Ex-Voto (Retablo) vs Posada's Calaveras
エクスボート（奉納画） / ポサダのカラベラ
Ex-Voto (Retablo) comes from Popular Painting and Posada's Calaveras from Popular Prints. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Ex-Voto (Retablo)
Mexico's votive paintings give thanks for deliverance from disaster. Painted on tin, they hold the scene of the crisis, a holy image and a handwritten testimony on one small sheet, and the urgency of the untrained brush drew Kahlo and other modern painters to them.
Posada's Calaveras
The skeleton satires Posada engraved for Mexican broadsides: dressed-up calaveras laughing at class and death alike. La Catrina became a national icon of the Day of the Dead and Mexican graphics.
| Ex-Voto (Retablo) | Posada's Calaveras | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 18th century– | 1880s–1913 |
| Family | Popular Painting | Popular Prints |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Small tin panels / Scene, image and testimony in three layers / Naive perspective / Records of accident and miracle | Personified skeletons / Rough zinc-etched lines / Sharing the sheet with broadside type / Satire that laughs at death |
| Best used for | Personal testimony told with the words and the picture on one surface · Recording thanks one incident at a time on small panels | Satirical drawing that needles power and the news for papers and magazines · Festival announcements and goods that treat death as an occasion for laughter |
| Type | Handwritten testimony packed along the bottom, name and date last | Headlines set as broadside type, packed above and below the image |
| Composition | Divide into three, the holy image above, the incident between, the words below | Crowds of skeletons ranged across, sorted by the hats and dress of rank |
| Material | Oil on small tin, drawing what matters large and ignoring perspective | Rough zinc-etched line printed black on coarse paper, trimmed close |
| Caution | Copying the naive picture and dropping the testimony leaves no one's incident on the panel, and the votive act itself goes missing. | Using the skeleton as a merely spooky motif blunts the satire that laughed at class, and the result becomes indistinguishable from seasonal decoration. |