The Cuzco School of Painting was a Roman Catholic artistic tradition in the 16th-18th centuries. Cuzco (also spelled Cusco) is a city in the Peruvian Andes that was once the capital of the Inca Empire.  After the Conquest of Peru in the 1530’s, indigenous artists were influenced by Spanish and European art. The Cuzco School developed a style that was uniquely their own, with bright color palettes, flattened forms, indigenous symbolism, detailed textiles, floral borders and a profusion of gold ornamentation.

Common themes of the Cuzco School were the Virgin Mary, saints and angels, along with tropical birds and idealized landscapes.  After King Charles II of Spain named St. Joseph the Patron Saint of the Spanish Monarchy, the image of St. Joseph came into vogue in both ecclesial and domestic circles.

Shown here are two paintings of St. Joseph from the Cuzco School done by anonymous artists between 1700-1730. The first is Saint Joseph and the Christ Child, now in the Brooklyn Museum. Notice the floral border, textile designs and use of gold. The second image is entitled The Double Trinity with St. Augustine and St. Catherine of Sienna, from the Lima Museum in Peru. It is almost an exact compositional copy of an engraving done by Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens in about 1625, shown above, now at the British Museum, but the Cuzco artist has made the painting very much their own.