Una imagen por gratitud. Exvotos de niños en la España del siglo XVIII

In Spain a large number of eighteenth-century pictorial ex-votos survive that portray children from different social classes. Considered as cultural artefacts, the votive offerings provide much insight into the emotions, spaces, costumes and traditions particular to childhood. Moreover, the ex-votos shed light on childhood codes of representation. Distinct from the ideal of enlightenment religiosity, the votive offerings report on public and private devotional practices. Specifically, ex-votos give an account of the most dreaded diseases in relation to the incipient advances in medicine and the reliance on thaumaturgical images.