Martha J. Egan has spent decades rummaging through markets and antique stores across Latin America in search of the rare, carefully crafted devotional pendants called relicarios.
Her hunt has led to her collecting more than 400 of the objects – pronounced reh-lee-CAR-yos; in English: reliquaries – and to write two books on what she has come to see as an overlooked genre within the religious art that emerged during the Spanish colonization of the New World.
Of course: “There wasn’t much art in the colonial era not religious,” said Ms. Egan, 78, who has a bachelor’s degree in Latin American history.
Usually the pieces (also called medallions or miniaturas) were pendants with painted, carved or printed images of favorite saints or the Virgin Mary on both sides, encased in metal rims under glass. Made for people in a range of social and economic classes, some relicarios were simple, while others were elaborately decorated; their creators were usually anonymous.
Perhaps because the pieces were worn as personal expressions of devotion, they have gone largely unnoticed, Ms. Egan said.
“Art historians have completely blown them off,” she said during an interview at Casa Perea Art Space, a 19th-century adobe event venue she owns in Corrales, NM, a village just outside Albuquerque. The building also houses her folk art shop, Pachamama, which opened 50 years ago and sells handmade items from Latin America, mainly Mexico, Peru and Bolivia.
Small but important
The word relicario is traditionally used for any relic for relics, such as splinters said to come from the cross of Jesus or bone fragments or pieces of cloth said to have links to saints or other religious figures. Such devotional pieces, including medallions, were popular in parts of medieval Europe.
During the Spanish colonial period – which began in the late 15th century and lasted more than 300 years – large quantities of relics were shipped to the Americas. But, Ms. Egan said, most were reserved for the Roman Catholic churches built as part of the effort to convert indigenous people to Christianity.
As a result, some in the New World began to make or have made pendants that did not contain relics but were still considered relicarios, as Ms. Egan described in her books “Relicarios: The Forgotten Jewels of Latin America” (2020) and “ Relicarios: Devotional Miniatures from America” (1993).
Gabriela Sánchez Reyes, an art historian with a Ph.D. in social sciences and works at Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, said in a video interview that reliquary research has typically focused on large objects such as ornate silver vessels from churches. But Ms. Egan’s work, she said, “forced us to turn our eyes to a small object that has its own important characteristics and its own artistic virtues, and speaks to us of the dedication of an era.”
Dr. Sánchez Reyes said only a handful of researchers in Mexico had written about these pendants — and that Ms. Egan’s first relicario book planted the seed of her own interest about 25 years ago, prompting her to include a chapter on these pendants in her master’s degree. rack.
However, such pendants are in many museums around the world. In Mexico City, for example, the National History Museum at Chapultepec Castle and the Museo Soumaya have two of the country’s most remarkable collections, said Dr. Sánchez Reyes. (Ten years ago, she co-curated an exhibition at the Museo Soumaya, “Sanctities of the Intimate,” featuring relicarios and miniature portraits from the institute’s permanent collection.)
Alfonso Miranda, the director of the Soumaya, said that relicarios often do not end up in museums, but that does not mean they are forgotten. “Families continue to hold these relics,” he said, noting that they were often passed down from generation to generation.
Relicarios can also provide important historical information, he said; For example, the depiction of a specific saint might indicate that a particular religious order existed in a particular geographical area.
Lucía Abramovich Sánchez, associate curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, made a similar point, noting that the materials used to make relicarios can offer a glimpse into the relative wealth of their bearer, and that the images of saints can shed light on devotional practices. “It enriches our knowledge of what colonial Latin American art is, or what Latin American art is,” she said. “It adds a personal element.”
Dr. Abramovich Sánchez, who has a Ph.D. in art history and Latin American studies, said it was Ms. Egan who introduced her to relicarios. The two met in 2019, when Dr. Abramovich Sánchez worked at the San Antonio Museum of Art, and in 2021 she reviewed Ms. Egan’s second relicarios book for a scholarly journal.
The materials at hand
At Casa Perea, Ms. Egan laid out a selection of her relicarios, some so detailed that the artist would have used something like a horse’s eyelash to apply the paint, she said. Several of them are carved from a variety of materials, such as tagua nut from Ecuador, alabaster from Peru and ivory from Asia.
One of her colonial-era medallions from Spain had a small wooden cross in the center and fragments of material incorporated into the rest of the design. “You can see they’re pieces of bone,” Mrs. Egan said matter-of-factly. ‘Someone’s bones. Who knows?”
