[Music] hello friends welcome uh this is our professor tim back with you again to talk to you about how the beatitudes are embodied within a work of art and specifically this week we are on blessed are the meek and uh in matthew 5 5 that's blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth for my own benefit in yours i put a definition of meek up on our powerpoint and basically it's enduring injury without patience and without resentment and not violent or strong gentle as we were constructing this course and i was thinking about
me what is a work of art i associate with meekness um i immediately thought of what's called the ex-voter tradition in 19th century mexico which is this tradition of creating a painting that is a painting of thanks that you would leave at a church or at a certain site in order to thank god for something uh that god did so we're going to talk about the mexico retrial tradition of ex-photos what's curious enough like frida and diego rivera diego rivera frida kahalo collected over 400 of these they were fascinated with these and i found just
recently in the new york times a little blurb actually that someone had written jason fargo wrote in 2019 and i'm quoting i'm going to quote a part of it these little devotional works depict sudden violence illness or distress but also divine intercession one gives thanks to the virgin of tapla for freeing a child from prison another praises the holy trinity for sparing a life of a man crushed by a car each is a little masterpiece of suffering and redemption made with a wretching open-hearted economy these artists knew and kahalo and rivera knew when they collected
them that art has a much higher vocation than mirth or merchandise and i thought wow what a phenomenal summary of these work and just a wonderful entrance for us to talk a little bit about uh the and have some time to talk about the ex voter tradition so let's initially talk about votive and what a votive is votive basically means offering and there's a deep tradition of votive or offerings within south america and north america for that matter uh within the incan tradition and aztec tradition so often these votives or offerings were of thanks there
is offerings of prayers i'd like this to happen but more often they were offerings of thanks at least once the catholics came into play of thank you god for answering this prayer so this dates back way back to gods and uh goddesses uh historically uh in the americas so in mexico in 1524 the first missionary orders arrived in mexico they all ventured off to establish parishes and what's interesting is they all carried sacred objects with them so as you look at this following slide you see they each brought their own version of the virgin with
them so there's the version of guadalupe by the franciscans our lady of the rosary by the dominicans there's our lady of mount carmel the carmelite order and then our lady of mercy which is the mercedes order so totally different uh versions of the virgin well you're dealing with a south america and north america for that matter that is used to multiple gods and so this fits really well and actually the catholics totally play into the tradition the multiple god tradition of the area with saints and it's a real easy play in uh to that community
and so i want to say an easy sell not that we're selling faith but you get the idea so uh in quechua the incan language that's still spoken today there are two terms that embody an ancient concept ancient concepts that are being integrated into the retablo tradition now i'm throwing another term to you retablo so there's the votive tradition and under that there's retablo as kind of another umbrella term i'll i'll unpack that a little bit more for you in just a moment but let's just talk about these terms another thing i just want to
say real quick about the incan culture and mayan culture is they were cyclical in nature they taught in terms of seasons cycles everything's kind of this big connective interweaving thing they don't think linearly like we do in a western thinking so things were interconnected things overlap things like that so two traditions that really play into the ex voter tradition huaca which it basically embodies the andean stress on active interrelations minimally it's the sacred spot or object and why it's special is its duality or transference of energy this will play in well with the catholics because
that's sites of churches that's where waka happens right and then the other one is kameh so this is to create manifest or infuse with energy and body it presumes a relationship between basically a larger originating force and then that's mostly invisible and then uh a receiver in the terrestrial world so that's going to be the votive tradition that's going to be sacred objects things like that that happen within that community all right so some examples for example are uh tepiac or the hill of tepiak in mexico city um this is the traditional site where uh
our um juan saint juan diego was walking he was a native man he sees the virgin she talks to him she's dressed totally a native she's p s speaking in the native language of those people and uh long story short he comes to people they're like no we don't believe you he basically keeps going back and forth finally you know reveals all these roses in a in a blanket or such that she gives him that has her face in it and you know and but what you need to know is that hill was actually the
sacred side of the mother god for the aztecs so it works real well that that happened at the same place so that happens all over so there's san juan de los lagos uh or st john of the lakes as well as some other places that you have images of there what happens then is those sacred places if you go to that sacred place maybe you want to take a little bit of that sacredness home with you right or if something good happens to you you want to go back and thank the saint or the virgin
and what happened at that location so um that's why um then these different sites become important and once again it very much embodied the huaca and kame concepts so let's talk about uh rotablos right so um where tablets basically mean behind the altar originally it referred to decorative paintings that would happen in medieval times but later it uh involves reliquaries that may be put put at the foot of the cross um specifically in the 12th and 13th century now it's a blanket term basically that means devotional images or devotional imagery it could be an image
