Parts of a Virgin’s Tunic (b)
Parts of a Virgin’s Tunic
Early 19th Century
Silver
(a.) H: 16 1/2” x L : 8” x W: 5” (42 cm x 20 cm x 13 cm)
(b.) H: 9” x L : 28”(23 cm x 71 cm)
Lot 100 of the Leon Gallery auction on 29 November 2014. See leon-gallery.com/v2/gallery/home
Estimate: P 40,000
During the Spanish Colonial Period wealth was always either invested in agricultural land and real estate or kept in the form of coin or in jewels. The last wills and testaments of the 17th to the end of the 19th centuries show that those who were very rich used a lot of silver in their daily lives, mainly for show, of course. Some even had hundreds of kilos of silver in the form of cutlery, flatware and hollowware for their dining tables to impress their guests during fiestas. In these wills, however, very, very few mention santos with silver vestments.
Apparently, only the churches, more particularly the religious orders, had the means to clothe their images with beaten silver. The pieces of lightly embossed and chased openwork silver above belonged to the tunic of a Virgin that must have stood one meter tall and was of ‘de bastidor’ type with an ivory head. The silver was appliqued to a velvet tunic stretched over a wooden frame or bastidor. The statue’s mantle would have been of gold-embroidered cloth.
The workmanship of the silver is very intricate, with the scrollwork very fluidly executed. The silversmith was most certainly Chinese, as evidenced by the large peony chased on the cota maya or breastplate. Cota de malla or chainmail was called such by local plateros or silversmiths and the Andalusians, as well. Exceptional, however, are the large feligrana or filigree flowers decorating the hem of the tunic. Three-dimensional flowers like these, en tremblant, were often used in silver ramilletes, the bunches of flowering branches that decorated the andas or processional floats of santos. Its use in a vestment is unusual.
Parts of a Virgin’s Tunic (b)
Parts of a Virgin’s Tunic
Early 19th Century
Silver
(a.) H: 16 1/2” x L : 8” x W: 5” (42 cm x 20 cm x 13 cm)
(b.) H: 9” x L : 28”(23 cm x 71 cm)
Lot 100 of the Leon Gallery auction on 29 November 2014. See leon-gallery.com/v2/gallery/home
Estimate: P 40,000
During the Spanish Colonial Period wealth was always either invested in agricultural land and real estate or kept in the form of coin or in jewels. The last wills and testaments of the 17th to the end of the 19th centuries show that those who were very rich used a lot of silver in their daily lives, mainly for show, of course. Some even had hundreds of kilos of silver in the form of cutlery, flatware and hollowware for their dining tables to impress their guests during fiestas. In these wills, however, very, very few mention santos with silver vestments.
Apparently, only the churches, more particularly the religious orders, had the means to clothe their images with beaten silver. The pieces of lightly embossed and chased openwork silver above belonged to the tunic of a Virgin that must have stood one meter tall and was of ‘de bastidor’ type with an ivory head. The silver was appliqued to a velvet tunic stretched over a wooden frame or bastidor. The statue’s mantle would have been of gold-embroidered cloth.
The workmanship of the silver is very intricate, with the scrollwork very fluidly executed. The silversmith was most certainly Chinese, as evidenced by the large peony chased on the cota maya or breastplate. Cota de malla or chainmail was called such by local plateros or silversmiths and the Andalusians, as well. Exceptional, however, are the large feligrana or filigree flowers decorating the hem of the tunic. Three-dimensional flowers like these, en tremblant, were often used in silver ramilletes, the bunches of flowering branches that decorated the andas or processional floats of santos. Its use in a vestment is unusual.