Another pendant, an engraved silver case approximately 6.5 cm in diameter, opens at one end to reveal a gilded bas-relief of the Virgin of Copacabana, one of numerous images of the Virgin Mary found in Latin America is revered. Under the lid on the back is an image of the Holy Rose of Lima, the first person born in the New World to be canonized as a saint.
Ms. Egan said the piece was made in Peru in the 17th century, with images formed from a homemade paste of mashed potatoes, a sticky liquid like peach juice, “and probably plaster of paris and who knows what else.”
“People are making something that is very important to them,” she said, “but with what they have at hand.”
From the early days of the conquest, the Spanish were impressed by the craftsmanship of the Aztec craftsmen. In her book “Forgotten Jewels,” Ms. Egan quoted from a letter Hernán Cortés wrote to King Charles V of Spain as the conquistador was consolidating control over the Mexica/Aztec empire.
Cortés reported that he had asked Moctezuma, the Aztec emperor, to let his artisans test their skills in Spanish-style art, and the emperor had “ordered them to make things of gold such as holy images, crucifixes, medals, jewelry and necklaces. and many more of our things, and they did it as perfectly as we could explain these things to them.”
The book contained a portrait of Cortés with a relicario on his shoulder.
“An enduring interest”
The first time Ms. Egan encountered relicarios was in an antique shop in Lima, Peru, in the 1970s. The dealer, she said, told her she was buying double-sided miniature paintings from the 18th century, set in a silver border, but Ms. Egan later discovered they were fakes.
Still, she credited the dealer with sparking what she described as “an abiding interest” in relicarios. Once or twice a year, when she went to Latin America to shop for her store, Ms. Egan supplemented the long hours of library research she did at home by interviewing local artisans, historians, museum curators, dealers and other experts. she could find.
Ms. Egan grew up in a Catholic family in Wisconsin, but left the church while attending college in Mexico City. She continued to delve into the religious imagery of relicarios “because they are so beautiful,” she said, adding that she understood “why they were important to people, why people would put such incredible artistic effort into creating of it.’
For many people, she said, relicarios were amulets that protected them from harm or comforted them in times of trouble. On a more mundane level, wearing a relicario could be a way to show off both faith and success, since religious adornments were exempt from so-called sumptuary laws, which regulated ostentatious displays of wealth.
And in some cases, a relicario may have served as a kind of cover during the Spanish Inquisition, Ms. Egan said.
In her most recent book, she described a relicario (not in her collection) from the Viceroyalty of New Spain—a vast Spanish territory that included modern-day Mexico—containing a map “containing signs of the Kabbalah and Hebrew script that may have been deliberately have been hidden in the space between two Catholic images.”
Relicarios began to fall out of favor in Latin America in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Ms. Egan noted, partly because of anticlerical sentiments and a growing independence movement, although, she added, the tradition was longer lasted around popular religious pilgrimage sites. .
Fine craftsmanship
Bernadette Rodríguez-Caraveo, a silversmith in New Mexico, has long had a front-row seat to Ms. Egan’s collection: She worked at Pachamama years ago before launching a 30-year career teaching ceramics and jewelry making. She now manages both the store and event space at Casa Perea.
Many of the ancient relicarios are examples of meticulous craftsmanship, she said: Without access to modern tools or art supply stores, the craftsmen often managed to fit the pieces together perfectly, with no visible solder lines. “I think it’s amazing that they did such beautiful, beautiful work and such fine work,” she said.
In general, the artisan who made the painting or carving was not the same person who made the ring, she said, and so “some of the painting isn’t that great, but the silverwork is — and vice versa.”
Ms. Rodríguez-Caraveo, 67, said she created her own versions of relicarios, inspired in part by Ms. Egan’s collection and by her own experiences being raised by her paternal grandparents in Santa Fe, N.M.
They had a simple relicario-style pendant, she said — a black-and-white printed image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, set in a small tin frame — that was usually kept in her grandfather’s pocket or in the box that held the rosary of her grandmother was sitting. .
Her own relicarios ranged from religious to playful. Most recently, she has created custom silver pendants that depict figures, scenes or symbols that are close to the wearer’s heart or that tell a story.
“For me, a relicario is something that you hold sacred,” she said.
As for Ms. Egan, she said she was no longer looking for relicarios, although she was quick to add that she would buy one “if it tells me anything.”
She spoke wistfully about a particularly beautiful piece she used to have, and then seemed to convince herself that she had done the right thing by selling it to a santero, a craftsman who makes images of saints.
“He’s serious, a serious Catholic,” she said, “so it’s in the right place.”
