Latin America Has a Rich Tradition of Religious Pendants

Martha J. Egan has spent many years rummaging round markets and vintage shops throughout Latin America searching for the uncommon, rigorously crafted devotional pendants referred to as relicarios.

Her hunt has led her to amass greater than 400 of the objects — pronounced reh-lee-CAR-yos; in English, reliquaries — and to write down two books about what she has come to view as an neglected style throughout the physique of non secular artwork created in the course of the Spanish colonization of the New World.

After all, “there was not a lot artwork within the colonial period that was not non secular,” mentioned Ms. Egan, 78, who has a bachelor’s diploma in Latin American historical past.

Usually, the items (generally referred to as medallones or miniaturas) had been pendants with painted, carved or printed depictions of favourite saints or the Virgin Mary on either side, set in steel bezels underneath glass. Made for individuals in a variety of social and financial lessons, some relicarios had been plain whereas others had been elaborately embellished; their creators had been normally nameless.

Maybe as a result of the items had been worn as private expressions of devotion, they largely have gone unnoticed, Ms. Egan mentioned.

“Artwork historians have completely blown them off,” she mentioned throughout an interview at Casa Perea Artwork House, a Nineteenth-century adobe occasion venue that she owns in Corrales, N.M., a village simply outdoors Albuquerque. The constructing additionally homes her folk-art retailer, Pachamama, which opened 50 years in the past and sells handmade gadgets from Latin America, primarily Mexico, Peru and Bolivia.

Small however Necessary

The phrase relicario historically has been used for any receptacle for relics reminiscent of splinters mentioned to be from Jesus’s cross or fragments of bone or bits of material mentioned to have ties to saints or different non secular figures. Such devotional items, together with lockets, had been fashionable in elements of medieval Europe.

Through the Spanish colonial interval — which started on the finish of the fifteenth century and lasted for greater than 300 years — giant portions of relics had been shipped to the Americas. However, Ms. Egan mentioned, most had been reserved for the Roman Catholic church buildings being constructed as a part of the push to transform Indigenous populations to Christianity.

In consequence, some within the New World started to create or fee pendants that didn’t include relics however had been nonetheless thought-about relicarios, as Ms. Egan described in her books “Relicarios: The Forgotten Jewels of Latin America” (2020) and “Relicarios: Devotional Miniatures from the Americas” (1993).

Gabriela Sánchez Reyes, an artwork historian who has a Ph.D. in social sciences and works at Mexico’s Nationwide Institute of Anthropology and Historical past, mentioned in a video interview that analysis on reliquaries tended to give attention to grand objects reminiscent of ornate silver vessels from church buildings. However Ms. Egan’s work, she mentioned, “compelled us to show our eyes to see a small object that has its personal essential options, its personal creative virtues, and speaks to us of the devotion of an period.”

Dr. Sánchez Reyes mentioned that solely a handful of researchers in Mexico had written about these pendants — and that Ms. Egan’s first relicario e book planted the seed of her personal curiosity about 25 years in the past, prompting her to incorporate a chapter on them in her grasp’s thesis.

Such pendants, nonetheless, are in lots of the world’s museums. In Mexico Metropolis, for instance, the Nationwide Museum of Historical past in Chapultepec Fort and the Museo Soumaya have two of the nation’s most noteworthy collections, Dr. Sánchez Reyes mentioned. (A decade in the past she was a co-curator of an exhibition on the Museo Soumaya, “Sanctuaries of the Intimate,” which included relicarios and miniature portraits from the establishment’s everlasting assortment.)

Alfonso Miranda, the director of the Soumaya, mentioned relicarios typically didn’t make it into museums — however that didn’t imply they’ve been forgotten. “Households proceed to carry on to those relics,” he mentioned, noting that always they had been handed by way of generations.

Relicarios can also yield essential historic info, he mentioned; for instance, the picture of a particular saint would possibly point out {that a} specific non secular order had been in a given geographic space.

Lucía Abramovich Sánchez, an affiliate curator on the Museum of Wonderful Arts, Boston, made the same level, noting that the supplies used to make relicarios may present glimpses into their wearer’s relative wealth, and the portrayals of saints may make clear devotional practices. “It enriches our data of what colonial Latin American artwork is, or Latin American artwork is,” she mentioned. “It provides a private ingredient.”

Dr. Abramovich Sánchez, who has a Ph.D. in artwork historical past and Latin American research, mentioned it was Ms. Egan who launched her to relicarios. The 2 met in 2019, when Dr. Abramovich Sánchez labored on the San Antonio Museum of Artwork, and in 2021, she reviewed Ms. Egan’s second relicarios e book for a scholarly journal.

The Supplies at Hand

At Casa Perea, Ms. Egan laid out a sampling of her relicarios, some so finely detailed that the artist would have used one thing like a horse’s eyelash to use the paint, she mentioned. A number of had been carved from supplies as diverse as tagua nut from Ecuador, alabaster from Peru and ivory from Asia.

One among her colonial-era lockets from Spain had a small wood cross within the heart and fragments of fabric integrated into the remainder of the design. “You’ll be able to inform these are bits of bone,” Ms. Egan mentioned matter-of-factly. “Anyone’s bones. Who is aware of?”

