diff --git a/pkgs/top-level/lgi-find-cairo-through-typelib.patch b/pkgs/top-level/lgi-find-cairo-through-typelib.patch
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..613b2eda0b58
--- /dev/null
+++ b/pkgs/top-level/lgi-find-cairo-through-typelib.patch
@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
+Reorder some code so that the cairo-gobject library is used before this tries to
+dlopen("libcairo.so.2"). Since cairo-gobject depends (RT_DEPEND) on cairo, this
+causes cairo to be used and so the missing search path for the dlopen() call is
+not a problem.
+
+diff --git a/lgi/override/cairo.lua b/lgi/override/cairo.lua
+index ca8193f..019239b 100644
+--- a/lgi/override/cairo.lua
++++ b/lgi/override/cairo.lua
+@@ -20,18 +20,8 @@ local record = require 'lgi.record'
+ local enum = require 'lgi.enum'
+ local ti = ffi.types
+ 
+-cairo._module = core.module('cairo', 2)
+ local module_gobject = core.gi.cairo.resolve
+ 
+--- Versioning support.
+-function cairo.version_encode(major, minor, micro)
+-   return 10000 * major + 100 * minor + micro
+-end
+-cairo.version = core.callable.new {
+-   addr = cairo._module.cairo_version, ret = ti.int } ()
+-cairo.version_string = core.callable.new {
+-   addr = cairo._module.cairo_version_string, ret = ti.utf8 } ()
+-
+ -- Load some constants.
+ cairo._constant = {
+    MIME_TYPE_JP2 = 'image/jp2',
+@@ -58,6 +48,18 @@ for _, name in pairs {
+    end
+ end
+ 
++-- Load libcairo.so directly; this has to happen after the typelib was used
++cairo._module = core.module('cairo', 2)
++
++-- Versioning support.
++function cairo.version_encode(major, minor, micro)
++   return 10000 * major + 100 * minor + micro
++end
++cairo.version = core.callable.new {
++   addr = cairo._module.cairo_version, ret = ti.int } ()
++cairo.version_string = core.callable.new {
++   addr = cairo._module.cairo_version_string, ret = ti.utf8 } ()
++
+ -- Load definitions of all boxed records.
+ cairo._struct = cairo._struct or {}
+ for index, struct in pairs {
diff --git a/pkgs/top-level/lua-packages.nix b/pkgs/top-level/lua-packages.nix
index b91f9dae9f04..d4822b72e248 100644
--- a/pkgs/top-level/lua-packages.nix
+++ b/pkgs/top-level/lua-packages.nix
@@ -671,6 +671,8 @@ let
       sed -i "s|/usr/local|$out|" lgi/Makefile
     '';
 
+    patches = [ ./lgi-find-cairo-through-typelib.patch ];
+
     meta = with stdenv.lib; {
       description = "GObject-introspection based dynamic Lua binding to GObject based libraries";
       homepage    = https://github.com/pavouk/lgi;