ORIGINS

The sanctuary of Las Nieves is located on the slopes of the mountain and on the crest of the interfluve of the Río and La Madera ravines, a place that, according to studies, was considered sacred for the ancient inhabitants of the island. Proof of this are the bowls and gutters found on what is known as ‘Morro de las Nieves’, which was possibly the place for offerings and rituals in astral cults and to implore help for rain. For this reason, the missionaries and conquistadors implemented a method of evangelization: converting and Christianizing an ancient place of worship and thus replacing the old beliefs. In this way, the natives went to the places and precincts that were familiar to them, but as newly baptized. The primitive hermitage was built in this place, where the image of the Virgin was placed, a late Gothic work, modelled in polychrome terracotta, attributed to the sculptor Lorenzo Mercadante de Bretaña, who was active in the city of Seville – the platform for the evangelisation and incorporation of the Canary Islands Archipelago into Castile – between 1454 and 1468, and who was able to create the image of the Patron Saint of the Palm Tree between 1460 and 1468.
In keeping with the gentle and maternal Marian representations of Gothic art, the figure of the Virgin shows the Child Jesus on her right arm, pointing with her index finger to a passage in the Holy Book, while with her other hand she engages in a caressing dialogue with the fingers of her mother’s left hand on her mother’s breast. Their small size is typical of evangelizing and missionary images, easy to transport so that they could be enthroned in the first temples to be erected in the newly conquered territories.