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Casket

Casket

  • Place of origin:

    Peru (probably, made)
    Bolivia (made)

  • Date:

    1598-1621 (and certainly before 1685) (made)

  • Artist/Maker:

    unknown (production)

  • Materials and Techniques:

    silver, embossing, chasing

  • Museum number:

    275-1879

  • Gallery location:

    In store

  • Image in copyright

This casket (Spanish 'arqueta') for personal possessions was made in an unidentified workshop in the Spanish colony of 'Alto Peru' (the Andean region of modern Bolivia and Peru). The decoration includes mermaids playing the 'charango' (a type of Peruvian guitar), viscachas (a South American rodent) and catfish. The town and maker's marks stamped on the base had originally suggested to scholars that the casket was made in Toledo (the silversmith Antonio Pérez de Montalto, whose mark appears here, was also assay master there between 1654 and 1685). However, as the ornament on this casket closely resembles other examples on silverware, furnishings and textiles made in the Andean region of colonial Spain, it seems the Spanish marks are a later indication the piece was tested for the quality of its metal.
An inscription on the lid reveals its original owner was a woman called Mencía Tenorio. A lady of the same name is recorded in Seville in 1607, among the servants connected to the household of the future Viceroy of Peru, the Marquis of Montesclaros (ruled 1608-1615).

Physical description

Oblong casket of silver with arched top and drop handles (the handle on the lid missing). Embossed and engraved with a mixture of Andean Indian and Western motifs, including mermaids, monkeys, catfish, viscachas, the sacred heart emblem of the Augustinian order (which also forms the lock plate) and male figures in seventeenth-century Western dress who play a ball game around a flower or bush.

Place of Origin

Peru (probably, made)
Bolivia (made)

Date

1598-1621 (and certainly before 1685) (made)

Artist/maker

unknown (production)

Materials and Techniques

silver, embossing, chasing

Marks and inscriptions

Toledo town mark T below O in rectangular punch for the seventeenth century (see Enciclopedia no. 1298) and maker's mark APE/REZ in rectangular punch for Antonio Pérez de Montalto stamped on the underside of the casket.

Zig-zag assay marks at the rim of the underside of the lid and on the base.
Este CoFre es de mi s[eñor]a / dona mensia tenorio Spanish, cursive script. 'This casket [belongs to] my lady Mencia Tenorio'.
Juegan ala peloda [sic, instead of modern Spanish 'pelota']. Spanish, cursive script. 'They play ball'.
Juegan a la peLoda E a peRden [sic] 'They play ball And they lose it'

Dimensions

Height: 30 cm maximum height, Width: 39 cm, Depth: 17.5 cm, Weight: 4082.7 g

Object history note

The casket was made in an unidentified workshop in the Spanish colony of 'Alto Peru' (the Andean region of modern Bolivia and Peru). The original owner was a woman called Mencía Tenorio, who may be the lady of the same name identified as a servant of Don Diego Núñez de Ovando in Seville in 1607. Ovando was chamberlain to the Marquis of Montesclaros, governor of Peru between 1608-1615; Mencía was part of the retinue who followed the governor and his household to Peru in 1608 (Esteras Martín: 2006, p.197). The marks stamped on the underside of the casket show it was sent to Spain at an unspecified date before 1685 and presented at the Toledo assay office for testing. Antonio de Montalto, whose mark appears here, was assay master at Toledo between 1654 and 1685.
The Museum purchased the casket in 1879 for £92 'from a convent at Toledo' (Special Loan Exhibition, cat. no. 884).

Historical significance: The form of this casket (Spanish, 'arqueta') was popular in Spain and Spanish America from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries (cf. for example cat. nos 67 and 133 in The Colonial Andes.) Given the wealth of the Spanish colonial empire during the seventeenth century, these caskets were typically constructed of thick silver plates (as here), rather than of silver plaques nailed to a wooden core (see Esteras Martín, cat. entry 133 in The Colonial Andes). The piece is unusual because it is engraved with the name of its owner, Mencía Tenorio. Another silver casket of different form but also bearing Mencía's name and with similar decoration survives in a Peruvian private collection (Colección Enrico Poli, Lima: see Esteras Martín, 2006, p.196).
The town and maker's marks stamped on the base had originally suggested to scholars that the casket was made in Toledo, and English and Spanish writers have argued the source of the unusual iconography lies in Portuguese Sri Lanka (Oman: 1968) or in Islamic Spain (for a summary of the arguments, see Esteras Martín: 2004, p.195). The most recent research (Esteras Martín: 2006 and Hecht: 2004) places the mermaid and animal motifs in the context of the silversmithing workshops of the Viceroyalty of Peru, in the area known as 'Alto Perú' (today the Andean region of Bolivia and Peru).

Historical context note

Silver caskets of this type generally held personal possessions but could also be used in an ecclesiastical context to store the consecrated bread wafers, or Hosts, essential to the Christian celebration of mass (for an example see The Colonial Andes, cat. no. 133). Esteras Martín (2006, p.196) suggests the figures of men playing and losing a ball game depicted on the sides reflect the casket's role as a prize in a wager. The fact the Museum purchased the casket from a religious institution in Toledo in the nineteenth century may imply it was originally brought to Spain by a Spaniard (male or female) who was entering holy orders (Esteras Martín 2006, p.200).

Descriptive line

Silver, Perú or Bolivia, 1608-1654, stamped on base with maker's mark of Antonio Pérez de Montalto and town mark of Toledo.

Bibliographic References (Citation, Note/Abstract, NAL no)

Robinson, J. C., ed. Catalogue of the Special Loan Exhibition of Spanish and Portuguese Ornamental Art, South Kensington Museum, 1881. London: Chapman & Hall, 1881.
See no. 884, p. 135.
Oman, Charles. The Golden Age of Hispanic Silver 1400-1665. London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1968.
Cat. no. 169 and figure 265.
Fernández, Alejandro, Rafael Munoa and Jorge Rabasco. Enciclopedia de la Plata española y Virreinal americana. Madrid: The Authors, 1984. ISBN: 84-398-2413-0
See entry 1298 (for Toledo mark) and p.413 for black and white image of the casket.
Hecht, Johanna. The Past is Present: Transformation and Persistence of Imported Ornament in Viceregal Peru. In: Phipps, Elena, Johanna Hecht and Cristina Esteras Martín, eds. The Colonial Andes: Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530-1830. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004. pp. 43-57. Catalogue of an exhibition held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, September 29 - December 12 2004. ISBN 1588391310 (hardcover).
See p.52 and p.53, fig.54 for a colour illustration of the casket.
Phipps, Elena, Johanna Hecht and Cristina Esteras Martín, eds. The Colonial Andes: Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530-1830. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004. Catalogue of an exhibition held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, September 29 - December 12 2004. ISBN 1588391310 (hardcover).
Esteras Martín, Cristina. Platería hispanoamericana en el Museo Victoria y Alberto, de Londres (Nuevas aportaciones). In: Estudios de Platería - San Eloy 2006. Murcia: Universidad de Murcia, 2004. pp. 191-204.
This publication is available online at:
http://www.um.es/publicaciones/digital/pdfs/san-eloy-2006.pdf
[consulted 07.03.2011]. A copy of the article in the Metalwork section object folder.
For the casket, see especially pp. 195-200.

Production Note

The maker's mark of Antonio Pérez and the Toledo town mark were added when the casket was brought back to Spain and assayed.

Materials

Silver

Techniques

Chasing; Embossing

Subjects depicted

Bird; Flower; Lions; Heart; Monkey; Mermaid; Guitar; Ball; Catfish; Viscachas

Collection code

MET

Qr_O124262
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