Lamp
Date
1700-1800
Creator
Name(s) currently unknown
Location
Mexico City, MEX, Museo Franz Mayer (current location)
Introduction
This lamp, probably made to illuminate a church or chapel in New Spain, is made out of silver worked in a variety of ways—cast, embossed and chiseled.
Iconography
The lamp would most likely have been hung from an interior roof beam or ceiling. It is covered with repeating floral and leaf designs pounded into the silver. The inverted cone of the base, made up of bulbous shapes, was popular at the beginning of the 18th century.
Patronage/Artist
While it is not known who made this lamp or where it originally hung, the production of silver pieces like this one would have been carefully controlled. There were regulations that governed the silver-maker’s guild and tests that pieces underwent to document their purity of material.
Material/Technique
Silver, abundant in Spanish America, was frequently used for church ornamentation, like lamps, candlesticks, chalices and monstrances.
Context/Collection History
The lamp is currently in the collection of the Museo Franz Mayer in Mexico City. The German-born Franz Mayer (1882-1975) was a prescient collector of colonial decorative arts and his personal collection, assembled in his home in Mexico City during his lifetime, forms the core of the present-day museum named for him.
Cultural Interpretation
Oil-burning lamps, like this one, added their glow to the darkened interiors of churches. Their shadowy light, so different from the bright outdoor sun, added to the otherworldly environment created within these sacred places.
Photo credit
Reproduced courtesy of the Museo Franz Mayer
Cite as
Dana Leibsohn and Barbara E. Mundy.
Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520-1820. http://www.fordham.edu/vistas, 2015.
Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520-1820. http://www.fordham.edu/vistas, 2015.
Selected bibliography
El arte de la platería mexicana: 500 años. 1989. Mexico City: Centro Cultural/Arte Contemporaneo.
The Grandeur of Viceregal Mexico: Treasures from the Museo Franz Mayer/ La grandeza del México virreinal: tesoros del Museo Franz Mayer. 2002. Houston. Texas and Mexico City: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and Museo Franz Mayer.
The Grandeur of Viceregal Mexico: Treasures from the Museo Franz Mayer/ La grandeza del México virreinal: tesoros del Museo Franz Mayer. 2002. Houston. Texas and Mexico City: The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and Museo Franz Mayer.
Collection
Citation
“Lamp,” VistasGallery, accessed December 10, 2023, https://vistasgallery.ace.fordham.edu/items/show/1764.