ESThe Face of Our Lady of Guadalupe
Between 1926 and 1931, the face of Our Lady of Guadalupe was retouched. This is a truly unfortunate fact, as the evidence of the image's supernatural origin is overwhelming and, therefore, it should never have been touched by human hands.
Far from validating the detractors of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the areas affected by the repaints appear disfigured, with colors that have degraded and darkened, while the colors of the original image have remained unaltered for over 400 years. Fr. José de Jesús Aguilar Valdés, who has had the opportunity to view the original ayate directly, comments on this: «Unfortunately, we could see that in the last century a painter tried to restore parts damaged during the three years it was rolled up [due to religious persecution] and added some repaints to the face, which can immediately be seen as not part of the original and, fortunately, are peeling off.»
The fact of these touch-ups is no secret, but it remains very little known by the general public. To show the great beauty of the original face, this page includes a collection of photographs taken before this modification was carried out. They have been obtained from the book The True & ExtraOrdinary Face of the Virgin of Guadalupe, by Mr. Rodrigo Franyutti.
Photographs by Manuel Ramos
On November 14, 1921, a man placed a bouquet of flowers at the feet of the image of Our Lady in the old Basilica. Hidden among the foliage was a high-powered bomb, which eventually exploded with a devastating detonation. Mexican physicist Adolfo Orozco, in his study for the Center for Guadalupan Studies, describes the magnitude of the event: the bomb was located barely five meters from the image and the energy released was so great that it shattered the windows of buildings more than a kilometer away. A heavy bronze crucifix next to the ayate ended up bent by the shockwave. And yet, both the original ayate and the ordinary glass that protected it remained intact, without a single crack.
In the aftermath of this attack, ecclesiastical authorities decided to reinforce everything related to the security and conservation of the image. To achieve this, a change of frame and various technical adjustments were scheduled, which required the removal of the protective glass. It was in this context that the historic opportunity arose to photograph the ayate directly—a task entrusted to the renowned Mexican photographer Manuel Ramos. The photographs he captured in May 1923 became the official images of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Original photograph of the ayate of Our Lady of Guadalupe taken by Manuel Ramos in May 1923. The photographer's name (Ramos) appears at the bottom of the image, as was customary in photographic prints of the time.
Original photograph of the ayate of Our Lady of Guadalupe taken by Manuel Ramos in May 1923, with color information transferred from a modern photograph.
Photograph of the original face of Our Lady of Guadalupe taken by Manuel Ramos in May 1923. It reveals a very young face, clearly showing the texture of the ayate and Our Lady's hair. We can also observe that the skin has a lighter tone than the current face, which has darkened due to the paint touch-ups and their degradation over the years.
The same photograph of Our Lady's face by Manuel Ramos, colorized using a current image.
Photograph by Manuel Ramos of the ayate along with its protective frame; the print includes the official seal.
Other photographs
Photograph taken from a distance in 1885; the original also includes the gold and silver frame that enclosed the image.
A painting of great beauty that an unknown author created based on the original face.
The official photographs of 1923 and 1931 clearly show the modifications made to Our Lady's face between these two years. Regarding these alterations, Fr. José Luis de Urrutia writes:
«The image has been retouched on several occasions. It is enough to compare high-quality photographs taken in 1923 with others commissioned by the ecclesiastical authority in 1930: the face was modified; the 1923 version was lighter. They have disfigured it by adding a double chin, shading the eyes, which now seem bulging; lengthening the nose, painting the lips red—now large and disproportionate—darkening the hair and leaving it looking stiff, and smoothing the profile of the face, which has lost its exquisite contour.
«In 1926, due to the terrible religious persecution, the bishops decided to close all churches on August 1st, except that of Guadalupe, but the authentic image was secretly replaced by a copy on July 31st until June 1929. The Murguía family kept it safe. 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 made for the city council of San Luis Potosí that year, a crown of ten gold rays or points covered Our Lady's head, which by 1883, when Fr. Gonzalo Carrasco made a new copy, had completely disappeared.
«Another Jesuit, Fr. Francisco de Florencia, in the book The North Star of Mexico (1668), says: “It seemed to those who cared for her devotion that it would be good to adorn her with angels, around the sun's rays... So it was executed, but in a short time everything superimposed was disfigured..., so they were forced to erase it..., for this reason, it seems that in some parts around the image, the colors are chipped away”.
«This desire to improve the image of Our Lady by correcting the supernatural painter is strange and curious, bearing in mind, moreover, that the original color was perfectly preserved. Perhaps the intention was to cover up the dirt on the sides left by thousands of hands that had touched it.»
The images show a detail of Our Lady's left eye. Mr. Rodrigo Franyutti highlights how the supernatural author used three thick threads of the tilma to form the eye and give it depth.
One of the most impressive aspects of the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe is that it was created by 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. Fr. José Luis de Urrutia writes about this: «No painter would have chosen to paint a picture on such a fabric, more akin to 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 Our Lady because her head is tilted to her right). But the remarkable thing, another of the inexplicable phenomena, is that the maker has been able to take advantage of all the imperfections of the fabric as a pictorial element».
Mr. Rodrigo Franyutti states in his study: «To give luminosity and volume to a face, you must use at least two colors: a light one and a dark one for the shadows. But on the face of Our Lady, there is not a single painted shadow. The eyebrows, the edge of the nose, the mouth, and the eyes are nothing other than the fabric itself, devoid of any superimposed color with all its stains and irregularities, but utilized with such mastery that they look like extremely well-drawn profiles; all the features are nothing more than gaps in the fabric, stains, and thick threads. For example, the profile that forms the nose is simply the fabric itself ending in a thick thread at the tip of the nose. These features denote a technique superior to human capability, since the way the imperfections of the cloth have been used defies logical explanation: delicate effects were obtained from coarse material, and from the stains, holes, and thick threads of the ayate, very fine features emerged, without a single gram of paint being applied to 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
Comparing Manuel Ramos' 1923 photograph (left) with a more recent one taken after the modification (right), we can verify that both were taken from the same image: the weave of the ayate's threads is identical in both photographs. This can be seen very clearly in cells 1 and 2 of the yellow grid (click on the image to view it in higher resolution).
In the post-modification photograph, we can see how they tried to soften the imperfections of the ayate where Our Lady placed the contour of her nose. Unfortunately, all these touch-ups have not only disfigured the image, but they also make it more difficult to notice how Our Lady crafted her face by making use of all the imperfections and stains of the cloth to give it shape and relief.
Regarding this part of the image, Mr. Rodrigo Franyutti writes: «The entire tip of the nose is raised above the plane of the tilma, because the thick threads of the fabric were used to form that profile. That lifted the tip of the nose above the cheeks and the mouth, turning it into a three-dimensional element on the face.
«The same applies to the eyes. See how the lower eyelid is raised above the cheek thanks to the use of a thick thread to form it. Similarly, the iris rises in a three-dimensional manner».
The eyes of Our Lady of Guadalupe
(January 2024 update)
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We have added a page dedicated to the eyes of Our Lady of Guadalupe to the website. In it, we include the most relevant reports from the doctors and ophthalmologists who have examined the eyes, accompanied by some high-resolution images. You can access this information at the following link: The eyes of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
