Art, literature & history
The Monastery of San Pedro (Our Lady of the Snows)
1879
- Dating
- Exact year
- Held at
- The Cleveland Museum of Art
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- Unframed: 118.8 x 183.2 cm (46 3/4 x 72 1/8 in.)
- Collection no.
- 1915.684
- Attribution
- By the artist
- Image rights
- CC0 1.0License details
Frederic Edwin Church. The Monastery of San Pedro (Our Lady of the Snows). The Cleveland Museum of Art. CC0 1.0. Compressed full-frame reproduction.
Collection: The Cleveland Museum of Art
About this artwork
The Monastery of San Pedro (Our Lady of the Snows) — Frederic Edwin Church. 1879.
Medium: oil on canvas. Dimensions: Unframed: 118.8 x 183.2 cm (46 3/4 x 72 1/8 in.).
Collection record: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.
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.
Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.
Location checked Sep 10, 2026. This does not indicate whether the work is on display.