"Catrina" Doll

Female shelf figurine with a white veil in her hands. The Day fo the Dead has given rise to a great number and quantity of crafts, plastic objects, and ephemeral art, with an infinite number of decorative objects and ornaments alluding to death, which are displayed on domestic altars. "La Catrina" is a character in Mexican popular culture, linked with the Day of the Dead. She represents the deceased (as a skeleton), is elegantly dressed, and can usually be distinguished by her characteristically large sombrero. This representation came to the fore at the end of the 19th and start of the 20th centuries, during the Porfiriato regime, as a characterization of the upper class. Nowadays, it is a distinct symbol of death on the Day of the Dead. This figurine spread and reached maximum popularity after it appeared in prints by Manuel Manilla and José Guadalupe Posada, and in murals by Diego Rivera, notably in his famous mural "Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park.”