COLLECTION NAME:
Santo Collection
Record
Creator display:
O'Rourke, Robert (American santero, born 1926)
Creator note:
American santero
Creator role:
creator
Date display:
acquired 2012
Title:
Angel de la Muerte
Title:
Angel of Death
Inscription:
on bottom: [artist monogram consisting of cross atop capital R within a capital O that is connected to a mountain symbol to the right] / Angel of Death
Location name:
Fort Collins
Location name:
Colorado
Materials display:
carved wood (plant material)
Material name:
wood (plant material)
Source name:
Thomas J. Steele, S.J.: The Regis University Collection of New Mexico and Colorado Santos.
Work type:
bultos
Work type:
sculpture (visual works)
Acquisition note:
2012, gift of the artist
Accession number:
RU0868
Measurements display:
18.5 x 7.2 x 8.6 cm
Santo Subject:
Doña Sebastiana, La Carreta, El Ángel de Muerte (The Death Cart)
Santo Subject Type:
Other Subjects
Note:
A reminder of death, not to be prayed to; used as a penitential instrument in Holy Week processions. All death carts date from after the middle of the nineteenth century. Arrows symbolize epidemic sickness (cf. Iliad I). Death may bear the name "Sebastiana" because St. Sebastian was martyred with arrows. An allegorical figure of death as a skeletal or corpselike woman with a bow and arrow or a club. Most often recognized as only a reminder, it was perhaps in some places superstitiously prayed to for longer life. Steele, "The Death Cart," Colorado Magazine 55 (1978), 1-14; Wroth, Images of Penance, Images of Mercy, pp. 149-59.
Rights text:
IN COPYRIGHT - EDUCATIONAL USE PERMITTED