#MacabroTurístico: The ex-votos of the Museo de las Intervenciones

During the 19th century and early 20th century, people gave thanks for miracles or heavenly favors by expressing themselves through paintings known as ex-votos. Today, a gallery at the Museo Nacional de las Intervenciones displays a selection of these paintings, which are part of the collection of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

Although the museum is dedicated to telling the story of foreign interventions in Mexico, it maintains this particular collection on exhibit to educate visitors about Mexico's religious life, which fits perfectly with the museum's building, once a convent.

The paintings are known as ex-votos because they are offered to different heavenly deities in gratitude for a favor or miracle granted. The artwork illustrates the moment the miracle occurred, the deity or saint to whom it is offered, and a short text recounting what happened.

This type of painting once hung in churches throughout the country, but the tradition declined in the 20th century during the 1940s, when people stopped making ex-votos and many were thrown away. The tradition came to be seen as a folk art form, and the surviving collections were sent to museums.

This museum's collection includes some ex-votos that tell astonishing stories, such as that of the man who survived a two-story fall, and another showing a man who survived the revolution because his mother entrusted him to a saint. The details in the artistic technique and the spelling errors make these paintings both astonishing and entertaining.

It's no surprise that today there are people who make parodies, creating images thanking saints for rescuing them from an alien abduction or for not being caught with a lover.

Read the original article at: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-ex-votos-of-churubusco

Photo: Internet