LONDON.- A rare religious painting from Peru’s Cuzco School, held by the same family for more than two centuries, will appear on the market for the first time this month at Sloane Street Auctions.

Dating to around 1700, The Black Madonna and Child is expected to sell for £20,000 to £50,000 when it is offered on July 10. The oil on canvas, measuring 32 by 22 inches unframed, has been in the possession of the Messina/Grisewood family since the 18th century.

The work’s history is as compelling as its imagery. The Messina family, Sicilian nobles associated with the Palazzo Messina in Palermo, is believed to trace its lineage back to those involved in the Norman conquest of Sicily nearly 1,000 years ago. The family later went into exile in Malta after Count Giovanni Messina was executed in Catanzaro in 1800 during the political upheavals that followed the revolutions in Naples and the rise of Bonaparte in Italy.

The painting then passed through the family by descent. It belonged to Count Rosario Messina, a wealthy merchant in Malta, and later to his daughter Concetta Messina, who married Harman Grisewood in 1875. Their grandson, also named Harman Grisewood, would become an important BBC figure and founder of The Third Programme. Before his broadcasting career, he worked as an actor alongside Peggy Ashcroft, John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson.

For Daniel Hunt, owner of Sloane Street Auctions, the painting stands out both for its rarity and for the cultural world it represents.

“This extraordinarily rare representation of the Black Madonna and Child, dating from around 1700, fuses the cultural iconography of the European Catholic Church with pre-Hispanic Andean culture,” Hunt said. He added that the painting shows Peruvian artists merging European religious imagery with Andean aesthetics, creating a work that reflects both colonial-era devotion and local visual identity.





That fusion is characteristic of the Cuzco School, one of the most important artistic traditions to emerge in colonial South America. Works from this school often adapted Catholic subjects through local materials, colors, symbols and sensibilities, producing images that were both devotional and deeply rooted in the Andean world.

The painting’s unbroken provenance gives it additional significance. According to Hunt, the fact that it has remained in the same family for around 250 years or more means it has never before been publicly offered for sale.

With its mixture of religious iconography, Andean cultural resonance and aristocratic European provenance, The Black Madonna and Child is likely to draw interest from collectors of Old Master paintings, Latin American colonial art and historical devotional works.

Live online bidding will be available through Sloane Street Auctions.