This is part of a collection of stories spotlighting deeply rooted – yet sometimes less exposed – craft hubs around the world and how to experience them. Read more here.
Picture the proportions of a shadow box: It could be the size of your hand, your head, or, in some cases, larger than your entire body. The exterior of this wooden box, often painted with vibrant floral flourishes, is deceptively simple. Pull open the two front doors and you’ll find an entire world within.
It might be a snapshot of daily life in the Andes – maybe a mercado, in which tiny figurines clamber over fruit and meat, or a celebration in which thousands of revellers dance in costume, their faces moulded in exuberant joy, bitsy cans of Pilsen beer littering the ground. Some offer religious interpretations of the afterlife; others preserve moments in the country’s history. Traditionally, the figures that make up the interior of a retablo are made piece-by-piece, from a compound of ground stone, like alabaster or lime, mixed with binding agents like potato starch and cactus gum; and then even the finest details are painstakingly painted on by hand, traditionally with aniline dyes, for a process that can take many months or years to realise. Hour by hour, day by day, retableros – that is, retablos makers – breathe life into the scenes they want to share.
Andean cultures have long found ways of telling stories through craft – by weaving tales into thick textiles, painting sagas onto ceramics, or chiselling mythology into gourds. But retablos have reached a level of ubiquity in Peru, and you’ll spot them in homes throughout the country; they also burst out of tourist shops everywhere from Lima to Cusco, and sit in museum collections well beyond the country’s borders. “Each [retablo] reflects a piece of Peruvian identity – whether it’s a festival, a protest, or a quiet moment in a mountain village, they hold our stories,” says Nicario Jimenez Quispe, a third-generation retablo maker from Alcamenca, a village in the region of Ayacucho from which retablos originated. “They show who we are, where we come from, and what we believe.”
As visually impressive (or simply delightful) as they may be, retablos also chart the evolution of a land through colonisation, political turmoil, internal displacement, and diaspora, in a craft moulded by those at the forefront of each. This is no art form preserved in amber, and yet the ways in which retablos have continually evolved over the past 500 years have ensured their existence. “The retablo is the most beautiful example of cultural survival,” says John Alfredo Davies Benavides.
Benavides is a traditional arts collector based in Lima, who was raised in the presence of retablo maestro Joaquin Lopez Antay (1897-1981), the 1975 Peruvian National Culture Prize winner who is credited with founding today’s form of the retablo, and Antay’s pupil, Jesus Urbano Rojas (1924-2014). Benavides can trace the roots of retablos back to pre-Catholic Huamanga, now known as the region of Ayacucho, where sculptores would travel between the high and low lands of the area, making items on commission for a rural clientele – common requests included stone figurines of pagan deities, and wooden boxes to hold them, to be used in rituals for the fertility and protection of livestock, including offerings to Pachamama (mother earth).
In the post-contact 1620s, when the Spanish attempted to eradicate these pagan customs and talismans in the push for Catholicism, craftspeople simply created “a language” in which they substituted various saints in for their deities. For example, Saint Mark and Saint Luke became a stand-in for the duality of Quechua god Illapa (known for both protecting and punishing, depending on how you treated the land), effectively preserving the belief system under a façade that aligned with the Spaniards’ religious art. “It’s an artistic form of mestizaje, in which rural Andean beliefs and Catholicism mix,” says Diego Lopez, who wrote a 2024 paper on the work of Antay for the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.
The retablo made its way to the big city of Lima – and thus the wider Peruvian cultural consciousness – in the 1930s. The construction of roads in the Andes separated many makers from their rural clients, while simultaneously connecting the highlands to the coastal capital, where a group of Indigenous artists began an orchestrated effort to showcase their heritage on the national stage. “There is a before and an after for retablos, and the after starts in the 1930s,” says Benavides. As had always been the case, artists worked on commission for clients who could choose to depict whatever they chose – but the details shifted from magical and religious imagery to “rural scenes, of farmers collecting prickly pear in a field, to Semana Santa, to [more recently] the atrocities committed against Andeans in the period of terrorism” says Lopez. The motifs of retablos have reflected a changing country since.
