Retablo

RETABLO. - The interpretation given here of this word, which belongs to the Spanish language, remains confined to the meaning it takes on in the fields of architecture and archaeology and refers to the decoration of altars.

Etymologically, r. derives from the Latin retro tabula and therefore refers to what is behind the altar table. In the Spanish language the term also denotes the most ancient painted images, portable ones, that were placed on altars. Today, in common usage, by r. is meant a large architectural complex in marble, stucco, metal, or wood decorated with figures and sculptures, immovable by destination, which covers the wall or conceals the space behind the altar. R. exist in Italy and in the other regions of Europe and almost always take on the character of particularly vast polyptychs, but the Iberian peninsula is the land where the r. is most widespread, being one of the characteristic elements of its places of worship. Some take up the architectural themes of the spaces in which they stand, others appear independent of them. Among those in carved stone one may recall that of St. Nicholas of Bari in Burgos, that of the chapel de Los Sartres in the cathedral of Tarragona, and the sixteenth-century 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 others painted. But almost always the essential character of the r. is given by the multiplicity of techniques that combine to make it a complex of great richness and showiness, intended to frame an image or a sacred composition or, as happens in Aragonese churches, to house a kind of display case where, among crystals, lamps and symbolic images, the Blessed Sacrament is exposed. - See plate XLIII.