This week the Wellcome Trust opened an exhibition in London called Miracles & Charms. It is actually two exhibits in one. The Miracle component, ‘Infinitas Gracias’ (Infinite Thank You) is the first major display of Mexican votive paintings outside of Mexico. 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. Over a hundred votives dating from the 18th century are in the exhibition. They are usually displayed in Mexican churches as gestures of thanksgiving, replacing powerful doctrine-driven images of the saints with personal and direct pleas for help. The religious imagery depicted in these vernacular paintings is at the heart of famous works of art by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.
Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera were avid votive collectors
Votives are an intimate records of the tumultuous dramas of everyday life – lightning strikes, gunfights, motor accidents, ill-health and false imprisonment – in which saintly intervention was believed to have led to survival and reprieve.
Charming. If only they could do something to stop the carnage of the Mexican Drug Wars that is currently destroying the country. When I troll the web looking for unusual stories and items for this blog, I am often shocked by the amount of grisly footage of killings that is being posted by the gangs and vigilantes. For such a devout country, where is religion in all this horror?
'I thank our Lord Saint Francis of Assisi for saving us from drowning on 27 Oct 1962'
The other component of the exhibition is “Charmed Life” made up 1400 amulets assembled by the Edwardian amateur folklorist Edward Lovett. The artist Felicity Powell who put the exhibit together describes how these objects seem to retain an insistent sense that they might yet hold some hidden magic. Does that sound familiar?
The front feet of a mole are permanently curved for digging, and this curved appearance is so suggestive of cramp that these feet are carried as a cure for cramp.
A BBC researcher called me this week to appear on national Morning television to discuss the exhibition as an expert of lucky charms. I was very tempted as this would have been great publicity for SuperSense but I declined the offer. I am now preparing for the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures (which is why I have less time for posting blogs) and have moved on from my interest in supernatural thinking. I also have a new book coming out in the Spring so I want to shed the spooky scientist label that my interest in supernatural objects conjures up. However, I will be dropping into the exhibit when I am next in London on my way to the RI, as it looks too good to miss.
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When you say “ Votives are small paintings, usually executed on tin roof tiles or small plaques” this may be so in Mexico, but the word “votive” is used for items with a similar use in ancient civilisations or in Roman Catholicism in Europe, very often a clay model of the damaged foot or thumb or whatever it is, or sometimes (as in Naples) a picture of it on a silver plaque. These are used when praying for a cure.
I have seen in Italy paintings of accidents where the Virgin Mary or somebody else intervened by not completely killing the victim, for example this one at Montallegro (near Rapallo in Liguria ).
Actually, a painting such as this and the one you illustrate is more often called an “ex-voto”, being a thanks offering rather than a bribe. A votive proprement dit is offered before the hoped-for miracle, not afterwards.
[There doesn’t seem to be any way of attaching my photo]
It’s still a very cool exhibition. ‘Spooky scientist?’ Never! Bloody entertaining, yes, but not spooky. Looking forward to the lectures, they’ll feature online?
Aparneptly this is what the esteemed Willis was talkin’ ’bout.