One other pendant, an engraved silver case about 2.2 inches in diameter, will be opened on one aspect to disclose a gilded bas-relief of the Virgin of Copacabana, one among myriad representations of the Virgin Mary revered in Latin America. Beneath the lid on the reverse is a picture of St. Rose of Lima, the primary particular person born within the New World to be canonized as a saint.

Ms. Egan mentioned the piece was made in Peru within the 1600s, its photos molded from a selfmade paste of mashed potatoes, a sticky liquid reminiscent of peach juice, “and doubtless plaster and who is aware of what else.”

“Persons are making one thing that’s crucial to them,” she mentioned, “however out of what they’ve at hand.”

From the early days of the conquest, the Spanish had been impressed by the Aztec artisans’ craftsmanship. In her “Forgotten Jewels” e book, Ms. Egan quoted from a letter that Hernán Cortés wrote to King Charles V of Spain whereas the conquistador was consolidating management over the Mexica/Aztec empire.

Cortés reported that he had requested Moctezuma, the Aztec emperor, to have his artisans check their abilities on Spanish-style artwork, and the emperor had “ordered them to make in gold things like holy photos, crucifixes, medals, jewellery and necklaces, and plenty of different of our issues and so they did it as completely as we may clarify this stuff to them.”

The e book included a portrait of Cortés carrying a relicario on his shoulder.

“An Abiding Curiosity”

The primary time Ms. Egan got here throughout relicarios was within the Seventies in an vintage retailer in Lima, Peru. The vendor, she mentioned, informed her she was shopping for two-sided miniature 18th-century work set in silver bezels, however Ms. Egan later realized they had been fakes.

Nonetheless, she credited the vendor with sparking what she described as “an abiding curiosity” in relicarios. A few times a yr, when she went to Latin America on shopping for journeys for her retailer, Ms. Egan would complement the lengthy hours of library analysis she was doing again residence by quizzing native artisans, historians, museum curators, sellers and some other specialists she may discover.

Ms. Egan grew up in a Catholic household in Wisconsin, however she left the church whereas she was a college pupil in Mexico Metropolis. She nonetheless went on to immerse herself within the non secular imagery of relicarios “as a result of they’re so lovely,” she mentioned, including that she understood “why they had been essential to individuals, why individuals would put such unbelievable creative endeavor into creating them.”

For many individuals, she mentioned, relicarios had been amulets defending them from hurt, or comforts in occasions of problem. On a extra worldly stage, carrying a relicario may very well be a option to flaunt each religion and success, since non secular ornaments had been exempt from so-called sumptuary legal guidelines, regulating ostentatious shows of wealth.

And in some circumstances, a relicario could have served as a sort of cowl in the course of the Spanish Inquisition, Ms. Egan mentioned.

In her most up-to-date e book, she described a relicario (not in her assortment) from the Viceroyalty of New Spain — an enormous Spanish territory that included modern-day Mexico — that had a card inside “inscribed with indicators of the kabbalah and Hebrew writing that will have been intentionally hidden within the house between two Catholic photos.”

Relicarios started to fall out of favor in Latin America within the late 18th and early Nineteenth centuries, Ms. Egan famous, partly due to anticlerical sentiments and a rising independence motion, although, she added, the custom lasted longer round fashionable non secular pilgrimage websites.

Wonderful Craftsmanship

Bernadette Rodríguez-Caraveo, a silversmith in New Mexico, has lengthy had a front-row seat to Ms. Egan’s assortment: She labored at Pachamama years in the past, earlier than starting a 30-year profession instructing ceramics and jewellery making. She now manages each the shop and the occasion house at Casa Perea.

Most of the previous relicarios are examples of meticulous craftsmanship, she mentioned: With out entry to fashionable instruments or artwork provide shops, the artisans typically managed to suit items collectively completely, with no seen solder traces. “It’s superb to me that they did such lovely, lovely work, and such superb work,” she mentioned.

Usually, the artisan who did the portray or carving was not the identical one that made the bezel, she mentioned, and so “among the portray isn’t that nice, however the silver work is — and vice versa.”

Ms. Rodríguez-Caraveo, 67, mentioned she had made her personal variations of relicarios, impressed partly by Ms. Egan’s assortment and by her personal expertise being raised by her paternal grandparents in Santa Fe, N.M.

They’d a easy relicario-style pendant, she mentioned — a black-and-white printed picture of the Virgin of Guadalupe, set in a small tin body — which was normally stored in her grandfather’s pocket or within the field that held her grandmother’s rosary.

Her personal relicarios have ranged from the non secular to the playful. Most lately, she has custom-made silver pendants that seize figures, scenes or symbols near the wearer’s coronary heart or that inform a narrative.

“To me, a relicario is one thing you maintain sacred,” she mentioned.

As for Ms. Egan, she mentioned she was now not on the lookout for relicarios, although she instantly added that she would purchase one “if it tells me one thing.”

She spoke wistfully about one notably superb piece she used to have, then appeared to persuade herself that she had carried out the appropriate factor by promoting it to a santero, an artisan who crafts photos of saints.

“He’s severe, a severe Catholic,” she mentioned, “so it’s in the appropriate place.”