Our Lady of Cocharcas
The Virgin of a Peruvian mountain shrine, built up in real gold leaf.
- Work
- Oil and gold on canvas
- Artist / creator
- Cusco School (anonymous)
- Origin & date
- Peru (Cuzco), 1759
- Held by
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York — The American Wing (gift of John Ming Ta Li, 2019)
Format
The full-resolution scan — yours to print, study, and keep.
Size
$24.00
The story
Our Lady of Cocharcas is one of colonial Peru's great pilgrimage Virgins — a statue enshrined in the Andean town of Cocharcas that became, by the 18th century, a destination rivaling Copacabana. Paintings like this one were pilgrimage souvenirs and devotional objects at once: a portable version of a specific, located miracle-working image, complete with her own crown, her own feast day, her own following.
The gold is not paint — it is brocateado, actual gold leaf worked into the pigment and tooled with fine lines to catch candlelight the way real brocade would. Cusco workshops perfected this technique, and it has no real equivalent in European Marian painting of the period; it turns the canvas into something closer to a reliquary than a picture.
Notice how the gold patterning follows the fall of the fabric — this was drawn, not just applied.
About this reproduction
- • Faithful reproduction of a public-domain work, sourced from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York — The American Wing (gift of John Ming Ta Li, 2019)’s open-access release.
- • Printed to order on EMA matte art paper, 200gsm. The heirloom frame is gold, under acrylic, with no mount.
- • Color-managed to the source scan.
- • Ships in 5–9 business days; satisfaction guarantee.
From the same collection
Our Lady of Guápulo
A pilgrimage Virgin from the hills above Quito, painted in full Cusco gold.
Our Lady of Mercy, called "The Pilgrim of Quito"
The Virgin as an actual traveler — staff, cloak, and the road still in her feet.
Our Lady of Valvanera
A Spanish shrine Virgin, carried across the Atlantic and repainted in Andean gold.