Alegoría

The dialogue with the foundational myth of Costa Rican visuality is declared from the very first glance. By reinterpreting the celebrated ceiling mural painted by Aleardo Villa in 1897 for the National Theatre, Felipe Cortes Reyes not only turns to a landmark of pictorial heritage, but to the graphic artifact that rooted it in collective memory: the five-colón banknote. The print meticulously adopts the syntax of paper currency, complete with geometric filigree borders, guilloché medallions framing the upper corners, and solemn typography sealing the scene along the bottom edge.

The elongated horizontal format articulates a two-fold narrative of nineteenth-century agro-export progress. To the left, port activity bustles amid masts, smoking funnels, and dockworkers carrying sacks stamped with the legend of national coffee. To the right, the plane recedes into the lushness of the countryside: women in aprons and hats gather beans among coffee trees and palms, accompanied by the gentle silhouette of an ox. At the exact center, functioning as a visual and human hinge between the plantation and the shipping pier, a peasant balances a bunch of bananas on his shoulder and directs his gaze straight at the viewer.

The graphic execution modulates sepia monochrome over the warm white of the paper through a dense layering of crosshatching and microscopic stippling. Cortes Reyes gives the tropical vegetation an opulent texture that contrasts with the clarity of the open sky and the geometric precision of the nautical rigging.

By transposing this imaginary into the intimate scale of printmaking on paper, the image reactivates a foundational fiction of identity: that republican idyll that envisioned agricultural labor as harmonious, abundant, and free of friction. The faithful inclusion of numismatic inscriptions and borders underscores the historical construct of this productive paradise, reminding us that national identity was also an image carefully crafted to circulate from hand to hand.