RETABLE. — The interpretation given here of the term, which is proper to the Spanish language, is restricted to the meaning it assumes in the fields of architecture and archaeology and refers to the decoration of altars.
Etymologically, *retablo* derives from the Latin *retro tabulam* and thus refers to what is behind the mensa. In the Spanish language, the term also indicates the oldest painted images, portable ones, which were placed on altars. Today, in common usage, a *retablo* is understood to be a large complex of an architectural nature in marble, stucco, metal, or decorated wood with figures and sculptures, immovable by design, which covers the wall or conceals the space behind the altar. *Retablos* are found in Italy and other European regions and almost always assume the character of particularly vast polyptychs, but the Iberian Peninsula is the land where the *retablo* has the greatest diffusion, being one of the characteristic elements of its places of worship. Some take up the architectural themes of the spaces in which they are located, while others appear independent of them. Among those in carved stone, one may recall that of St. Nicholas in Bari at Burgos, that of the chapel of Los Sartres in the cathedral of Tarragona, and the 16th-century German-style one in the chapel to the right of the presbytery in the cathedral of Coimbra. Those in silver are very numerous, and the oldest date from the 15th century, as do those carved in wood and the painted ones. But almost always the essential character of the *retablo* is given by the multiplicity of techniques that contribute to making it a complex of great richness and splendor, intended to frame an image or a sacred composition or, as occurs in Aragonese churches, to house a kind of display case where, among crystals, lamps, and symbolic images, the Most Holy Sacrament is exposed.
— See pl. XLIII.