Audio

To the Holy Sepulcher: Masterpieces from the Terra Sancta Museum | Audio Tour, Introduction

Speaker: Xavier F. Salomon

Xavier F. Salomon: We are in the exhibition To the Holy Sepulcher: Masterpieces from the Terra Sancta Museum. This is an extraordinary assembly of incredible masterpieces of European art that were sent to the Holy Sepulcher as gifts from the Catholic countries. We collaborated on this project with the Custody of the Holy Land, which is currently creating a museum that will open in the next few years known as the Terra Sancta Museum in the Convent of St. Savior in Jerusalem. And in that museum, these objects and many other treasures will be shown.

The exhibition shows unique objects. These are all metalwork, goldsmith, and silversmith work, and textiles, liturgical vestments created between the late 16^th and the late 18^th century in Europe. These were all gifts from Catholic countries in Europe. So you will find objects created, made in France, Spain, Portugal, certain areas of Italy, Venice, Genova, Naples, and the Empire, Vienna. Of course, you will not find anything at the time that was made in Protestant countries, in the United Kingdom, for example, or Germany, or the Netherlands. So it's very much about Catholic Europe sending these incredible gifts to the Holy Sepulcher.

The objects here are unique in the world, often no other examples of silver objects or gold objects or vestments of this kind can be found anywhere else in Europe or in the world. Why an exhibition like this at The Frick? This fits very well with our collections of paintings and decorative arts. First of all, the most important picture in the collection, of course, is Bellini's St. Francis in the Desert. This is an exhibition of objects that have been kept by the Franciscans in Jerusalem for a very long period over centuries, but there are also some other links.

There is a great throne of exposition in the exhibition, which was a gift of King Philip IV of Spain. He's, of course, the subject of our Velázquez portrait. When you start looking at the decoration of some of the objects, the metalwork made in Vienna, is very similar to Viennese Du Paquier porcelain, which we have in the collection. You will find vestments given by Louis XV. It was his mistress, Madame du Barry, who commissioned the Fragonard room. So there are all sorts of links between the exhibition, the objects in the exhibition, and our collection here at The Frick.

This is a unique opportunity to see these objects here in New York. None of these objects has ever been to the United States before, so it's an extraordinary opportunity to be able to see these objects, to study them, to examine them. It's wonderful to be able to have this conversation between these objects and our collection. And I hope that everyone who comes to the show understands how great this collection is, and will be able eventually to see it at the Terra Sancta Museum once that opens in the next few years.

To the Holy Sepulcher: Masterpieces from the Terra Sancta Museum | Audio Tour, Full Length

Speaker: Xavier F. Salomon

Xavier F. Salomon: Welcome to the exhibition To the Holy Sepulcher: Treasures from the Terra Sancta Museum. I am Xavier Salomon, I am one of the three curators of this exhibition, and I will accompany you on this tour over the next 50 minutes, looking at the objects in this exhibition. You are in the Garden Court of The Frick Collection and this is where the entrance to the exhibition is. To the left of the door, you see in a vitrine a model, a wooden model decorated with precious materials. This is an incredible 18th-century object which represents the key site for which all of the objects in this exhibition were originally created and conceived: the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is the most important and sacred site for the Christian religion. It is a site that is divided between various Christian denominations. The focus of this exhibition is what is known as the Latin Treasure. That is, the objects that were given over the centuries to the Catholic Church at the Holy Sepulcher. And the Catholic Church at the Holy Sepulcher is represented by the Custody of the Holy Land, the Custodia di Terra Sancta, which is run by the Franciscan Order, the Franciscan Friars, and they've been taking care of the Catholic holy sites in the Middle East since the 14th century.

Because it was so difficult to travel to the Holy Land in the past, models such as this one, in this case made of precious materials like pistachio wood, camel bone, mother of pearl, were sent all over the world to make people understand what the Church of the Holy Sepulcher looked like. So for all of those who have not been to the church, this is a reminder of what the church looks like. And if you look to the right of the door, into the exhibition, you will see a photo of what the complex looks like today. Little different from the model but essentially the same with its two domes, the entrance into the church and the bell tower. But now let’s go through the door and into the first room of the exhibition.

This is an introductory room to the themes and the symbols you will encounter throughout the exhibition. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher stands on the site where two key events took place for Christianity. Part of it is the area of Calvary, Golgotha, where Christ was crucified and died, and then in the middle of the rotunda of the Holy Sepulcher, there is the tomb of Christ, where he was buried and where he was said to have resurrected from three days later.

