Colonial School. 18th century.

Colonial School. 18th century.
"True portrait of Our Lady of Valvanera"
Oil on canvas. 142 x 106 cm.
The iconography is based on the anonymous engraving dedicated to the General of Earth and Sea, Iñigo de la Cruz Manrique de Lara Ramírez de Arellano (1673-1733). In it, the clothing of the Virgin Mary, the position of the tree, the chest in the foreground and the eagle of the throne can be seen, as well as other details. In front of a large tree trunk rests Our Lady of Valvanera —patron of La Rioja— richly dressed with the Christ Child on her lap and a fruit and a flower in her left hand as bees fly around them, an iconographic symbol.
According to legend, the image of Our Lady of Valvanera, which had been carved by Saint Luke and brought to Spain by Saint Peter’s disciples, was discovered by a repentant bandit named Nuño Oñez who had become a hermit. After an angel appeared to him in his cave in the mountains of La Rioja to show him the way, he did not hesitate to make the journey. A priest named Domingo from the Segovian village of Brieva was willing to help him, and their quest came to a successful end in the hollow of an enormous oak tree marked by a honeycomb and a spring which emanated from its roots; three elements which currently identify the patron of La Rioja. Scholars who studied this miracle later linked it to the iconography of Heaven, identifying the tree, fountain of grace, with Christ and linking the bee hive with the faithful congregation and the brightly coloured flowers and birds with Heaven.
On discovering the image of the Madonna, the pair formed by Nuño and Domingo moved her to the Hermitage of Santo Cristo, the first place where it was worshiped and where more than a hundred hermits had care over it.
It is not made clear in the legend from La Rioja why the Montenegrin Nuño Oñez converted to Christianity. It was attributed to the piety shown by a worker who he was planning to ambush, as the curator Ronda Kasl suggests in his description of the “True portrait of Our Lady of Valvanera” (1770-1780), in the Metropolitan Museum collection. Another story tells that his repentance was caused by the accidental death of his son while trying to get water from the opening of the cave by the river Najerilla (near Anguiano, La Rioja), where father and son lived.
This painting can be linked with the similar painting of Our Lady of Valvanera which presides over the main reredos in Saint Maron’s Cathedral, which is currently a Maronite church following Syriac orientation, but until 1922 was the Parish church of Our Lady of Valvanera and, before that, the "Combento de Balvanera".
The Franz Mayer museum has a painting by Juan Correa which depicts Our Lady of Valvanera, dated circa. 1665, which has very similar iconography to this one, Also, at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, there is another version by an anonymous artist from Cuzco, dated circa 1770-1780, which was donated by James Kung Wei Li, in memory of the Ambassador and Mrs. Ti-Tsun Li, of the Republic of China, in 2018.