The original of this image of Our Lady of Guadalupe was hand painted on a 20”x 36” deerskin e by a Franciscan missionary in the 17th century in what is now New Mexico. Silkscreen artist Martha Ann Wallker created a print based on the original. My mother, Stella Marie Schmitt Ely (1912-1946) wrote a poem describing the print. The print is in a book Sacred Paintings on Skin published in 1944 by the Museum of New Mexico Press. Paintings were done with native vegetable dyes on animal hides were prepared as graphic teaching aids. The Friars could easily roll them and carry them on to the next stop on their missionary journeys.
“December roses on a stony hill?
Poor fool-he’s mad, completely mad, poor fool1”
Thus spoke the unbelieving ones.
But from his tilma Juan Diego cast
Before them roses, red, and velvet-soft,
And there upon the homely cloth
There glowed an image of his vision fair,
‘Twas just as she had come before
Upon the hills where Juan was hunting herbs,
And told him softly of her wish to build
Upon that spot a place of prayer and praise.
She stood in shining brightness, tall and fair;
Her hands were clasped in an attitude of prayer;
The crescent moon, content to touch her feet,
The stars, to cling upon her azure robe,
The sun, which all around her spread its rays,
Were to her brightness as is dawn today.
They’d asked for facts, for proof--well, here it was-
A miracle! The unbelieving knew;
The scornful bowed; the simple-hearted prayed,
And all together build the shrine she asked.
Thus Guadalupe wrought a miracle
Of Gentleness and faith. In human hearts
Uncounted everlasting shrines were born.
Marie Schmitt Ely
