2-745-058 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

The Monastery of San Pedro (Our Lady of the Snows), 1879. 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. One of the artist’s last major paintings, it was commissioned by Cleveland banker and railroad executive Hinman B. Hurlbut (1819-1884), who also co-founded this museum.