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I ship DHL Express Delivered Duty Paid. Shipping, customs clearance and all import duties and taxes are paid by me before the package leaves Guadalajara. You pay the listed price and nothing further on delivery, anywhere in the world. Tariff classification 9701.91, original hand-painted artwork, which enters most countries duty-free.
What you are looking at
A Mexican ex-voto retablo, oil on tin, painted in 1954 in Arandas, Jalisco. An ex-voto is a thank-offering: a person receives what they believe is a miracle, commissions a small painting recording it, and leaves it at their church as public testimony. The image and the written account are one object — that is what separates an ex-voto from a devotional picture. Here a woman named Petronila Pérez R. gives thanks after being healed of a tumor in her stomach. San Miguel Arcángel dominates the left half in full Baroque dress: gold wings spread, crimson cape, blue and gold tunic over a lilac lace-edged skirt and boots, a black cross-staff in one hand and a flaming sword in the other, standing squarely on the devil — red, horned, tailed, sprawled on his back in a field of leaping flame. At upper right the petitioner herself kneels in the air in a white gown and rebozo, holding a small dark cross, floating clear of the fire. The painter has drawn the whole theology of the miracle in one frame: the disease is the devil, the archangel is the cure, and the woman is already delivered. In 1954 a stomach tumor in rural Jalisco was very often a death sentence, and she did not die. All the retablos I sell come from one anonymous hand — a local painter people went to when they needed an ex-voto made. He never signed his work and has since died; his name is not recoverable. The panels were commissioned by devotees, left at their own churches, and kept for years by a church custodian in a rural Jalisco town who has been collecting them. My dealer buys from him and I buy from my dealer. That is the path, told plainly. It is not a documented chain of title, and any dealer who hands you one for an ex-voto is inventing it.
Condition
Honest and consistent with a panel that hung in a church for seventy years. The painted figures are stable and strongly colored, and the entire inscription is legible. A nail hole is punched through the upper field beside the flaming sword, original to how it was mounted, with paint loss around it. The open sky at upper right carries the heaviest wear: scattered paint loss, small dark pitting and light abrasion across the ground behind the kneeling figure. Fine surface scratches run through the green ground at left. Light rubbing along all four edges with minor tin exposure. The tin was hand-snipped by the painter and the edges are slightly irregular, as made. The verso is bare tin, scratched throughout, with rust blooms and old paint spatter around the borders and a small dent at the lower edge. No restoration, no overpaint, no cleaning. Ready to hang as it is.
The inscription
As painted, spelling preserved:
Gracias San Migu[el] el arcanje Por sanarme. de Un Tumor en el estomago 1954 arandas Jal. Petronila Perez R.
Corrected Spanish:
Gracias, San Miguel el Arcángel, por sanarme de un tumor en el estómago. 1954, Arandas, Jalisco. Petronila Pérez R.
English:
Thank you, Saint Michael the Archangel, for healing me of a tumor in my stomach. 1954, Arandas, Jalisco. Petronila Pérez R.
The irregular spelling — arcanje for arcángel, estomago and Perez without their accents, arandas in lower case — is written by a rural hand in 1954 and is one of the better authenticity markers a piece like this carries. Reproductions get the spelling right.
Measurements
11.5 x 8 inches (29.2 x 20.3 cm), horizontal format. Tin panel, unframed.
A note on the photographs
Some images place the piece in a staged setting so you can judge scale and presence in a room. Backgrounds and props are for context only and are not included. What ships is the panel itself.
Grade and appraisal
Graded A− on my ex-voto scale, where the A band runs $270 and up. It earns that on subject and completeness: San Miguel over the devil in flames is the most collected image in Mexican ex-voto painting, and this panel carries a named petitioner, a named town, a hard date and a full narrative. The paint loss in the upper right sky is the one factor keeping it off a straight A. You are buying an A− piece at $215, below the band it grades into. Separately, and this is a different question from the ask: gallery replacement value is $500, meaning what you would expect to pay for a comparable dated and inscribed 1950s Jalisco San Miguel ex-voto through a retail gallery in Santa Fe, San Miguel de Allende or Mexico City. That figure is for insurance and estate purposes.
Item specifics
Origin: Arandas, Jalisco, Mexico · Date: 1954 · Artist: Anonymous · Medium: Oil on tin · Format: Horizontal · Size: 11.5 x 8 in · Subject: San Miguel Arcángel, healing of a stomach tumor · Petitioner: Petronila Pérez R. · Condition: Original, unrestored · Tariff code: 9701.91
Shipping and duties
Free DHL Express worldwide with tracking, duties and taxes prepaid by me. Packed professionally by Diseños de Cartón in Colonia Americana and dropped off by me personally. When your package arrives, open it along the seams — never with a blade, the panel sits close to the wall of the box. If your delivery address at checkout differs from your account address, message me before purchasing so I can confirm the destination.
Questions
Message me. You will never get an AI reply or a canned answer. Every message is answered by me personally, usually the same day.
God bless,
Ricardo Ivan Cardenas EMBA
St. Joseph\'s University New York Business School Graduate