In this room, you have two objects that bring to life the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ. Immediately to the right of the door, you will see a reliquary of the True Cross. This is a gilt bronze object from France created in the 1620s. And in the middle of it, there is a tiny piece of wood, which is a relic of the cross on which Christ was crucified. Reliquaries of this kind were created throughout Europe, and they were often obviously in the shape of a cross. And in this case, you have two beautiful angels flanking the object. So this is a reminder of the death of Christ on the cross, his Passion.

On the left, the largest object in this room is this impressive monumental relief in silver showing the Resurrection of Christ. Christ, displaying the wounds of the Crucifixion, triumphantly ascends from his tomb, while the Roman soldiers that are guarding it are asleep on the sides. He holds a banner to show the triumph of life over death. And of course, his body is beautifully represented almost in three-dimensional form. The sculpture becomes, from a relief, almost freestanding as you look at it.

At the top there is a Latin inscription which tells us that this object was created in Naples, in Italy, in 1736. It is an extraordinary object because of its size, the material used, but also the decoration of it. Look at the way in which every single part of silver is decorated, even the clouds, the sky in the background, everything is chiseled and chased in extraordinary ways. What you see on the banner that Christ is holding is the symbol of Jerusalem for Christians, the five crosses. And you will encounter this symbol throughout the exhibition.

If you look to the side at the two vitrines flanking the door, you will see two religious vestments. There are two chasubles which are worn by priests during Mass. On the one on the left, you will see again the symbol of the five crosses of Jerusalem. The five crosses symbolize the five wounds, two on the hands, two on the feet, and one in the chest, that Christ suffered during the Passion.

So, obviously the link between the symbol and the Passion of Christ is a very direct one. And if you look at the chasuble on the right of the door, you will see again these symbols throughout the object, but you will also see a number of other images, which are the so-called Arma Christi, the symbols of the Passion of Christ. You will see the crown of thorns, you will see the column to which Christ was tied and the whips with which he was flagellated. You will see the robes that were taken away from him before the Crucifixion. The hammer, pliers, lance, sponge, a number of symbols and creatures like the rooster, for example, that all take part in some way or another in the descriptions of the Passion of Christ.

This exhibition displays goldsmith, silversmith work, metalwork basically, and religious vestments. And those are the two categories in which the Latin Treasure of the Custodia is particularly rich in. So you will encounter these types of objects throughout the exhibition.

The other object in this room is a humeral veil, which is a piece of cloth that would be worn by a priest around his shoulders on specific occasions, specific liturgies. But what is interesting about this piece is that it is actually a piece of Islamic fabric. The red fabric decorated with silver thread is probably either Middle Eastern or Spanish, and it was then reused for a Christian vestment at the time of King Philip II of Spain. And the coat of arms you see embroidered on the back of this object is the coat of arms of the king. So this is a case of reuse of a certain object, and it’s also a reminder that throughout the 17th and 18th century, the two centuries that this exhibition focuses on, the Holy Land, the Christian Holy Land, Jerusalem, were very firmly under Islamic Ottoman rule. So we have to imagine that the Christian community was co-inhabiting that part of the world with a majority Islamic population.

So this room is really designed to give you a general idea about the symbols you will encounter throughout the exhibition, the type of objects you will encounter throughout the exhibition, and it tells us that what we’ll be looking at throughout this exhibition are gifts mostly from monarchs or countries that were Catholic in Europe in the 17th and 18th century, and that would send objects to the Holy Sepulcher to celebrate the importance of the site, a site that was difficult to access physically for pilgrims who found it very difficult to reach the Middle East in that period in history. Straight ahead is the first thematic room of the exhibition that focuses on a specific country.

The Custodia di Terra Sancta, the Custody, headed by a Custos, who was appointed by the pope and still is to this day, is the Franciscan organization that would take care of the Holy Sepulcher and other sites in the Holy Land. The Custodia had different related sites all over Europe that were known as Commissariates, Commissariati, and the Commissariati in cities like Paris and Vienna, and Madrid and Venice were effectively working as sites that would do fundraising for the Holy Sepulcher and the Franciscans, and would organize the sending of money, food, objects that would’ve been sent to the Holy Land and to Jerusalem throughout the centuries. All of these shipments are effectively recorded in large books in Jerusalem known as condotte, and that allows us to be very precise about when all of these objects arrived in Jerusalem. So we know that certain things were sent, for example, from Paris at a specific date to the Holy Sepulcher.

