Feature: The Big Picture - Exhibition - Infinitas Gracias: Mexican Miracle Painting at Wellcome Collection

Published: 13 October, 2011

ON September 18 1930, Señor Donato Lopez, while chasing his cow through a stream as he tried to lasso it, had the misfortune of crashing into a boulder and breaking his left leg.

After such a severe blow he appealed with all his heart for the help of the Santo Niño de Atocha and with gratitude he dedicates this retablo (devotional painting).

So reads the story behind this picture, one of more than 100 votive exhibits in Infinitas Gracias: Mexican Miracle Paintings, which forms one half of a new Wellcome Collection show entitled Miracles and Charms.  

Mexican votives are small paintings, usually executed on tin roof tiles or small plaques, depicting the moment of personal humility when an individual asks a saint for help and is delivered from disaster and sometimes death.

With images, news reports, photographs, devotional artefacts, film and interviews, the exhibition illustrates the depth of the votive tradition in Mexico.

Usually commissioned from local artists by the petitioner, votive paintings tell immediate and intensely personal stories – from domestic dramas to revolutionary violence – through which a markedly human history of communities and their culture can be read.

The votives date from the 18th century to the present day. Over this period, thousands of small paintings came to line the walls of Mexican churches as gestures of thanksgiving, replacing powerful doctrine-driven images of the saints with personal and direct pleas for help.

They are intimate records of the dramas of everyday life: lightning strikes, gun fights, motor accidents, ill health and false imprisonment; in which saintly intervention was believed to have led to survival and reprieve.

Infinitas Gracias explores the reaction of individuals at the moment of crisis in which their strength of faith comes into play.

The accompanying show, Felicity Powell: Charmed Life, is an exhibition of amulets from Henry Wellcome’s collection, selected by the artist Felicity Powell.

Drawing lines between faith, mortality and healing, Miracles and Charms offers a poignant insight into the tribulations of daily life and human responses to chance and suffering.

• Infinitas Gracias: Mexican Miracle Paintings is part of Miracles and Charms, two free exhibitions at Wellcome Collection, Euston Road, NW1, until February 26, 2012.
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