St Catherine with the Spindle

Years ago an eBay shop called Putuco's Alpaca Warehouse used to sell Peruvian colonial religious art - they still do, though not in the exciting variety of those days. I bought two pieces from them, my wooden retablo of St Catherine and an image of St Jude, the patron saint of the church at Goremead which I looked after for a few months, because it didn't actually possess an image of him. I liked the naivety and gaudy joyfulness of the images. They revelled in life.

The other day I found this picture of St Catherine, apparently from 19th-century Spanish California so a bit north of Peru but still originating in the same cultural milieu. Although the blessed Saint is the patron of wool-workers because of the wheel which is her emblem (and therefore also of unmarried women, whose main occupation is of course spinning), I've never seen any reference to this aspect of her work in representations of her, so this picture is unique as far as I know. I'm not sure whether Catherine is being shown as a child here - that would be equally unusual. Hard to tell, isn't it?

I'm not going to buy it as the antique store wants $2500 for it!

UPDATE: It isn't St Catherine at all! It is in fact an icon of the Virgin, 'The Child Mary Spinning', a very unfamiliar image to most of us now, but not so in 17th and 18th century Peru, apparently.