The Household Saints of Puerto Rico
Featured in this excerpted article are selections from
the exhibition “Sants de Palo: The Household Saints of Puerto Rico, organized
by guest curator, Yvonne Lange, and shown at the Museum of American Folk Art in
N.Y. from Jan. 1992-April 1994. The objects in the exhibition were drawn from
the collection of Alan Moss Reveron of New York City.
By just viewing the religious artistic expressions of many Puerto
Rican santeros, one can see the intertwined past of two countries, by comparing the similarities and the contrasting differences
with the santo carvings of the Philippines, which, like Puerto Rico, was Spain-owned, steeped in Catholicism, introduced by their colonizers.
Like Filipino carvers, santeros were untrained, and often
worked from their imagination or by using old religious prints as guides for
the saint’s iconography. Majority of the output were folksy in style, rather
naïve, though a few were close to realistic—with better proportions, and superb
painting,
The major difference is that, many of these Puerto Rican
santeros were known and well-documented, while early Filipino artists remain
anonymous. Most Puerto Rican samples average about 8” in height, while
Filipinos examples show a wider range of sizes, from miniatures, tabletops, to
processional and church size-images.
There are also expected differences in the representation
of subjects, due to local devotions. A Filipino would be able to recognize, for
example, a Puerto Rican-carved San Antonio de Padua or San Miguel., but
perhapans, not Virgen de Monserrat or La Trinidad; the common Puerto Rican
version shows 2 human forms (God, Son) and a dove representing the Holy Spirit.
Filipino examples prefer showing a trio of look-alike persons.
Like the Philippines, the art of the Puerto Rican santero
represents a rich and a varied legacy of imagery and artistic expression, often
looked as a vocation, and not a trade.
SOURCES OF PHOTOS &
INFO:
“Santos de Palo: The
Household Santos of Puerto Rico” Exhibit Catalog, © 1991, The Museum of 61 West
62nd St., N.Y., N.Y. 10023.
