Cotopaxi is an 1862 oil painting by the Hudson River School artist Frederic Edwin Church. The work was commissioned by well-known philanthropist James Lenox. The painting was met with great acclaim, and seen as a parable of the Civil War, then raging in the South, with its casting of light against darkness. The painting depicts Cotopaxi, a volcano that is also the second highest peak in modern-day Ecuador, spewing smoke and ash across a sunrise. Church also painted another landscape by the same name that also features the volcano in the distance.