Los Desposorios Místicos de Santa Rosa de Lima (The Mystic Betrothal of Saint Rose of Lima)
| Support Type: | Canvas |
| Paint Type: | Oil Paint |
| Current Location: | Museo Nacional de Arte (MUNAL) in Mexico City, Mexico |
| Location History: | This piece was accepted into the San Carlos Academy. After being displayed at the Philadelphia Universal Exhibition in 1876, it was added to the San Diego Viceregal Painting Gallery's collection before joining the MUNAL collection in 2000. Today, the piece can be found in the National Museum of Art/Museo Nacional de Arte (MUNAL), located in the historic downtown of Mexico City, Mexico. |
Nicolas Correa was a mulatto painter from the late seventeenth century. Following the vocation of his father, he established himself as a painter and gained recognition in the technique of enconchado, an uncommon artistic practice among painters during that period. Enconchado is a unique, colonial-era art form, particularly popular in the regions of Mexico City and Peru. The technique involves oil painting on wood or canvas with inlaid nacre, also known as mother-of-pearl, an organic-gemstone material produced by the inner layer of shells of mollusks, including pearl oysters, mussels, and other freshwater species. The artwork displayed above, completed in 1961 and measuring 168 x 146 centimeters, is one of Correa's most recognized oil-on-canvas pieces. The composition depicts Santa Rosa de Lima in one of the passages from the Apocrypha (a collection of ancient, religious texts), in which she is seen praying inside a Christian chapel when suddenly she experiences a vision of the Virgin Mary, with the Christ child on her arms and offering her a rosary. Saint Rose, in return, presents a white rose to the infant Jesus. Santa Rosa de Lima was a member of the Third Order of Saint Dominic, from Lima, Peru, and the first person born in the Americas to be canonized as a saint by Pope Clement X. She is known as the patron saint of embroidery, gardening, and the cultivation of blooming plants.
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