A few Ayacuchano families – the Antay, Jimènez, Urbanos, and Nuñez – began work in this post-1930s period that their descendants continue today. “When I was younger, the retablos were mostly religious,” says Jiménez Quispe, whose father Florentino Jiménez Toma (1935-2005) taught him the art of retablo making. “Now, they can be political, humorous, deeply personal. The themes have changed, and that’s a good thing – it means the tradition is evolving, not disappearing.”
Jiménez Quispe now lives in Florida, and his retablos – some of which can take up to a year to make – reflect that experience. “Living in the US changed my work – I still create a lot of pieces about Peru, but I’ve also started making retablos about the immigrant experience, about Latinos living here, about what it means to live between two worlds,” says Jiménez Quispe. (The retablo most prominently displayed on his personal website shows scenes of an immigration detention centre, the US-Mexican border, and the streets of Puerto Rico.) His brother Edilberto still lives in the Andes, and his work is focused on processing and memorialising the violence wrought by the Sendero Luminoso group, which most significantly impacted the communities around Ayacucho.
The Jiménez Quispe brothers still make retablos using traditional ingredients. Even in Florida, Nicario uses a dough made of potatoes and gypsum powder to form the many figures in his retablos. “My pieces can take anywhere from a few weeks to a whole year, depending on the size and complexity,” Jiménez Quispe says. “The hardest part is always the tiny details – getting the hands, the faces, the emotion just right. But that’s also what I love the most.”
Nicolasa Chavez is the curator of Latin American collections at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, which has a number of Peruvian retablos in its collection from the colonial period to the present. For Chavez, it’s this level of care, the value of minutiae, that makes retablos so interesting to study. “I am most impressed by the fine detailing in the figurative scenes inside the box, the variety of people, and the scenes they contain,” she says, “but also how those super fine details contrast with the flowing and loose floral designs on the sides of the doors. Understanding the culture and heritage from which it came always makes a piece more special.”
In Peru, the art form is facing the realities of a public that appreciates the item, but doesn't always want – or can't always afford – a piece that requires such a high level of labour, and a new workforce of creators who haven't inherited generations of idiosyncrasies tied to the craft. Many of the renowned retablo families now have two lines, says Benavides: one, which maintains more traditional means of production and is sold at fine art prices, and another more accessible commercial expression that allows more Peruvians and visitors alike to own a charming retablo of their own. More and more, you'll spot pieces on the streets of Ayacucho inspired by pop culture figures like Barbie, or local soccer teams – whatever sells.
One could argue that the tradition is at risk, as time-consuming techniques are increasingly forgone – “black potato starch, once used as a binding agent, has been largely replaced by synthetic glues,” says Benavides, who worries that one-day they’ll be made in China, or even 3-D printed – yet this continued adaptability is arguably why retablos persist. “Today, retablos are a medium that allows many people to make a living,” says Benavides. “Traditions evolve,” he adds with a shrug.
On a visit to Ayacucho, this truth is undeniable. Workshops are squeezed beside one another on winding roads, and packed to the brim with in-progress boxes and little, emotive characters, waiting to tell their stories on the stage that is their retablo. Here, the tight air at nearly 10,000 feet high forces a sense of slowness – a life of community, religious gatherings, and pastoral living that, while not without its challenges, is certainly worthy of memorialising.
How to experience retablos on a trip to Peru
In Ayacucho, Casa Museo Joaquin Lopez Antay is a museum dedicated to the artist’s work on the main square; workshops of artisans can be visited or hired for commissions. In Lima, the Museo de Artes y Tradiciones Populares at Casa O’Higgins in Centro has a permanent exhibit of noteworthy retablos from important artists of the last century. The team at Aracari can also arrange experiences with John Alfredo Davies Benavides, allowing travelers to see his personal collection of retablos and learn their history. A handful of pieces are available for purchase at Artesania Las Pallas in Barranco. From afar, considering watching the film Retablo, a moving and award-winning Quechua-language film centred on a retablo-making family.
This article was originally published on Condé Nast Traveler.