The painting was done by hand in Cuzco, Peru, where artists have been painting the saints this way for almost five hundred years. The Cuzco school began in the 1500s when Spanish missionaries trained Quechua and mestizo painters to make sacred art for the new churches of the Andes. What came out of that integration was its own thing entirely. Warm ochres and golds, soft green skies, and faces painted with a tenderness that formal European portraiture rarely allowed. Joseph was one of the most beloved subjects for Cuzco artists, and you can tell.