They are expensive gifts from monarchs, but sometimes from the population of a city or a country under a specific ruler. But we have to imagine that everything you’ll see in this exhibition comes from Catholic countries in the 17th and 18th century. So you will have objects from France, from Spain, from the Empire, from Portugal, from certain Italian states. You will not encounter anything from Protestant countries. There is nothing from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, or some German states that were Protestant at the time.

This first room focuses on France. France is one of the essentially Catholic countries in Europe at this time and in this room you have gifts from the three monarchs who ruled France during the 17th and 18th centuries: Louis XIII, Louis XIV, and Louis XV.

Again, the objects are goldsmith work and textiles, but straight in front of you, there is a display that is meant to show how these objects were used. And what we have to think about in this exhibition is that you’re looking at great works of art, often unique survivals in these fields of textiles and silver and goldsmith, but there were also objects that were used, and to some degree, are still used on special occasions in Jerusalem. So this display is set up as a solemn Mass with dalmatics and copes. These are the vestments that you see in front of you, in front of an altar with candlesticks, a cross, and with a lamp hanging above from the ceiling. All of these objects were gifts of King Louis XIII and his wife, Anne of Austria, that were sent to Jerusalem between 1617 and 1645, so over a period of several decades. And they're immediately recognizable as French gifts because of the omnipresent appearance of the fleurs-de-lys, the lilies, the gold lilies that symbolize the French crown. You see them on the vestments, you see them on the candlesticks, on the cross, on the lamp.

On top of that, you also see the coat of arms of France on the back of the central cope, for example, the three gold lilies on the blue ground next to the red part of the coat of arms, which is the kingdom of Navarre, which was also part of the French crown at the time. And you see below the dove an L under a crown for Louis. And on the other vestments you also see A’s for Anne of Austria. It is extraordinary that objects from the 17th century like these survive in such good condition. And it is extraordinary to see them all together here in this remarkable ensemble. It is also important to point out that some of these objects would’ve been changed over time. So, we know that the vestments in this case were originally on a white ground and only later the background fabric was changed to the current red one.

This has an important significance also in terms of the use of these objects. Liturgical colors in vestments denote certain times of the year. So if a vestment, a cope or a chasuble, is red or purple or white or black or green, it determines the type of occasions it’s used for. So with a white one, it would’ve been used on solemn occasions like Easter, while the minute it became red it would’ve been used for other occasions such as Pentecost.

On the left wall are a group of metalworks given to the Holy Sepulcher, to the Custody, either by Louis XIII again, like for example the two large dishes with more fleurs-de-lys—and you can imagine that these would've been part of the same ensemble as the candlesticks, cross, and vestments—and Louis XIV, the Sun King, the most celebrated king in the early modern period in France. The extraordinary chalice decorated with scenes from the Passion of Christ and the very beautiful crozier to the right, in the vertical vitrine, those were both gifts of Louis XIV. While the pyx, which is another object that is used during Mass to hold the Holy Host, was actually a gift probably from a French ambassador. So these are not just royal gifts, but they’re also gifts from important people in that country.

On the opposite wall, you have more textiles, more vestments, and these are amongst the richest ones in the exhibition. And these were gifts, again, of the King of France. And when you look at the bottom of all three pieces, you will see yet again the lilies of France and the coat of arms of Navarre, and the crown. And these were gifts of Louis XV. We are here well into the 18th century, we are in the 1740s, so you have to imagine we’re at the time of Fragonard and Boucher, and these are textiles made in Lyon in the south of France at the time, and you can see that with the gold thread and silver thread and the different colors and techniques, these would’ve been amongst the most expensive, luxurious, and important textiles made at the time anywhere in Europe. So you immediately get a sense of the importance of these objects within the creations in Europe of that kind of object.

You can imagine that every king of France would send objects like that to the Holy Sepulcher, and of course the selection in this room gives you a sense of the treasures that are held by the Custody today.

We walk back through the introductory room and then left into the main gallery of the exhibition. And this is a gallery where different countries are presented in a number of different ways. You have to imagine that all of these objects would’ve been preserved over the centuries by the Custody and were only really discovered by scholars in very recent times.

