ESThe Face of Our Lady of Guadalupe
Between 1926 and 1931 the face of Our Lady of Guadalupe was retouched. This is a really unfortunate fact, since the evidence that the image has a supernatural origin is very large and therefore it should not have been touched by a human hand.
Father José de Jesús Aguilar Valdés comments on this: “Sadly, we could see that in the last century a painter tried to restore damaged parts for the three years in which it was rolled (due to religious persecution) and made some repaints in the face, that immediately you see they are not part of the original and that fortunately are detaching”.
But far from confirming the skeptics and detractors of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the areas affected by the repaints appear shabby, with colors that have degraded and darkened, while the colors of the original image have remained unchanged for more than 400 years. In addition, the image was made taking advantage of the stains and irregularities of Juan Diego's tilma, giving the appearance that it is printed on the fabric rather than painted. In the section “The technique of the image”, more details are given.
Although the fact of these touch-ups is not a secret, it is very little known by the public. To show the great beauty of the original face, this page includes a collection of photographs taken before this modification. They have been obtained from the book “True and Extraordinary Face of the Virgin of Guadalupe”, by Mr. Rodrigo Franyutti. You can click on the images to see them with higher resolution.
Photograph by Manuel Ramos, May 1923
Photograph of the Virgin's face captured by Manuel Ramos in May 1923, just a few years before its alteration. It shows a very young face, clearly revealing the texture of the ayate and the hair of the Virgin. We can also observe that the skin has a lighter tone than the current face, darkened due to the touch-ups of paint and its degradation over the years.
The same photograph by Manuel Ramos of May 1923 colored from a current image.
Photograph by Manuel Ramos, 1926
Photograph taken in 1885
Photograph taken from afar in 1885, the original also includes the frame of gold and silver that framed the image.
Painting prior to modification
Painting of great beauty that an unknown author made from the original face.
Photograph by Manuel Ramos, November 1923
Photograph by Manuel Ramos of November 1923, with the frame and the official stamp.
The two official photographs of 1923 and 1931 show the modification made on the face of the Virgin between these two years. Fr. José Luis de Urrutia writes:
The image has been retouched on several occasions. It is enough to compare high quality photographs that were made in 1923, with others commissioned by the ecclesiastical authority in 1930: the face was modified, that of 1923 was clearer; they have marred it by adding a jowl, shading the eyes, which now seem to be exorbitant; lengthening the nose, painting red lips, now large and disproportionate, darkening her hair and leaving it as stiff, smoothing the profile of the face, which has lost its exquisite contour.
In 1926, because of the terrible religious persecution, the bishops decided to close all the temples on August 1st, except that of Guadalupe, but the authentic image on July 31 was secretly replaced by a copy until June 1929. The Murguía family kept it. Who, when and why did they retouch it?
It had also been retouched at other times. According to descriptions prior to 1838, and in the copy that the painter J. Corral took for the town hall of S. Luis de Potosí that year, a crown of ten rays (or tips of gold) covered the head of the Virgin, which by 1883, when Fr. Gonzalo Carrasco, made a new copy, had completely disappeared.
Another Jesuit, Fr. Francisco de Florencia, in his book “The North Star of Mexico” (1668), says: «Those who cared for her cult considered that it would be nice to adorn her with cherubs, around the sun's rays... So it was executed, but in a short time everything superimposed was disfigured..., so that they were forced to erase it..., because of this it seems that in some parts around the image the colors are skipped».
It is strange and curious this desire to improve the image of the Virgin by amending the supernatural painter, also taking into account that the original color was perfectly preserved. Perhaps they intended to cover the dirt on the sides left by thousands of hands that touched it.
The images show a detail of the left eye of the Virgin. Mr. Rodrigo Franyutti shows how the supernatural author used three thick fibers of the tilma to form the eye and give it depth.
Father José Luis de Urrutia writes: «No painter would have chosen to paint a picture with such a fabric, more like sackcloth than a canvas. In addition, the tilma was made of two pieces, with a seam in the middle (which does not affect the face of the Virgin because it is tilted to her right). But the remarkable thing, another of the inexplicable phenomena, is that the author has been able to take advantage of all the imperfections of the fabric as a pictorial element».
Mr. Rodrigo Franyutti, affirms in his study: «To give luminosity and volume to a face at least you need two colors, one light and another dark for shadows. But in the face of the Virgin there is not a single shadow painted. The eyebrows, the edge of the nose, the mouth, and the eyes are nothing other than the same fabric, lacking any color superimposed with all its spots and irregularities, but used with such mastery that they look like extremely well-drawn profiles; all the features are nothing more than the fabric openings, stains and thick threads. For example, the profile shaping the nose is the very same fabric that ends in a thick thread in what is the tip of the nose. These features denote a technique superior to the human one, since the way the imperfections of the cloth have been used has no logical explanation: from the coarse it was obtained delicate effects and from the spots, holes and thick threads of the ayate, very thin features, without having put a gram of paint on them».
The Smith-Callagan report states: «One of the truly marvellous and inexplicable techniques utilized to give realism to the painting is the way it takes advantage of the unsized tilma to give it depth and render it lifelike. This is particularly evident in the mouth, where a coarse fiber of the fabric is raised above the level of the rest of the weave and follows perfectly the ridge at the top of the lip. The same rough imperfections occur below the highlighted area on the left cheek and to the right and below the right eye. I would consider it impossible that any human painter could select a tilma with imperfections of weave positioned so as to accentuate the shadows and highlights in order to impart realism. The possibility of [so multiple] conincidence[s] is even more unlikely!
The truly phenomenal thing about the face and hands is the tonal quality which is as much a physical effect from light reflecting off the coarse tilma as it is from the paint itself. It is a fact that if the image is looked at closely, one is disappointed by the surface sculpturing and coloring of the face. But looking at it from a distance it seems as if the pigment and surface sculpturing blend together to collect the light and refract the olive-skinned tone far away. As one moves away, the overwhelming beauty of the Madonna emerges as if by magic. It is the face of such beauty [even in spite of the retouching] and of execution so singular, that it is inexplicable for the current state of science».
Verifying the 1923 photograph
If we compare Manuel Ramos' 1923 photograph (left) with a more rencent one taken after the modification (right) we can easily verify that both have been taken from the same image: the weave of the threads of the ayate is the same in both photographs. This can be noticed very clearly in cells 1 and 2 of the yellow grid (click on the image to see it with higher resolution).
The post-modification photograph shows how they tried to soften the imperfections of the ayate where the Virgin placed the contour of his nose. Unfortunately all these touch-ups have not only spoiled the image, but also make it more difficult to perceive how the Virgin used all these fabric imperfections and stains to give shape and relief to her face.
On this part of the image, Mr. Rodrigo Franyutti writes:
«The whole tip of the nose is raised above the plane of the tilma, because thick threads of it were used to form that profile. That lifted the tip of his nose above his cheeks and mouth, turning it into a tridimensionsal element on the face.
The same goes for the eyes. See how the lower eyelid is raised above the cheek because a thick thread was used to form it. In the same way, the iris rises in a three-dimensional way».
The Eyes of Our Lady of Guadalupe
(January 2024 update)
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We have added to the website a page dedicated to the eyes of Our Lady of Guadalupe. There we include the most relevant reports of the doctors and ophthalmologists that have examined the eyes, together with some images in high resolution. You can have access to this information in the following link: “The Eyes of Our Lady of Guadalupe”.