Book overview
This new book tells the intriguing story of the search for, and discovery of, wonderful, rare silver-gilt religious vessels thought lost for centuries.
In 1767 and 1768, a number of objects made by renowned eighteenth-century Roman goldsmith Luigi Valadier (1726-1785) were sent from Rome to an unnamed "principal church in Mexico," among them a monstrance (a vessel in which the consecrated Host is shown). All were thought to be lost. During the course of The Frick Collection's 2018 exhibition Luigi Valadier: Splendor in Eighteenth-Century Rome, Xavier F. Salomon kept asking himself whether the lost treasure might be found. The odds were slim because objects made of gold, silver, and precious stones have so often been melted for cash or recycling. But after an extensive search, Salomon located the monstrance in the Cathedral of Le