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A new Christmas stamp featuring the Madonna and Child is set to be released by the US Postal Service October 20.
Every two years the USPS issues a new Christmas stamp showing the Blessed Mother and baby Jesus.
This year the image selected is of an 18th-century Peruvian painting of Our Lady of Guapulo. The painting of a wood carving hangs in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
“Enrobed in a pyramidal gown speckled with jewels and holding a scepter woven with roses and leaves, a crowned Virgin Mary looks down at a similarly adorned Christ Child in her left arm,” the USPS wrote in its description of the stamp.
The word “Christmas” appears in black lettering across the top.
The museum’s description of the painting said the “richly dressed and adorned sculpture depicted in this work originated as a copy of the Spanish Virgin of Guadalupe, commissioned in 1584 by a confraternity of merchants in Quito (Ecuador).”
The image is named for the Church of Our Lady of Guápulo, the first Marian sanctuary in Ecuador. The church has attracted numerous devotees seeking the Blessed Mother’s aid and protection for centuries.
“During last quarter of the 17th century, a painted copy of the sculpture was carried throughout the Andes on a mission to gather alms for the construction of a new sanctuary, resulting in a demand for locally produced copies like this one by a Cuzco painter,” the museum’s description said.
And today we celebrate...