Traditional attribution to LUIGI GARZI

St Rose of Lima[1] 

Oil on canvas

25 ¾  x 19 ¼ inches(65.5 x 49 cm), and framed

The inscription on the back of the canvas used (about 100 years ago) for relining shows the name (Luigi Garzi Px) of the painter Luigi (or Ludovico) Garzi (Pistoia 1638-1721 Rome).

This painting is one of the artistic results of the European exploration of the New World, and the influence from migration of some European painters to South America and New Spain. The Dominican nun Isabel Flores de Oliva (1586-1617) was canonized St. Rose of Lima in 1671, the first saint from the Americas.Her canonization was a testament to the success of the Dominicans in the New World. The Dominican order commissioned her image for churches all over the Viceroyalties, Spain and Italy. It is clear from many of the works that they produced that she also captured the imagination of European painters.

A few notable examples of European artistic renditions of St. Rose are listed below. Her image was often modeled after those of St. Catherine of Siena, a very popular Dominican saint who also died young.

Domenico Piola’s 17^th century Virgin, Child, St Rose of Lima  is in the Basilica di Santa Maria di Castello, Genova. The Genoese had huge trade dealings with Spain through the port at Cádiz, and thereby with the New World, so it is natural that news of the canonization of the saint from the Americas would have traveled rather fast.

Jacopo Zoboli’s Rapture of St. Rose of Lima is in the Galeria Corsini, Rome. Zoboli lived from 1681-1767.

The Italian Melchiore Caff á’s 1665 carved marble statue of  Rose of Lima (signed and dated) was commissioned for the church of St. Dominic, Lima.

There is even a marble statue of the saint at St. Peter’s square in Rome (17C, att. to Bernini).

Arguably the most celebrated of the images of St. Rose produced in Europe was a later one: Tiepolo’s painting of three Dominican saints (Catherine of Siena, Rose of Lima, Agnes of Montepulciano) and the Virgin in the church of the Gesuati  in Venice (1739-40).