An Allegory of Saint Rose of Lima

A Peruvian viceregal painting of Saint Rose of Lima with Inca symbols is now a key piece in the United States, having passed through Argentine collections.
The new pontiff, born in the United States but with a long missionary career in Peru, revived interest in a unique colonial work: "An Allegory of Saint Rose of Lima," an 18th-century painting.
The announcement of the new pontiff, Leo XIV, moved not only the Catholic faithful in the United States, where he was born, but also in Peru, where he lived for decades as a missionary and bishop. The appointment revived interest in a little-known piece of colonial religious art: a painting on canvas entitled "An Allegory of Saint Rose of Lima," currently on display at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. The work, dated between 1730 and 1760, was created within the Viceroyalty of Peru and attributed to a painter of the Cuzco School. Its allegorical and symbolic nature offers a unique look at the visual fusion and social tensions that marked viceregal life.
Far from being a conventional devotional representation, the painting depicts a female figure emerging from a rose, surrounded by cherubs and allegorical figures. Although based on a 1711 European engraving, published as the frontispiece to a collection of sonnets by the Spaniard Oviedo y Herrera, the painting introduces fundamental changes. Instead of depicting the artist, as the engraving did, the canvas shows an Inca ruler, dressed in recognizable symbols of Inca power. The gesture did not go unnoticed by scholars, nor is it insignificant in the context of a colonial society that repressed expressions of Indigenous sovereignty.

The inclusion of the Inca, with his "mascaypacha" and "tocapu," suggests a Creole and Indigenous appropriation of Catholic religious discourse. The symbol of Saint Rose—the Lima saint canonized in 1671—becomes here a point of confluence between two universes that coexisted in tension. The work proposes a visual alliance between Christian sacredness and Inca political memory, which in the 18th century was already beginning to be invoked for purposes beyond the liturgical.
The 1.5-meter-high painting was acquired by the Walters Museum in 2019. In the central section, Saint Rose of Lima appears, emerging from an open rose, with a floral halo in her hand containing the Child Jesus. In her other hand, she holds an anchor, a symbol of the city of Lima. The scene includes the cathedral of the viceregal capital, represented as a miniature building above the anchor, with the inscription "Lima" below.

"These types of compositions were quite common in the Hispanic world during the 18th century," explained a museum curator, quoted in the official presentation of the exhibition. “But what makes this painting special is the transformation of European content into a local political and visual message.”

To the viewer's left, a female figure with a bow, arrows, and a feathered headdress represents America. Although this figure appeared nude in the original engraving, in the painting she wears a blue dress. On the right, instead of the poet Oviedo y Herrera, there is an Inca nobleman with royal attributes: a tunic with tocapu motifs, a yacolla cape, a crown with cantuta flowers, and the red fringe of the mascaypacha.
The ruler depicted is not a generic figure. The choice of colors, the frontal band, and the flowers emerging from his crown directly reference the symbols of Inca nobility. As one of the museum's viceregal art specialists explained, “the cantuta was recognized as a ceremonial flower before the arrival of the Spanish. Its presence on the ruler's head is no accident.”

The representation of the indigenous king in a reverent attitude before Santa Rosa also shows a reversal of hierarchies. The canvas suggests an alliance between indigenous and Creole cultures under the common symbol of Lima's sanctity. For Creoles excluded from peninsular power, as well as for the curacas who still enjoyed certain privileges, evoking Incan grandeur in a religious painting could be interpreted as a subtle form of symbolic resistance.

In the museum's words: "This work is not only an example of 18th-century artistic syncretism, but also a visual statement of local vindication, at a time when social tensions were also manifested in art."
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