What Is a Retablo? The Little Tin Paintings Behind Our Name

6 de noviembre de 2026

19th-century Mexican retablo of Our Lady of Guadalupe painted in oil on tin, El Paso Museum of Art

Before RETABLO was a shirt, it was a word. And before it was a word on a shirt, it was a little painting on a sheet of tin, hanging on somebody's wall.

If you've ever wondered why I named the brand after it, the short answer is that a retablo is the most honest kind of art I know. The long answer is this post.

RETABLO · reh·TAH·bloh · noun

From the Latin retro tabulum, "behind the table." The table is the altar.

It started huge

In Spain, and later in the churches the Spanish built across Mexico, a retablo was the giant wall of art behind the altar: carved columns, saints in little niches, everything covered in gold. Some climb all the way to the ceiling. You've probably stood in front of one at a wedding or a funeral and didn't know it had a name.

17th-century Mexican retablo painted in oil on copper, El Paso Museum of Art — A Mexican retablo from the 1600s, oil on copper. El Paso Museum of Art, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

Then it got small, and it got personal

Here's the part I love. After Mexico won its independence in 1821, trade opened up and cheap tinplate from England poured in, the same stuff used for lanterns, pans and candleholders. Suddenly regular people didn't need a church or a rich patron to have sacred art. Local painters, most of them anonymous, started painting saints and virgins on small sheets of tin for families to hang at home.

Through the 1800s, towns across central Mexico, around Guanajuato, Jalisco and Zacatecas, turned them out in huge numbers. The favorites were the Virgin of Guadalupe, Nuestra Señora del Refugio and El Santo Niño de Atocha.

Two kinds, one idea

	Retablo santo	Ex-voto
What it shows	A saint or a virgin, alone	The day something almost went wrong
Why	For prayer at home	To say thank you after a prayer was answered
Where it hung	The family altar	The church or shrine of the saint who helped

The ex-voto is the one that gets me. Somebody survives a fever, a runaway horse, a flood, a bad year. They go to the local painter, tell him what happened, and he paints it, with words and all.

Anatomy of an ex-voto

① The scene. The moment it happened, painted big: the bed, the river, the overturned cart.

② The saint. Up in a corner, usually in a cloud, watching over it.

③ The testimony. Below a line, in plain words: who, what, when, where.

"Doy gracias a la Virgen de San Juan porque el día 3 de mayo mi hijo cayó al río y salió con vida. Lagos de Moreno."

An example we wrote in the classic style.

No fancy language. No signature from the painter. Just the truth, the date and a thank you. The writer Anita Brenner called them "a moving record of a nation." To me, they're some of the best storytelling our culture ever made.

The timeline, quick

1500s
Gilded church retablos arrive in Mexico with the Spanish.
1590s
The earliest known Mexican ex-votos. Rich patrons pay for paintings on canvas.
1821
Independence. English tinplate floods in, and tin becomes affordable.
1800s
The golden age of tin retablos. Anonymous painters, thousands of homes.
Late 1800s
Cheap color prints from France and Germany replace the painted saints. The personal ex-votos keep going.
1900s
Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo collect them as art. Frida keeps hers at home.
Today
Museums collect them. And one shirt brand borrows the name.

Frida knew

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera were among the first to collect ex-votos as art. They saw them as a record of real Mexican life, not junk from the flea market. Frida kept hers at home, and you can see them in her work: a portrait with a block of text under a line, scenes that squeeze a whole story into one frame. She even took an old ex-voto of a road accident and reworked it to look like the bus crash that changed her life.

Closer to home

If you're anywhere near the border, the El Paso Museum of Art holds one of the largest collections of Mexican folk retablos in the United States. Both pieces in this post are from it. Go see them in person; the tin glows in a way a phone screen can't show.

Why I named the brand RETABLO

A retablo was never fancy. It was small, honest and personal. It took one moment, one feeling, one bit of faith and made it something you could hang on the wall and keep.

That's what I want every shirt to be. A word your abuela used. A Christmas tradition. A place you came from. Look at our logo: the A in RETABLO is an arch, like the niche a saint stands in. And inside every shirt it says De buena fe, in good faith, because that's how the old painters worked too.

TEPEYAC Luz and Night tee by RETABLO in Natural, hanging on a terracotta wall — TEPEYAC, from our LUZ & NIGHT Collection. La Guadalupana, still our favorite subject.

Test yourself

Tap a question to see the answer.

1. What does retablo literally mean?

"Behind the table," from the Latin retro tabulum. The table is the altar.

2. Why were so many retablos painted on tin?

After independence in 1821, cheap tinplate from England made it affordable for everyday families.

3. What makes an ex-voto different from a retablo santo?

An ex-voto tells the story of a miracle and says thank you. A retablo santo just shows the saint.

4. Which famous painter collected ex-votos?

Frida Kahlo, with Diego Rivera.

Your turn: write your ex-voto

If you painted one for your own life, what would it say? Keep it old-school: who you're thanking, what happened, and when.

"Doy gracias a ___ porque ___." Leave yours in the comments. The best ones might inspire a future design.

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Sources and further reading: El Paso Museum of Art, Joy and Suffering: Mexican Folk Retablos from the Permanent Collection (2019); Michener Art Museum, Mexican Folk Retablos: Images of Devotion; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, "Ex-Votos: A Mexican Tradition of Special Narrative Paintings"; Anita Brenner, Idols Behind Altars.

— Mauricio, Casa Retablo