The word retablo comes from the Latin retro tabula, behind the altar. In connection with Mexican popular art, it refers to small paintings on tin, wood or canvas, which are found on walls behind altars to saints or other sacred figures. Some are portraits of individual saints, others serve as testaments to the efficacy of a saint who has been asked to intervene to save a marriage, cure a child, find a lover, or improved crop of business. Although found all over Latin America since the early part of the colonial period, retablo painting, mostly on tin, reached its height in Mexico during the middle of the nineteenth century. Many retablos were painted by itinerant artists who traveled from town to town filling individual orders. Others were done by artists who set up stalls in front of important shrines on feast days […]. Most retablo painting has been supplanted by inexpensive prints and photographs, but subject matter often remains basically the same.

The retablo[] seen here [is an] ex-voto[] and served as grateful acknowledgement of the successful intervention by the Virgin of Guadalupe during times of personal crisis. The 1944 painting was offered by María Refugio Garza as thanks for the safe return of her son who had gone to the United States to work as a bracero, field hand.

Marion Oettinger, Jr., "Retablo Honoring the Virgin of Guadalupe," The Folk Art of Latin America: Visiones Del Pueblo (New York: Dutton Studio Books in association with the Museum of American Folk Art, 1992), 46.

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information.　

To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.org