Paintings Retablos & Ex-Votos

Mexico, the nineteenth century, and a sheet of tin suddenly cheap enough for an ordinary household. Retablos are small devotional paintings on that tin, and ex-votos, their close cousins, add a written thanks for a cure or a rescue. Self-taught artists copied European prints and academic paintings, and the Baroque idiom lingered long in rural Mexico: Our Lady of Sorrows, the Holy Trinity, Saint Joseph with the Christ Child, Saint Francis, the Crucifixion, Our Lady Refuge of Sinners. The Virgin, above all as Our Lady of Guadalupe, sits at the center of this faith.

Small, and intimate for it. Tin flashes through worn paint, and old frames add warmth. A tight cluster on a terracotta-toned wall hardly needs help.