Ex-voto with obraje

1735-1745

López, Carlos (attributed)

Mexico City, MEX, Museo Soumaya (current location)

This Mexican painting of an obraje, a workshop producing textiles, places the well-dressed owner or overseer at the center of the image. Three workers, in more humble clothing, spin thread, manage the complex of weights and pulleys at the loom and weave the cloth. The painting is not merely a vignette of daily labor; few paintings made in Spanish America existed to document only the quotidian. The scene is an ex-voto, made to commemorate a miraculous intercession.

Indications that this small painting served as an ex-voto are found in the presence of the Holy Spirit, symbolized by a dove at the top, and the floating image of Saint Michael, an archangel, who appears dressed in military clothing. The legend reads: “Cuis ut deus” (also spelled Quis et deus), Latin for “who is like God.” This phrase was often written on Saint Michael’s shield, and was the battle cry of the angels led by Saint Michael in their charge against Satan. The phrase “A debosion del Maestro Don Miguel Prieto” (“For the devotion of the master, Don Miguel Prieto”), suggests that Prieto commissioned the work. Other details about him are not known. The scene below reveals how large looms worked. The foot pedals, called treadles, allowed the weaver to manipulate combinations of the warp threads, creating a pattern in the fabric. The result here is an elaborate checkerboard design. The finished woven fabric was rolled onto a cloth beam.

The patron of this work, named as don Miguel Prieto in the inscription, has not surfaced in other historical records of the period. The Carlos López who signed this work at the bottom, center of the scene may be Carlos Clemente López (ca. 1725-c. 1790), who was the father of an even more famous painter in New Spain (Andrés López).

The image, an oil painting on canvas, represents two kinds of labor familiar in 18th-century New Spain: the production of textiles and the production of painting. In this descriptive scene, the artist distinguishes those who toil from those who profit. It measures 84 x 59 cm.

Works like this one would often be hung beside an altar in a parish church as an act of thanksgiving. Others might grace a home altar. But they were always intended, and initially always seen, in a religious environment. Today they are also valued as works of art, and this one is in the collection of the Museo Soumaya, a private Mexico City museum.

Ex-votos attest to the breadth of the art market. While some of the best known painters of the day created ex-votos for wealthy patrons, most are unsigned—created by provincial painters, or painters lacking formal training, for humble patrons. Such a wide and varied range, suggests that the ex-voto genre offered painters a way to both participate in the religious devotion of their time and earn a wage.

Reproduced courtesy of the Museo Soumaya, photo: Javier Hinojosa

Dana Leibsohn and Barbara E. Mundy.
Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520-1820. http://www.fordham.edu/vistas, 2015.

Curiel, Gustavo, et al. 2002. Pintura y vida cotidiana en México: siglos XVII-XX. Seville: Fundación Cultural Banamex, Fundació Caixa de Girona, Fundación el Monte.

Luque, Elín. 2007. El arte de dar gracias: Los exvotos pictóricos de la Virgen de la Soledad de Oaxaca. Mexico City Universidad Iberoamericana.