Retablo of Saint Joseph walking with the Christ Child

“St. Joseph’s veneration was introduced to Mexico in the 1520s by the first Observant Franciscan missionaries in the Americas. In 1555, St. Joseph was proclaimed patron of the viceroyalty of New Spain (present-day Mexico, Central America, and the Philippines) by the First Provincial Council of Mexico. In Mexican Colonial and retablo art, St. Joseph is consistently depicted as a youthful but mature, gentle but vigorous father figure.

While this subject [Joseph walking with the Christ Child] is frequently found in Spanish Golden-Age and Colonial art, it is rare in Mexican retablo art. Besides divine election, St. Joseph’s staff also had other meanings, derived from the Bible, such as protection (the shepherd’s staff or crook) and patriarchal authority (Genesis 38:18, 25). In St. Joseph’s case, the latter referenced his role as the head of God’s household, the Holy Family, as well as the lieutenant (literally ‘taking the place’) of God the Father on earth, and is encapsulated by titles often preceding the saint’s name in the Spanish-speaking world: lord (señor) and patriarch. Evoking the iconographic formula for representing the Guardian Angel (an angel leading a child by the hand or wrist), this image likewise reflects the notion, commonplace in devotional literature, that St. Joseph was Jesus’s Guardian Angel who accompanied and protected Him on the journeys that the Holy Family undertook and throughout the years of the Hidden Life at Nazareth.” (Rev. Joseph F. Chorpenning, O.S.F.S., S.T.L., Ph.D., notes in curatorial file for 05.OP.614)