Our Lady of Valvanera, oil on copper. Spain, 17th century. Height: 20 cm - Width: 14.4 cm. Govaert certificate, 1986.

Our Lady of Valvanera, oil on copper. Spain, 17th century. Height: 20 cm - Width: 14.4 cm. Govaert certificate, 1986.
The Virgin of Valvanera is a Marian devotion from the Sierra de la Demanda, in La Rioja (Spain), a community of which she is the patron saint and one of the patron saints of the autonomous communities of Spain. The current image is a carving considered to be early Romanesque, from the end of the 11th century AD or beginning of the 12th century AD.

The Catholic Church commemorates the feast of the devotion on September 8.

The appearance of the image is recounted in the Historia Latina, written in 1419 by Rodrigo de Castroviejo (Abbot of Valvanera), as a translation of a Latin text from the 12th century AD, probably written by Gonzalo de Berceo. It tells how the thief Nuño Oñez, hearing the prayer of his intended victim, repented of his crimes, entrusting himself to the Virgin Mary to help him change his life. One day, during his prayers, an angel appeared to him, telling him to go to Valvanera in search of an oak tree that stood out from the others, from whose foot a fountain sprang forth and which contained several swarms of bees, where he would find an image of the Virgin Mary. He went to that place with the cleric Domingo and found the image. In that place they would begin to build a place of worship to the Virgin, in the last third of the 9th century AD.

This discovery gave rise to the Monastery of Valvanera, where this image is currently venerated, guarded by Benedictine monks.

The canonical coronation of the image took place at the Espolón in Logroño on October 15, 1954.