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Corazón Sagrado de Jesús
Retablos were the by-product of a late 18th century technological innovation. A hundred years later a different new technology spelled their demise. Retablos are small paintings with religious themes found on the walls and private altars in homes mostly in Mexico, but also throughout Central and South America and in southwest United States. The Spanish word retablo was derived from the Latin retro tabula, “behind the altar.” It was originally used to designate paintings and sculptures of patron saints and other images of devotion displayed behind the main altar. Art historians have divided them into two categories. Retablo santo refers to depictions of Jesus, Mary, and various saints. Retablo ex-voto refers to dramatic depictions of thanks, pleas or for good health, prosperity, or protection against life’s ills. Retablos are also known as laminas or imagines pintadas. In practice, all these terms are interchangeable, depending on the time, place, and purpose these small paintings were purchased and displayed. The tradition of small devotional paintings was transported to the New World by the Spanish settlers. Rendered on wood, copper, and canvas, these paintings were too expensive for all but the wealthy. This changed in the 1770s when metallurgists perfected the process of applying a thin coat of tin to a leaf of industrial iron. Developed for other purposes, these sheets, provided artists with an inexpensive and readily available painting surface. Paint adhered well to tin, which was as durable as copper and much lighter. With rare exceptions, retablos are unsigned. The anonymous artists who created them usually had no academic training and initially copied formal European and Colonial paintings. Over time a distinctive naïve style emerged that included floating images, scenes of domestic travail, apparitions, and explanatory text. Because the tin sheets used for retablos were sectioned from larger standard sheets, they fall into a half dozen common sizes, the most popular of which were 25.4 x 17.7 and 35.5 x 25.4 cm. In 1837 the French publisher Godefroy Engelmann patented the process for commercial chromolithographic (multi-color) printing. It arrived in the New World in the 1840s, and by the end of the 19th century inexpensive color prints of holy images were readily available. Retablo painters could not compete and were driven out of business. Of 20th century artists, Frida Kahlo was particularly
influenced by retablos, evidenced by her many paintings on small metal
sheets, primitive style, and use of explanatory text. Her collection
of retablos is still on display in the house she shared with Diego Rivera
in Coyoacán. In a private collection, this Corazón
Sagrado de Jesús is a spectacular example of 19th century
retablo art. |
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