Mexican statues and paintings of figures like the Virgin of
Guadalupe and the Lord of Chalma are endowed with sacred presence
and the power to perform miracles. Millions of devotees visit these
miraculous images to request miracles for health, employment,
children, and countless everyday matters. When requests are
granted, devotees reciprocate with votive offerings. Collages,
photographs, documents, texts, milagritos, hair and braids,
clothing, retablos, and other representative objects cover walls at
many shrines. Miraculous Images and Votive Offerings in Mexico
studies such petitionary devotion-primarily through extensive
fieldwork at several shrines in Guanajuato, Jalisco, Queretaro, San
Luis Potosi, and Zacatecas. Graziano is interested in retablos not
only as extraordinary works of folk art but: as Mexican expressions
of popular Catholicism comprising a complex of beliefs, rituals,
and material culture; as archives of social history; and as indices
of a belief system that includes miraculous intercession in
everyday life. Previous studies focus almost exclusively on
commissioned votive paintings, but Graziano also considers the
creative ex votos made by the votants themselves. Among the many
miraculous images treated in the book are the Cristo Negro de
Otatitlan, Nino del Cacahuatito, Senor de Chalma, and the Virgen de
Guadalupe. The book is written in two voices, one analytical to
provide an understanding of miracles, miraculous images, and votive
offerings, and the other narrative to bring the reader closer to
lived experiences at the shrines. This book appears at a moment of
transition, when retablos are disappearing from church walls and
beginning to appear in museum exhibitions; when the artistic value
of retablos is gaining prominence; when the commercial value of
retablos is increasing, particularly among private collectors
outside of Mexico; and when traditional retablo painters are being
replaced by painters with a more commercial and less religious
approach to their trade. Graziano's book thus both records a
disappearing tradition and charts the way in which it is being
transformed.
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