Diego Quispe Tito (Cuzco, Perú, 1611 - 1681) 'Saint Joseph with the Child in its workshop' Oil on canvas. 71 x 63 cm.   The painting we present is attributed to Diego Quispe Tito, a master of the 17th-century Cuzco School.   In addition to its devotional purpose, this painting of Saint Joseph with the Child Jesus serves as an example of a rolled format painting. This unusual canvas, rich in iconography and symbolism, is presented rolled like a parchment, a format typically created for ease of transport, whether for outdoor masses or services in villages near the main parish, or to display a religious motif that would unify catechesis, homilies, or talks given by missionaries.   From a technical perspective, this format required durable materials and painting techniques resistant to wear, as the paintings were repeatedly rolled and unrolled.   With a background characteristic of Quispe Tito, and later of the entire Cuzco School, we see a landscape filled with birds, vegetation, and flowers, including native elements such as Andean birds (macaws and parrots) and typical trees of the Andean region. The painting portrays backgrounds with mists and radiant clearings; gardens in intermediate planes with well-defined plants and vegetation, and a bridge.  There is an unreal architectural perspective to the right, a wall and a plinth are hinted at, on which the saint has his carpentry tools, as if he were a surgeon. There are also meticulously detailed elements. At the center, we contemplate the chaste Joseph holding the Child in his arms. To his left, as if representing an independent reality, we see Saint Lucy, as a donor, appearing timidly, with independent vanishing points and horizon lines, yet sharing the same pictorial surface without any clear division between them. We have three possible hypotheses: a) It is a religious painting, commissioned by a priest, featuring two primary devotions of the place where he ministers, one larger and more intense at the center, and another on the side; b) The commission was made by a man named José, who places his patron saint at the center, and near the end of the work, requests the artist to include Saint Lucy, who seems to stumble into the composition but integrates perfectly as she shares the same compositional plane; c) The painting was commissioned by a donor, placed to the left, named Lucía, or devoted to the saint, and she is depicted in an unreal plane next to the central saint she wishes to venerate. Whichever of these are true, this is a devotional painting, full of goodness and light, blessed from heaven by the Holy Spirit, which becomes a refreshing window of pure reality, a haven of peace, calm, and tenderness.   In the painting, we can observe the mastery in the use of vibrant colors, the richness of meticulous details, and the depth of color, all hallmarks of Quispe Tito’s style. The reds in the garments of Saint Joseph and Saint Lucy, and the whites of the Child Jesus, contrast with the background landscape, which features softer and more natural tones.   The textures of the clothing, the carpentry tools, and the natural elements of the landscape are rendered with precision, creating a harmonious composition that guides the viewer's gaze through the scene.   With the inclusion of carpentry tools, local landscapes, and native fauna, Quispe Tito not only narrates the sacred story but also documents life in his homeland. It is a work that encapsulates a cultural mix, speaking both of faith and identity, achieving not only its religious and spiritual function but also becoming a reflection of daily life in colonial Andes, creating a visual language that captivated both the Indigenous and Spanish populations.   As we read in the Real Academia de la Historia Quispe Tito 'Member of a family of the Inca aristocracy, he is considered to be one of the main initiators of the Cuzco school of painting. He apparently came from the indigenous village of San Sebastián, where a significant part of his work can be found. It is centred on the decorative works for the parish church in that town, for which he worked intensively between 1634 and 1669. During those years he produced four large pictorial cycles: Life of Saint John the Baptist, The Passion, Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian and The Doctors of the Church. These groups of canvasses summarise Quispe Tito's maturity and originality, characterised by an ingenious reinterpretation of European prints and by a precise, agile brushstroke with lively colours. His fame soon spread beyond the confines of Cuzco, and in 1667 he was commissioned by the churches of Potosí to paint Jesus with the Doctors of the Church and The Betrothal of the Virgin, both of which are now in the Museo de la Casa de Moneda in Potosí. In the Inca capital itself, Quispe Tito's most ambitious work is the canvas of the Last Judgement, painted for the porter's lodge of the Convent of San Francisco in 1675.Here the Andean painter abandoned the dynamic formulas, in force until the High Renaissance and early Baroque periods in Europe, to return to the ordered scheme in depicting the Last Judgement, in the form of successive horizontal layers, common among medieval painters.'   Bibliographic reference: - Gisbert, Teresa. “Iconografía y mitos indígenas en el arte”. Editorial Gisbert, 1999. - Vargas Ugarte, Rubén. “Historia del Arte en el Perú”. Editorial Studium, 1969. - San Agustín. “Sermones sobre San José”, Biblioteca de Patrística, siglo IV. - Wuffarden, Luis Eduardo. (n.d.). 'Diego Quispe Tito'. https://dbe.rah.es/biografias/54757/diego-quispe-tito