Beautiful antique Mexican 18th - 19th C. retablo, depicting St. Domingo de Guzman, oil on wood.

Beautiful antique Mexican 18th - 19th C. retablo, depicting St. Domingo de Guzman, oil on wood.

Wooden frame elaborately carved and painted gold leaf.

Mexico. 18th - 19th century.

Size 26 x 25 x 4 cm

Retablos, better known as “laminas” in Mexico, are devotional oil paintings created on small rectangles of tin, wood, or copper. They were typically created for home altars to venerate beloved Catholic saints (“retablo”, or “retro tabula” meaning “behind the altar”). This art form had deep European Catholic roots – where retablos were sometimes grand and elegant altar pieces – and was brought to Mexico during the era of Spanish conquest, being later adapted into a folk art style by indigenous peoples. Trade routes soon brought them to Peru also, where retablos have flourished for centuries.

Saint Dominic, (8 August 1170 – 6 August 1221), also known as Dominic de Guzmán was a Castilian Catholic priest and the founder of the Dominican Order. He is the patron saint of astronomer’s and natural scientists, and he and his order are traditionally credited with spreading and popularizing the rosary. He is alternatively called Dominic of Osma, Dominic of Caleruega, and Domingo Félix de Guzmán.