This content was published: January 1, 2005. Phone numbers, email addresses, and other information may have changed.
Bean Gilsdorf – Ex-Voto
Rock Creek Helzer Gallery
January and February 2005
The archaic practice of offering a votive object as a way of giving thanks to God dates back, at minimum, to the ancient Greeks. In the west, these votive objects are called ex-votos, which is Latin for “from a vow,” signifying that these offerings are made in anticipation of a prayer answered or to give thanks to a saint for a miracle received. Traditionally, modern ex-votos (from the 19th century to the current age) are small devotional paintings or drawings. Most ex-votos illustrate the circumstances of the miracle: they depict the petitioner, often kneeling, in the scene of the miracle, and the apparition of the interventionist saint. For example, if a father has asked a saint for help with his ill child, he may, upon the restoration of the child’s health, commission a local painter to create an ex-voto. The ex-voto might depict the man kneeling in prayer next to the bed of his sick child. In the background, or hovering above the scene, would be the saint to whom he was praying, who then intervened and healed the child.
This ex-voto, absent of petitioner and intervention, is offered as both an environment for contemplation and as a private devotion.
