A decorative picture placed on the wall over an altar.
Comment:In Christendom, this usually includes a frame including one or many pictures or statues, as well as a shelf used for candles, a tabernacle, or other altar-related equipment or decoration. In Eastern Christianity the retablo is typically an icon and may be part of a home altar. In Western Christianity it is normally a feature only of churches or chapels. Some (not all) Spanish speakers use the collective term reredo refers to an over-altar structure holding multiple statues in niches or framed paintings, each of which is then called a retablo. The Italian word predella is borrowed to refer to the base on which an altarpiece stands and/or to the row of pictures that often decorates it below the principle images.
In South America, the term "retablo" is extended to shadow boxes containing small dioramas, originally on religious themes, similar to the creches seen at Christmas in North America.
In Chinese homes what it is convenient to term a retablo normally consists only of one or more flat pictures mounted or pasted on the wall above a home altar, of which the upper table (in poor households or cramped quarters often only a shelf) supports candles, flowers, statues, and so on.
The word retablo is borrowed into English from Spanish, but an occasional, if unfortunate, English transformation of it is "retable," awkwardly pronounced RE-table or RETT-able, (provocatively rhyming with "regrettable"). Attempts to borrow the distinction between reredo and retablo have so far been successfully resisted by most English speakers.
Definition Revised: 2023-08-30
Script Last Modified: 2025-02-04
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