Head of Santo

Head of a Santo is derived from a late nineteenth-century Crucifixion by Santero José Benito Ortega. Cady Wells began collecting Spanish Colonial religious art after meeting E. Boyd, a fellow artist who would become one of the foremost experts on the Santero tradition. Over roughly fifteen years, Wells would amass a collection of approximately 250 pieces and ultimately donated his collection to the Museum of New Mexico in 1951 with the condition that E. Boyd be hired as a curator for a newly formed Department of Spanish Colonial Art. In Head of a Santo, Wells focused on the head of Christ, similar to the paintings of Georges Rouault, and used a limited mottled palette suggestive of stained glass.