of christ a saint mary an angel on a wooden plaque or even on a mural in mexico the this is what it's most commonly called but under that term we're going to talk about uh santos malagrosses and then ex voters are kind of main focus of the time so here's an image of a very large altar in mexico too to just give you an idea of what that looks like pretty amazing and beautiful all right so what are santosas so santos's are devotional paintings they're decorative usually at the back of an altar and um specifically
in medieval times and medieval spain and they would be religious they'd be used to educate the indigenous people about the tenets of the faith like these are important people this is john the baptist here's saint peter like these are important folks here's gabriel right the artists who painted these were skilled copyists so what they would use is they would use old prayer books old bibles have them and want to replicate them exactly you'd want to replicate a santos exactly because the holiness is embodied a bit in how it's been rendered historically so i'm going to
want to try to copy that so there's a variety of schools that happen in south america and in america and in mexico that embody these traditions of copying out of missiles prayer books and trying to copy them exactly as they are they're they're a little formulaic we'll talk a little bit in here about folk art because the artist i'm taught the art type of artwork i'm referring to here is folk art which is a good term it's not a bad or term it basically is work uh created by artists that aren't necessarily trained like they
didn't go to art school they didn't train with a master artist and usually there they can have quirks to them like even at the painting i have for you here the roses all look the same like they establish methods of painting and repeat them some of them like i'm certain with the santo says there would be schools that would train you to paint them and copy the images that we see so here's a sacred heart of jesus very familiar image with the madonna there these would typically be painted on tin here's another example of saint
francis of paula uh once again these were super popular in the 19th century so the 1800s so you would go to this church i would go to the church of saint francis apollo and i'd want man i had a great experience there and i really feel like i connected with god so i'm going to want to buy something so there'll be vendors outside selling you these it still happens in europe to this day right you go and it's like i went to the sistine chapel i have to get something here same thing they would get
it take it home to remember that sacred time here's a holy family image and then what would happen is you would take that image and take it to your home altar at home as your place kind of your central place where you worship and pray so similar to you have that image you got from the sistine chapel ceiling of the two fingers almost touching you put that up on your wall they would have their little nook in their home that they'd put these and pray in and remember and remember that sacred time i went to
that place so another thing i want to talk about briefly is milagros just touch base they're they're silver if you're really like have money but typically their tin their their legs their arms there's people praying their eyes they're all kinds of things but basically they were a thank you too that you would buy at the church as a thank you god for healing my eyes i had something wrong and you healed that or it also could be an object that you'd use as a prayer as well to pray for your hurt leg or such and
once again these could be left uh at the church but also it could be something that you take with you to remember or to pray and now we're gonna move on to what i want us to really focus on here which is the ex-votive uh tradition uh within a retablo or the retabo tradition the ex-voters and what they are so once again we're talking 19th century it's uh the term is from the latin it means an offering to god to christ to a virgin or saint and thanks for a promise granted it's a way what
was clear in everything i read it was a way of publicly thanking god like i want people to know it's like i'm gonna i have a witness i have a testimony i want to stand up and share how god did something in my life so that's uh what these would be um here is an image just at a museum of the basilica of guadalupe showing you kind of what they look like these would be left in the church you would bring it uh this painting you would bring it you'd leave it in the church as
a thank you and leave what's curious like how frida kahlo and diego rivera got 400 of these is they would be cleared out and some of them would be thrown away but also they would often be resold by vendors because they're curious and interesting and and odd artists would pick them up and such so uh i want to walk you through some of these so here's one in particular and uh what happens at the bottom it tells you the story and what happens it's in spanish and so i'm going to read it to you in
english so a knight this one is from 1934. i give thanks to you virgin of guadalupe for shielding me from my death when i was stabbed by my good friend who was in a rage because he had heard a rumor that i was flirting with his wife which was not true all right so he survived and he's thanking the virgin of guadalupe for protecting him so here's an image of that if we look closely at the image x photos function with regions and so i want to talk about three basic regions usually there's a sacred
site so it's this otherworldly area where saints appearing often the saints big out of proportion it's coming in the sky or such there's the earth or worldly space so where the narrative is happening within the image and then there's the written description once again there are certain um methods in creating these a lot of these were anonymous but we do have certain artists that have uh that are known for painting these there's one artist particularly that painted they think up to 300 of these and stuff and typically these were on sheet metal or tin is
