The Monastery of San Pedro (Our Lady of the Snows) (1879): Art, History and Details

The Monastery of San Pedro (Our Lady of the Snows) (1879) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Although the location that inspired the painting has been subject to scholarly debate, many believe it derives from Church’s travels through the Ecuadorean Andes nearly a quarter century earlier. The composition reads as an allegory of spiritual salvation: perched atop a dramatic cliff, a brilliantly backlit monastery overlooks a shadowed foreground where a solitary figure navigates a rugged path.

Object facts

• Title: The Monastery of San Pedro (Our Lady of the Snows)
• Date: 1879
• Creator attribution: Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900)
• Culture: America
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Unframed: 118.8 x 183.2 cm (46 3/4 x 72 1/8 in.)
• Collection: American - Painting
• Department: American Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1915.684

A detail from the museum

This painting was commissioned by Cleveland banker and railroad executive Hinman B. Hurlbut (1819–1884), who also cofounded the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Collection credit

Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Coloquio Internacional de Historia del Arte Zacatecas, Zac. 1994, Gustavo Curiel, Renato González Mello, Juana Gutiérrez Haces, and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas. Arte, Historia E Identidad En América : Visiones Comparativas : XVII Coloquio Internacional de Historia Del Arte. México: UNAM, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, 1994.
• Carr, Gerald L., "New Light on Frederic Church's 'Late' Work," Magazine Antiques 137 (January 2008).
• Frederic Church: Global Artist. Edited by T. J. Barringer, Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, and Jennifer Raab. New Haven, London: Yale University Press ; in association with The Olana Partnership, 2026.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.