A narrative ex-voto painted in oil on tin in 1953 in Guanajuato, headed with the name Apolinar Montes Rosas, a wife's thanks to the Señor de la Misericordia for healing her husband of terrible chest pain and bleeding after the doctor had given him only days to live.

The left half shows Christ crucified beneath the INRI plaque on a green ground, crowned with thorns and marked with his wounds. Below the cross, three souls rise from the flames of purgatory with hands joined in prayer, one of them crowned. Thick impasto clouds in cream and grey frame the whole vision. On the right, against a gold field dotted with yellow, the husband sits in a red armchair in a green shirt with his hands pressed to his chest, his hat set on the tiled floor beside him, while his wife kneels in prayer wrapped in a brown rebozo. The inscription runs across the upper right in blue-green lettering. It measures 15 inches wide by 8 inches high.

It comes from the same source as the rest of my retablos: one unknown painter who never signed his work and has since died. Families commissioned his pieces and took them to their village churches.

An elderly custodian at one of those churches has been collecting this painter's work for decades. A picker who travels the small village churches brought it to my dealer, and my dealer brought it to me.

None of those links is documented on paper, so I give it to you as the path it traveled, not as a chain of title.

The inscription

As painted:

"Apolinar Montes Rasas: Gracias SR: De la misericordia Par sana mi espaso. Terrible Dolar De PecHo, vamito i sangr ado. Fui al Doctar. Dias de vida le dio, Pestrado Dai gracias ella sano, i Fuimas Felicez 1953 G.to."

In English:

"Apolinar Montes Rosas. Thank you, Lord of Mercy, for healing my husband. Terrible chest pain, vomiting and bleeding. I went to the doctor. He gave him days to live, bedridden. I give thanks, he is now healed, and we were happy. 1953, Guanajuato."

The spelling is the painter's own. Rasas, Par, espaso, Dolar, vamito, Doctar, Dai, Pestrado and Fuimas all show his habit of forming o's like a's. Felicez stands for felices, i for y, and ella for él ya. SR is his abbreviation for Señor, sangrado breaks across two lines, and G.to. is the standard abbreviation for Guanajuato. Irregularities like these are part of what makes the piece genuine.

Condition

Good for its age. The paint is stable, the inscription is fully legible, and the impasto clouds are intact.

There is a nail hole at top center beside the first letter of the inscription, with a small torn loss around it. The top edge above the crucifixion is slightly rippled. A few small raised bumps and pinpoint losses sit in the right-hand clouds, and grime has darkened the outer clouds along the left edge. Red-brown speckling runs across the gold field, with light scratches over the surface and a few small rust points along the bottom edge.

The verso is bare tin under overall rust and mottled oxidation.

Appraisal

Grade: A

A complete narrative ex-voto: dated, placed and named, with the illness, the doctor's verdict and the healing all recorded. The composition pairs the Crucifixion with the souls in purgatory, a richer devotional program than a single saint, and the domestic scene is drawn with real tenderness. The panel is in the large 15-inch format. Graded against realized sales of this painter's work.

Gallery replacement value: $675, what it would cost to replace this piece through a gallery, for insurance and estate purposes.

A note on the photographs

One photograph shows the retablo staged for scale. Only the retablo is included.

Shipping and import fees

The price includes DHL Express shipping anywhere in the world, with tracking, packed by Diseños de Cartón in Guadalajara.

Import duty and tax are the buyer's responsibility. Tariff code 9701.91, hand-painted original art. Most markets let it in duty-free, and it qualifies for a reduced tax rate wherever one exists.

When it arrives, open the box along the seams; never cut down into it.

If your delivery country differs from your account country, message me before purchasing.

Destination | Import duty | Import tax | Estimated total

United States | 0% | none collected at import | $0

Canada | 0% | 5% GST, or 13–15% HST by province | $18 – $54

United Kingdom | 0% | 5% reduced-rate import VAT on works of art | about $18

European Union | 0% | 5.5% – 13.5% reduced rate, set by your country | $20 – $49

Australia | none on orders under AUD 1,000 | 10% GST, charged at checkout | about $36, paid at checkout

Where tax is collected at delivery, DHL adds a small advancement fee, typically $12 to $20.

Questions

You will always reach a real person, never AI.

God bless,

Ricardo Ivan Cardenas EMBA

St. Joseph's University New York Business School Graduate