The "Conquering Virgin."

The most famous sculpture in Spanish colonial New Mexico was La Conquistadora, the Conquering Virgin, reputed to be the oldest image of the Virgin Maty in the United States. In 1625 the friar Alonso de Benavides brought the small polychromed or painted-wood statue from Mexico to Santa Fe and placed it in the parish church of the Assumption of the Virgin. Today she resides in her own chapel in Santa Fe's Cathedral of St. Francis. Because she holds the rosary in her hands, she is regarded as a Virgin of the Rosary.

Sculptural Technique.

Because the painted and gilded wood statue was a collaborative work, it typifies Spanish and Spanish-colonial sculptural production. A sculptor carved the wood, which he then gessoed, filed, and smoothed. After the carving was finished, one painter executed the encarnacion (flesh tones) of the figure while another...