# The Monastery of San Pedro (Our Lady of the Snows)

- By: Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900)
- Date: 1879
- Medium: oil on canvas
- Classification: Painting
- Dimensions: Unframed: 118.8 x 183.2 cm (46 3/4 x 72 1/8 in.)
- Culture: America
- Credit line: Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection
- Museum: [Cleveland Museum of Art](https://clevelandart.org/art/1915.684)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1915.684/1915.684_web.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

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.