El Divino Rostro 1952 Mexican Ex Voto Retablo Spider Bite 11.5 in For Sale
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El Divino Rostro 1952 Mexican Ex Voto Retablo Spider Bite 11.5 in:
$235.00
Free worldwide shipping, and I prepay the duties. You pay the listed price and nothing else. No customs bill at your door, no broker fee, no surprise at delivery. Tariff code 9701.91 — original hand-painted artwork under 100 years old.
A hand-painted ex-voto retablo on tin, dated to the day — February 17, 1952 — and given by a mother in Zapopan after her newborn son survived a spider bite. The Divine Face of Christ dominates the center of the panel: a bearded head with wide dark eyes under a green laurel-and-thorn crown, with thin red rivulets running down the face and out across the ochre ground in every direction. To the right, the mother kneels in a pale grey robe, a lit taper raised in one hand and the swaddled infant held against her chest, beneath a swag of rose-colored drapery. The left third of the panel is given over entirely to her own account, painted in dark brown lettering that runs the full width of the piece by the final lines. These retablos come to me through a single path: an anonymous painter working in a rural district of Jalisco, who never signed his work and has long since died; the devotee who commissioned the panel; that family's local church, where it hung as an offering; a custodian who kept the accumulated ex-votos there for many years; and from him, my dealer. I know every step of that path and I have no doubt the piece is what it is, but the individual links are undocumented and I won't dress them up as a chain of title. Any dealer who hands you a fully documented provenance for an ex-voto invented it.
Condition. The painted face reads clearly throughout and the full inscription is legible end to end. The ground has warmed to a deep ochre with age, and fine rust freckling is scattered across the whole surface, densest through the lower right quadrant. Both upper corners carry torn nail holes with lifted tin and paint loss around them, the right one taking a small bite out of the rose drapery. Soft creases run across the panel, and the edges show nicks and handling wear. The verso is bare tin under heavy oxidation, with a broad rust field, deep pitting and lifted metal along the right edge. No restoration, no overpaint, no cleaning. Sold as found.
The inscription. As painted, with the original spelling preserved: Teodora lepe Ramirez. mi Hijo recien nacido lo Pica Una araña i mucha, Fiebre, Vomito Dolor, roque postiada, el Divino: Rostro muy Desesperada con mucha Fe ToDa la Familia Pedimas i el sano se curo Feliz estoi mi Hijo pedrito volvio a ser la alegria de la casa Zapopan, Jal. 1952 Febrero 17: Testimonio De gratitud..
Corrected Spanish: Teodora Lepe Ramírez. A mi hijo recién nacido lo pica una araña, y mucha fiebre, vómito, dolor. Rogué postrada al Divino Rostro, muy desesperada, con mucha fe. Toda la familia pedimos, y él sanó, se curó. Feliz estoy: mi hijo Pedrito volvió a ser la alegría de la casa. Zapopan, Jal., 17 de febrero de 1952. Testimonio de gratitud.
English: Teodora Lepe Ramírez. A spider bit my newborn son, and there was high fever, vomiting, pain. I begged on my knees before the Divine Face, in great desperation, with great faith. The whole family prayed, and he recovered, he was cured. I am happy: my son Pedrito is once again the joy of the house. Zapopan, Jalisco, February 17, 1952. A testimony of gratitude.
A note on the spelling. The irregularities are the painter's, not errors in transcription, and they are part of what makes the panel real. Accents are absent throughout — recien, Vomito, alegria, sano. The letter i stands in for y, and estoi is written for estoy. The word rogué appears as roque, with a q for the g. Postrada loses its r and is broken across two lines as posti and ada. Pedimos is written Pedimas, the o closed into an a, which is a habit of this painter's hand and shows up across his other panels. The devotional name is split by the line break and a colon, as el Divino: Rostro. Capitals fall wherever the painter felt emphasis — Pica, Una, Fiebre, Dolor, Fe, ToDa with a capital D inside the word — while he set his petitioner's own surname and her son's name, lepe and pedrito, in lowercase.
Measurements. 11.5 inches wide by 7.5 inches tall (29.2 by 19.1 cm). Tin panel, unframed.
A note on the photographs. Every image is of the exact panel you will receive, shot in natural daylight with no filters and no color correction. Both the painted face and the bare tin verso are shown, along with close details of the inscription, the Divine Face and the kneeling mother with her child. Some photographs place the panel in a room setting so you can judge scale and see how it reads on a wall or a shelf. Those backgrounds are for context only. Nothing in them is included in the sale.
Grade and value. Graded B. Attribution and narrative both sit well above the average of my realized sales: a petitioner named in full, an exact calendar date rather than just a year, a named city, a named child, and a miracle I have not seen recorded on another panel — an infant surviving a spider bite. The Divine Face is a strong devotional subject and it is painted large and unflinching here, with the inscription running the full width of the piece. What pulls the grade down is scale and condition. At 7.5 inches tall this is a small panel, and the rust freckling and the two torn corners are honest damage that I am not going to talk around. The B band runs $210 to $240, and those are realized sales, not asking prices. This panel is priced inside that band. Gallery replacement value through a Santa Fe, San Miguel de Allende or Mexico City dealer is approximately $700, which is a separate question from the grade band and is the figure for insurance or estate purposes.
Item specifics. Hand-painted ex-voto retablo, oil on tin. Devotion: El Divino Rostro. Painted February 17, 1952. Petitioner: Teodora Lepe Ramírez. Child: Pedrito. Place: Zapopan, Jalisco, Mexico. Miracle: an infant survived a spider bite with fever, vomiting and pain. Size: 11.5 by 7.5 inches. Unsigned by the painter. Unframed. Condition: used, original untouched surface. Tariff code 9701.91.
Shipping and duties. Free worldwide shipping by DHL Express with tracking, and I prepay all import duties and VAT. You will not be asked for anything at delivery. The panel is packed flat and corner-protected by Diseños de Cartón in Colonia Americana, Guadalajara, who build a rigid custom box for every piece. Open the box along the seams rather than cutting into it. If you need the piece delivered to an address different from the one on your account, message me first, as freight to a different destination may cost more and the difference would be yours to cover.
Questions. Ask me anything about the inscription, the condition, the devotion or the region. You will never get an automated or AI-written reply from this shop. Every message is answered by me personally, and usually within a few hours.
Thank you for looking.
God bless,
Ricardo Ivan Cardenas EMBA, St. Joseph's University New York Business School Graduate
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