Colonial school. Cuzco. Peru. Century XVIII. 'Our Lady of Pomata' Oil on canvas. In 1534, the Spanish foundation of Pomata was established on the Collao plateau in the Peruvian Altiplano by the Dominican friar Fray Tomás de San Martín, an important political figure and master of the Religious Order of Santo Domingo. The town was founded to encourage worship and conversion, so the first settlers were religious, to which the civilian population was gradually added. Under the rule of Kings and Viceroys, Pomata became an important centre of catechism for the religious congregation of Santo Domingo de Guzmán. The chapel of Santa Barbara, the temple of San Santiago, the temples of San Martin and San Miguel were built, thus initiating the evangelisation of the first inhabitants of Puma Uta, later called Pomata by the Spaniards. One of the most popular miraculous sculptures of the viceregal period, which became very popular around 1600, was the sculpture of Our Lady of the Rosary in the church of Santiago de Pomata, which competed in popularity with the Virgin of the Augustinian sanctuary of Copacabana.   Professor Maya Stanfield-Mazzi in her interesting study on the Virgin of the Rosary of Pomata, 'LA VIRGEN DEL ROSARIO DE POMATA, EN SU IGLESIA Y EN EL VIRREINATO', indicates among other things that: 'The original image belongs to the church of Santiago de Pomata, a town on the south-western shore of Lake Titicaca which during colonial times was part of the bishopric of La Paz. Depictions of this sculpture were disseminated throughout the viceroyalty. A large number of the paintings come from the Cuzco school of the 17th and 18th centuries, and many are today in churches and museums in the department of Cuzco, such as the one in the Museo Histórico Regional Casa Garcilaso, an anonymous Cuzco artist, in which the Virgin is accompanied by Saint Rose of Lima and Saint Dominic'. Professor Stanfield-Mazzi continues: 'We do not know with certainty in what year the image of the Virgin of Pomata was created, nor when it arrived at the church of that town; nor do we know the name of the sculptor who created it (anonymous around 1570) In his work published in Rome in 1681, fray Juan Meléndez maintains that the parish of Pomata was returned to the Dominicans because the bishop de la Cerda knew the devotion that the friars had for the Virgin Mary 'in her prodigious image, under the invocation of her Rosary' (Meléndez, 1681-82: I, 446).