The Pedro de Osma Museum features mostly colonial art in the Barranco district of Lima, Peru. It is one of Peru’s best museums. In fact, it used to be in the top five museums in our Lima Travel Guide, but was bumped to make place for the Real Felipe Fortress, which we later decided to qualify as a “museum.”

The museum is dedicated to showcasing colonial art, the majority of which is religious in nature. The largest building houses exclusively religious paintings and sculptures.

Much of the Peruvian art from the colonial era came from the Cusco School, a generation of mestizo sons located in the former Inca capital who painted scenes from the Bible. These images played a key role in the Catholic Church’s conversion of the Americas’ natives, the vast majority of whom could not read.

Saint James descended to Earth in the mythical Battle of Clavijo to expel the Moors from Spain.

The museum is housed in a century-old mansion which is a museum in its own right. The space is absolutely marvelous, a series of brilliant, white casonas and lush, elegant gardens.

The second gallery showcases colonial silverwork. Soon after the conquest of the Incas, the Spanish discovered the world’s largest silver deposit in Potosi of present-day Bolivia. All the silver has been extracted, but it remains the largest deposit ever discovered to this day. All those exports passed through Lima before being shipped to Spain.

Silver from Potosi as well as Peru’s gold, copper and other mineral wealth converted Lima into an opulent enclave of the Americas. One of the city’s nicknames, which must have been considered a bad joke during the mostly troubled times of the 20^th century, is “The Pearl of the Pacific.”

The Eucharist Pelican is a symbol of a mother’s sacrifice. The pelican pecks her own blood during famine to feed her young.

Since the last time I visited, the museum has acquired enough pre-Columbian work to have a small gallery dedicated mostly to the Incas.

Inca emperors Huayna Capac (left) and Tupac Amaru.

The second house in the back houses galleries 9 and 10, dedicated to colonial furniture and portraits of the historic Osma family which has curated this art. I like all the galleries, but for me this is the icing on the cake. I love the colonial-era furniture. It’s so unapologetically gaudy. As the saying goes, “they don’t make ’em like they used to!”

How would you like to have that bureau in your house?

And what about that table!

In closing, the MALI Art Museum is the most important art museum in Peru, with authoritative collections spanning the pre-Columbian, colonial, republican and modern eras. But Pedro de Osma rivals MALI’s colonial collection, and I have to say their colonial furniture and silverwork surpass the venerable MALI.

Location and info

Museo Pedro de Osma
Av. Pedro de Osma 421, Barranco
Hours: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., closed Mondays
Admission: 30 soles ($9)
Pedro de Osma Museum on Facebook

The Pedro de Osma Museum is located in Barranco about five blocks south of the Parque Municipal. Art lovers can knock out two museums in one swoop by hitting the quick and easy MATE Museum of celebrity photography, located less than a block away. The Estadio Union Metropolitano station is just three blocks east of the museum.