Monstrance

1646-1649

Atienza, Diego de

New York, NY, USA, Metropolitan Museum of Art (current location)

The focal point of this elegant monstrance is the clear crystal case at the center, meant to hold the Eucharistic host in public processions.

The rayed nimbus surrounding the central crystal case transformed the host into a tiny sun. Solar imagery is frequently associated with Jesus, whom faithful Catholics believe the host embodies.

A text written at the monstrance’s base reveals that it was made by the silversmith Diego de Atienza as a commission for the Spanish-born Mercedarian friar Pedro de Urraca. Instead of using it in Peru, Urraca sent the monstrance as a gift to his home parish in Guadalajara, Spain. This was unusual, since most of the New World silver sent across the Atlantic was raw bullion or minted coins to be used in commerce, not finished luxury goods like this monstrance.

The monstrance is an exquisite example of silver working techniques. Much of it is cast of silver. Decorative elements are the added gilding and blue enamel applied to the nimbus. When silversmiths like Diego de Atienza came over from Spain, they carried their metalworking techniques with them. Ironically, indigenous metalworkers possessed highly sophisticated technology themselves, but most of their pre-Hispanic works were melted down for bullion.

This superb piece of silverwork spent most of its life in Spain. The monstrance was given to the Metropolitan Museum in the 1930s by Colonel Michael Friedsam, a New York collector and philanthropist who headed the B. Altman department store.

Visually impressive objects like this monstrance, perhaps seen on a Church altar or paraded in an outdoor procession, conveyed to Christian viewers—in material and symbolic terms—the richness of the otherworld. The solar imagery of many monstrances and imagery of the stem (seen in later examples) lent the host a wealth of metaphorical meanings, many fully evident to the witnessing audience. Most obvious was the link made between the sun and Jesus, who was believed to be embodied in the host. Later monstrances sometimes have a small sculpture of the Virgin upholding the sun. The preciousness of such objects also reflected the religious value of the enclosed host, as well as the tastes and the status of its patron.

Reproduced courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Friedsam Collection, Bequest of Michael Friedsam

Dana Leibsohn and Barbara E. Mundy.
Vistas: Visual Culture in Spanish America, 1520-1820. http://www.fordham.edu/vistas, 2015.

Esteras Martín, C. 1984. Platería hispanoamericana, siglos XVI-XIX. Badajoz: Secretario Diocesano del Patrimonio Histórico-Artístico de Badajoz.

Esteras Martín, C. 1994. “A Peruvian Monstrance of 1649.” Metropolitan Museum of Art Journal 29: 71-76.

Esteras Martín, C. 2004. “Monstrance.” In The Colonial Andes: Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530-1830. Elena Phipps, Johanna Hecht and Cristina Esteras Martín, eds. Pp. 308. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.