Monstrance

Diego de Atienza

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The inscription indicates that this monstrance was made for Pedro de Urraca, a Spanish-born Mercedarian friar who spent most of his life in Ecuador and Peru, where he was revered for the holiness of his ministry. Urraca probably commissioned the monstrance from Atienzia as a gift to his native parish of Jadraque in Guadalajara, Spain. Such donations are responsible for the presence of much New World silver in Spanish churches. Although the monstrance stem conforms to the "Severe" style of silver in early seventeenth-century Spain, the elaborate composition of the sol anticipates the distinctive development of the form in Peru.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art