Retablos: The Art of Faith
The Mexican Folk Retablos
The worship of a household god or image representing supernatural powers is as old as man himself. Logically, then the replacement of the New World’s native gods with Christian religious personages was an obvious step in the conversion of the Indians. Catholicism supplanted an already deeply ingrained image-worshiping tradition with a new set of holy persons, often strikingly similar to the old gods. The desire to possess an image to ensure health, fertility, and abundance of crops often led to a simple transfer of beliefs from a pagan image to one of the Catholic hierarchy of saints.
Immediately after the conquest, then, the new religion created a demand for paintings, statues, or prints depicting the numerous saints. For almost three hundred years this need was rather inadequately filled for the humble people by small paintings on wood and canvas. Since most of these have not survived the ravages of time, it is difficult to determine just how prevalent these household images were. In the 1800’s, however, a highly durable and inexpensive material became available, and thousands of small religious paintings on tin have endured to give us touching insight into village life of nineteenth century Mexico.
Retablos: The Art of Faith
While exceptions do exist, the percentage of retablos signed by anyone who can be traced or chronicled is infinitesimally small, and the folk artists had little opportunity for study under academic painters and almost no exposure to the stylish mode of painting. In comparison with the work of trained artists from the cities, the paintings of these folk artists may seem crude, but their ingenuity in accomplishing desired effects, their freshness, and spontaneity they achieved are worthy of consideration.
Retablos are small oil paintings, usually on tin, most often done by primitive, untrained artists from the provinces. They were specially commissioned by individuals or purchased from artist/peddlers, who offered them door to door or sold them in stand set up around church during holidays and feast days. Devout Mexicans placed them on their home altars, where they were appealed to for everything and could be depended upon to remedy both specific and general situations- ailments of every conceivable sort, social problems, and meteorological phenomena.
Although the beginning of the production of the tin retablo is difficult to date, it is thought to have begun sometime in the early nineteenth century and can be seen to disappear at the beginning of the twentieth.
A clear-cut stylistic distinctness, leaning heavily toward the baroque, accompanies a subject matter which modifies and mirrors both Christian and pagan beliefs, making the retablo a genuine manifestation of Mexican folk art. Icons and small religious paintings have existed from the earliest years of Christianity, but this type, painted for and mostly by the common people in a limited time and area in Mexico, has a quality all its own. These tin paintings reflect the intense, sincere beliefs of the people and radiate the naive charm of the primitive.
Ex-Voto a San Francisco y a Jesus Nazareno
28 de Mayo, 1822
Ex-votos, because of their importance for comparison with retablos deserve a consideration as well. Dramatic and charming, these little story paintings reveal much about the Mexican people and their art.
An ex-voto is a votive painting hung on a church wall or placed near a particular image to commemorate the recovery of the donor from some grave danger. Each is a receipted bill for spiritual or physical boons received. Truly anecdotal, the painting illustrates a written text that relates the circumstances of the cure or rescue. The written commentary is often so full of regional dialect and phonetic spelling that it is impossible to translate it and still maintain the flavor.
The ex-voto tradition-the placing of some object indicative of a healing or blessing- probably dates back to the Greeks. The custom followed the Spanish to the New World, and pictorial stories of divine aid, constituting a public offering of thanks to the holy person invoked, were placed in Mexican churches as soon as they were built.
During the colonial epoch and until the end of the eighteenth century the offering of votive pictures was almost confined to the wealthy. After the achievement of independence from Spain, the common man adopted the ex-voto painting for his own. It became very popular with the illiterate classes and it was later abandoned by the wealthy.
This kind of popular Mexican art, faith and sincerity are immediately expressed. The event is reduced to its most simple dramatic elements, and the entire story surrounding the circumstances has admirable directness. The characters portrayed reflect the calm serenity of faith in the reality of the marvelous which results in a description without falseness or overemphasis because there is never a feeling that this was an extraordinary event. No one is trying to sell anything that makes the pictures totally convincing.
There are ex-votos of many different topics depending on the people’s life experiences, some are:
a. Harvest-Agriculture
b. Illnesses and Cures
c. Dangers on the way
d. Natural Disasters
e. Personal Problems
f. Wars and Jails
"From place to place and period to period, significantly, occupations, situations, official clothing, progress in caravan against a changeless endless background, vibrant of human trouble and of racial agonies throughout. Plagues, droughts, conflicts, are dated and described. The very common concurrent is charted, in kind and quality. In the quiet of miracles some years, the violence other; in the faith that makes them numberless, [the ex-voto]… is a moving record of a nation, a stethoscopic measure of its heart."
Anita Brenner
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