The present work depicts Our Lady of the Rosary of Pomata, in all her glory, centered on an altar flanked by two flower arrangements. She is beautifully dressed in a silky violet robe and a rich blue cloak decorated with strands of pearls, gold brooches, precious stones and tricolor rosettes, symbols of purity and dignity. She holds the Child in her arm as he raises his right hand in a sign of blessing and with his left holds an orb, an attribute of power and sovereignty over the world. With her right hand, Our Lady delicately holds a red rosary, a symbol of the mystery around the conception of Jesus and an allegory of his innocence, purity and abnegation.
The Virgin and Child wear crowns with a feather headdresses of suri or Andean ostrich as a symbol of Inca royalty and, in the case of the Child, an allegory of the theological virtues: faith, hope and charity. At her feet appear two cherubs and the sacred crescent moon, a symbol of female fertility and a reference to the immaculate conception. Around the Virgin is an arch of roses, a symbol of power and triumph and allegory of the rosary. The red roses represent charity and sacrifice, while the alternating white ones embody innocence and purity.
It is worth noting the inverted “S” and nail symbol along her lower abdomen, a possible allusion to the brotherhood of slaves. This Marian depiction was embraced by African ethnic groups present in the Peruvian colony since the sixteenth century. Indeed, Peru had a large number of slave guilds in the Spanish colonies in the Americas, which were organized by the Dominicans and later the Jesuits. This type of organization served as a strategy of indoctrination and control, and for this reason the doctrineros found necessary the inclusion of these symbols as a way of inculcating their status as slaves. These figurative elements created a bond between the Blessed Mother and slaves, strengthening their devotion and love, but in containing the memory of their social standing, they could be understood as a manifested act of defiance.
The invocation of Our Lady of the Rosary of Pomata owes its origin to the Dominicans who spread the cult of the Virgin of the Rosary throughout the Peruvian territory. One of the most important temples in Puno, the ancient doctrine of the Dominican Order in the sixteenth century, was the Villa de Pomata. The first representations of Our Lady of the Rosary of Pomata occurred towards the end of the seventeenth century, and Bolivian historians José de Mesa and Teresa Gisbert Mesa identify the painter Pablo Chili Tupa, who signed a canvas in 1723, as the pioneer of this iconographic theme of great success in the southern Andes, Cusco and Lima.