of St Peter, born Simon, but named Cephas (Peter) by Jesus. Another attribute is that book he carries, he is an author, as the New Testament contains Peter’s letters. He is portrayed as a common looking man, born a lowly fisherman, raised to become the keeper of heaven’s gates. He is patron saint of sailors, fishermen, and locksmiths, and the first of all the contiguous popes.

In JS’s painting, Peter stands beside a dark featured woman with flowing hair tied with a red bow and sporting a gold crown. This is Saint Margaret of Antioch. She’s dressed in a red girdle-corset and wears an indigenous, heavily embroidered apron. On a chain, subdued, at her side is a timid little dragon, the attribute of St Margaret.

Symbolism and Saints

Margaret is the patron saint of women in childbirth. As a famed beauty, she was courted, during the Roman reign of Diocletian, by a pagan. A Christian nurse raised her after her mother died in childbirth. She endured imprisonment rather than marry, and for her pains, the devil appeared in her cell as a dragon, who ate her whole. In his belly she made the sign of the cross and out she popped. She symbolizes victory and the triumph of the spirit over the flesh. In medieval England sh became a cult figure from the 9th to the 16th century although not canonized till later because of the hard-to-swallow dragon part of her hagiography. She is one of a handful of female Saints who face “the dragon.” Male Saints are usually the dragon-slayers.

Another attribute is her palm frond, a symbol of martyrdom. She faced execution after she burst from the dragon. The palm symbolizes the spirit and eternal breath, as we see the palm frond sway in the wind and never changing or falling.

Both Saints represent the believer who overcomes terrible trials, and is justly rewarded. No coincidence an indigenous Peruvian artist in the 1800s who also overcame a powerful Colonial system painted this image. Very non-European, this is painted as a sensual narrative, in a heartfelt earnest way: notice how both Saints gaze directly at the viewer. This is a small devotional work, not a grand European style alter painting, a work for the people. The value is $800.

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Elizabeth Stewart, PhD?is a certified member of the Appraisers Association of America, presenter of custom Antique Road Show style events, and author of No?Thanks Mom: The Top Ten Objects Your Kids Do NOT Want (and what to do with them).

Originally published at elizabethappraisals.com on April 16, 2024