Retablos Explained

Retablos Explained

You can tell a lot about colonial-era churches by their retablos (retables), the altarpieces that are almost always massive in scale and over-the-top in ornamentation. Most are made of elaborately carved wood and coated with layer after layer of gold leaf. Indigenous peoples often did the carving, so look for some atypical elements such as symbols of the sun and moon that figured prominently in many local religions. You may be surprised that Jesus is a minor player on many retablos, and on others doesn't appear at all. That's because these retablos often depict the life of the saint for which the church is named. Many churches retain their original baroque retablos, but others saw theirs replaced by the much simpler neoclassical ones with simple columns and spare design. If you wander around the church, you're likely to find the original relegated to one of the side chapels.