An enormous Virgin-Mountain-Woman features at the center of Virgen de Cerro Rico, an anonymous Hispano-American baroque painting from circa 1680 currently located at the Casa Nacional de Moneda de Bolivia. The figure could be understood as being at the center of this mid-sixteenth century world—she is flanked at the top by the Holy Trinity, St Michael, St Raphael and a string of cherubs; in the middle by the sun and the moon; and at the bottom, Pope Paul III and other members of the Christian church stand on one side, with Charles V and the Cacique Inca (the commissioner of the work) on the other. The painting can also be read chronologically from top to bottom; that is, the Trinity existed prior to Mary, who in turn lived before the Inca that preceded the characters located at the foot of the hill. Read like this, the painting pictorially maps colonial power.

En Bumi-Antara: Southeast Asian Futurism Beyond the Map, Perspectives Magazine [online], Anissa Rahadiningtyas y Kat Ditzig (Eds.), Singapur, National Gallery of Singapore, Otoño 2023.