Portable altarpiece of the Virgin of Copacabana

During the seventeenth and a good part of the following century, one of the most valued mementos of visitors to the sanctuary of Copacabana (in the highlands of what is today Bolivia) were these small portable altars or retablos, which allowed pilgrims to transport the devotion of the Virgin to their homes. These are repoussé and engraved silver boxes in the form of a triptych topped by baroque coronations. Upon opening the doors one finds a miniature altarpiece, worked in gilded and polychrome paste that attempts meticulously to reproduce the main altar of the temple, dominated by the venerated image of the Virgin of Candelaria. It seems that the fragility of the paste and the intrinsic value of the silver determined the destiny of most of those pieces, contrasting their ubiquity in the past with their rareness in the present. Traditionally it has been considered that these small altars were produced by workshops located near Copacabana. Numerous documentary references that account for their devotional use in Cusco suggest, however, that they were produced in this city to be sold afterwards in the highland sanctuary, just as was the case also with the paintings of Our Lady of Cocharcas.