how they were constructed so here's another one uh maria p offers this to our lady of solitude because felipe felipe g asked for my hand in marriage because my father wanted me to marry be married off to don p the shopkeeper i prayed so hard for this because felipe and i love each other and now we're happy celia uh and uh they're in may of 1929 so notice how big the saint is also she's holding a candle which is a very typical thing that would happen within these votive images is this devotional candle often in
crazy ways like someone will be holding a devotional candle and there's a flood or they're up in a tree and they're holding the devotional candle like thanking god which is kind of interesting and here is our lady of lourdes you can see how large the the virgin is compared to the scene and the child on this uh on the sick bed and the mother praying thanking for the healing so once again when you see these know that usually the prayer has been answered because it was left as a thank you this this person um uh
this person was healed so i'm gonna write a thank you uh to the to the saint um or go to the church and thank you so much for letting this happen so here's another one um uh called uh uh lord of mercy of the incarnation for you to look at there and even there's there's little people in purgatory praying at the foot of the cross as well in that one which is a little curious and once again very um the idea was the i want to put it the spirit of this right the thankfulness of
it it wasn't about rendering things perfectly this isn't a renaissance painting right it isn't about creating a phenomenal amazing composition it's it's the heart it's the intent and that's what's most important also some of these uh just even have a person with a saint as well um another one uh similarly little people in purgatory there at the bottom and the people have their little sheep or pigs with them i think they're pigs so these cover people being sick praying right but then also there's traumatic things that happen like here clearly there's a robbery and there's
christ in a sacred vessel kind of up at the top while people are experiencing a robbery or in this one you have a young lady falling from a swing um that must have survived that's being protected by the saint that's up in the sky in this one um i want to uh show you some of that are my favorites so uh this one with this gentleman in jail with this cow out front to the holy infinite of uh to uh to to the holy infant of atocha my immense gratitude because my at last the cow
showed up and i could get out of jail to prove innes my innocence and honor before the whole town and to thank my wife and son who believed in me always and supported me to the last because i am mexican and honorable i just love that so clearly he must have been accused of stealing a cow and he's like i didn't steal this cow and i love how the cow's like showing up like hello to the jail so kind of curious there um in this image uh it shows you a bunch of kind of contemporary
votives in a church so different than the earlier image i showed you of the x photos in that museum nowadays once we hit the 1930s we got printing uh people could print devotional cards also people started bringing photos so if i was healed from a sickness maybe i'm going to bring a photo of me well and put that in the church maybe i was lame but i got healed so i'm going to bring my crutches and i'm going to leave them there so the ex photo tradition very and the santos tradition actually very much waned
and because you could go to a church and if you were like that church maybe they're going to give you little lithographs or little paintings of or prince of the church right like it doesn't have to be a painting anymore um but ex-voters specifically the prayer photos continued and continue into the 21st century which is curious very rarely but part of it it's personal right so i can put it there so i want to show you three more as we close here that i just think are really quite sweet so senor antonio v offers this
retablo to the version of guadalupe for curing his heart problem so that now he can continue to work as a clown and entertain the children coco verde the clown 1950 mexico um so i just love the sacred and profane are put together right if you work a job as a clown you're going to render yourself as a clown and this kind of lovely whimsy that happens within these work um often within these images too there's just a foreground things in the foreground middle ground and usually not a background or there's foreground and background it's so
this one is basically just a foreground and middle ground and such or this one i give thanks to the verge of guadalupe that my good friend forgave us after he found me in bed with his wife i begged forgiveness because i couldn't help it pancho c mexico 1970 so everything is at play with these right and uh and left at the altar of god to thank uh christ to thank the virgin for their help and uh and such so here's a little different than that earlier story this this gentleman did anyway yeah we won't go
there okay so in the last one which is super moving and this was done in 2001 which i think is pretty uh striking maria 15 years old on the morning of january 6 2001 i abandoned my newborn baby in a trash can oh golly okay i do this in class too so might as well do it on video okay i abandoned my newborn baby in a trash can for fear my parents would throw me out when i got to the corner my heart made me repent i started running praying that the guardian angel praying to
the guardian angel and i was able to get there in time before he was eaten by dogs i beg forgiveness for you and a blessing in to face life together the two of us and may grant all mothers love in their hearts so that they never abandon their children out of poverty or ignorance because a child is a blessing of from god neighborhood painter mexico df so you know um here's where the rubric meets the road in terms of why art i think is an important thing right because this woman sharing with me her story
even her prayer um uh the just the blessed gift life is and the care uh that we need to take care of one another so uh thank you for walking with me uh on this journey and uh uh as i feel a bit of empathy and i hope you did too for these people's stories and um and the mercy they're asking for and the um the meekness that they're willing to possess the humility right and sharing their story i mean that's part of it is um they're being vulnerable they're taking a risk and that meekness
that humility um is a quality i really admire in them and i really respect this mother uh yeah thank you
