Design for a Monstrance (Presented to the City of Trieste by King Louis XVIII)

Design for a Monstrance (Presented to the City of Trieste by King Louis XVIII)

Louis Lafitte

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

To-scale design for a monstrance, executed in pen and ink with a brown wash for the metal structure and a light gray wash for the roundel with Christ on the cross, which may have been executed in glass.The Louvre exhibition catalogue reveals that the drawing represents a design for a gift to the city of Trieste, designed by Lafitte, but executed by the royal goldsmith, Jean-Charles Cahier. It is possible that the monstrance was made as early as 1814, when the newly crowned King Louis XVIII sent an envoy to Trieste to recover the remains of his sisters who had died there while in exile.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Design for a Monstrance (Presented to the City of Trieste by King Louis XVIII)Design for a Monstrance (Presented to the City of Trieste by King Louis XVIII)Design for a Monstrance (Presented to the City of Trieste by King Louis XVIII)Design for a Monstrance (Presented to the City of Trieste by King Louis XVIII)Design for a Monstrance (Presented to the City of Trieste by King Louis XVIII)

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.