The Santa Casa di Loreto, or Holy House of the Virgin Mary, is a peculiar relic of Catholic devotion. Famed as the miraculous flying house of the Mother of God, the structure invited devotion from Catholic communities as an embodiment of the Virgin’s presence on earth. Across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Santa Casa was an effective missionary tool: replicas were erected in multi-confessional and colonial territories alike, proclaiming the Virgin’s protection to ever-widening audiences. In replication, the relic reveals its performative nature, wherein its iconographic, structural, and material facets transform the new edifice into the Virgin’s home. Each replica is effectively the “Santa Casa di Loreto,” albeit with localized votive additions and tactile wear that progressively distance the replica from its archetype.
This presentation explores the cult of Loreto from the vantage of missionary expansion, with a particular focus on Spanish South America. South American replicas were among the earliest produced in Spanish territories, thus they reveal early priorities in the cult’s history of replication. The Capilla de la Virgen de Loreto in Santa Rosa de Lima, Paraguay, represents the last remnants of an otherwise lost visual tradition. Built in 1698, the humble structure is far removed—literally and figuratively—from its archetype. In a history that began one-hundred years prior in Milan and Genoa, Italy, and then cycled through Arequipa and Lima, Peru, the Paraguayan replica represents a regionally standardized paradigm, revealing early objectives of the cult’s structural replication, and the Church’s educational and conversionary mission.
About the speaker
KNIR Associated Researcher Dr Erin Giffin is a visiting assistant professor at Hamilton College (Clinton, NY, USA), and a member of the Sculpture Journal’s editorial board. Most recently, Dr Giffin held fellowships at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD (2023), and at I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence, Italy (2021-2022). During her appointment as Associated Researcher at KNIR, she will continue her research on religious prints of the Santa Casa di Loreto and their international spread. Her current project on the engraver Giacomo Lauro emerges from her forthcoming monograph: Early Modern Replicas of the Santa Casa di Loreto: Translating Space (Routledge, 2025). Read more