In 1980, an art historian called Alvar González-Palacios discovered some of these objects in Jerusalem and published them in the 1990s for the first time. After these objects were published, scholars from an international group of people from various museums all over Europe and universities started to study these objects and the plan now is to create a museum in Jerusalem, the Terra Sancta Museum, which will hold these objects and display them for future generations. Here you now see these objects for the very first time in the United States. None of these works of art has ever been seen in the United States before. And these are just the highlights of a very important and varied collection where many of these objects are absolutely unique, especially in terms of their materials and survival. So such precious textiles and objects in gold and silver are usually very rare to find also in European collections.

Each section focuses on one part of Europe from which these objects come from. As you walk in, to the right, the entire wall is taken up by Spanish objects. Spain, like France, were amongst the most important Catholic countries in the Western world in the early modern period. When you look at the vitrine immediately to your right, you see two chalices. They’re very different in style and they’re very different in terms of chronology. The chalice to the right, made in 1587, is probably the earliest object in the exhibition, and it was a gift from King Philip II of Spain to the Holy Sepulcher, while the chalice on the left, much more richly decorated and in gold, is from the 1770s, also comes from Spain as a gift from that country.

The garniture over the altar is absolutely spectacular. The key metal objects on this altar were given to the Holy Sepulcher by the king of Spain. This king was Philip IV. To those of you who know The Frick Collection well, of course he will be a very familiar face. He is the king portrayed by Velázquez in the great portrait here at the Frick. The central piece on this altar is what is known as a throne of Eucharistic exposition, also often known as a baldachin or tabernacle. It is effectively an architectural piece that serves purely as the framework in which one can display a monstrance. And a monstrance is an object in which the Holy Host is displayed. The monstrance in this object is unfortunately lost, but we will soon see another example in the exhibition. This is an incredible architectural structure in silver, gilt metal, semi-precious stones, with angels, a cross at the top. And as you look at it, you discover at the top again the five crosses of Jerusalem, at the bottom, at the heart of the eagle, the coat of arms of Spain, and underneath that, the name, inscribed, of Philip IV.

We know that this was actually made just around the time of his death. It was completed in 1665 and the king died a year later. The candlesticks to the side and the flower vases—the decorative flowers made out of metal—were made by his successor, by Charles II. So they were originally probably meant to be a single group of objects, but they were given over time by two different kings. When you look at the candlesticks, you will see that at the base of each candlestick and going up the body in another location, there are lions. The lions are symbols of the area of Spain called León, and at the very top you will see some little towers on the body of the candlesticks, and those towers or castles represent Castilla, another region of Spain. Castilla and León were the two founding states, areas of Spain, and because of that, they often appear on Spanish objects. And as you look at the central throne of exposition, you will also realize that in the coat of arms there are lions and towers.

This entire garniture, even though it was a gift of the king of Spain, was actually made in southern Italy. It was made in Sicily, in the city of Messina, which at the time, together with Sicily and Southern Italy, belonged to the kingdom of Spain, so it was part of the territories of Spain. And these were made by the Juvarra workshop, a group of artisans, a father and two sons, whose next generation then produced one of the most important architects in Europe at the time, also Juvarra, who designed the royal palaces of Madrid and Lisbon.

The altar frontal, and that is the textile at the bottom, is also known as an antependium or paliotto, and it would be very common for altars at the time, and still to this day, to be decorated at the front with a piece of fabric or sometimes a piece of metal decorated in some way or another. This is extraordinarily embroidered. It was probably made also in southern Italy, possibly Sicily. When you look at it close up and you see the background fabric, you realize that it is very plain fabric. And in fact, where that appears is where originally there would’ve been most likely silver thread, which was then later removed. So you have to imagine that this piece would’ve been a lot more rich in its appearance to begin with.

So this set of objects gives you a sense of a large gift from Spain in the 17th century. Just in front of it is one of the magnificent objects in this exhibition, which is this extraordinary lamp made out of silver, which was also a gift from the king of Spain, in this case, King Charles III in 1786. So we’re getting almost to the beginning of the 19th century. And this is a lamp decorated again with images of Christ during his Passion. On the four corners of this lamp, you have the images, the sculptures of the four evangelists, each identified by his traditional symbol: St. Matthew with an angel, St. Mark with a lion, St. Luke with an ox, and St. John with an eagle. And at the bottom of the lamp, on the body, you will also recognize some of the coat of arms you’ve already seen. The five crosses of Jerusalem, a coat of arms with the Virgin Mary, a new symbol, which is the two arms with a cross, and that is the symbol of the Franciscan order, and directly across from the altar, the castles and the lions of Castilla and León, and therefore of Spain.

An object of this size in silver is an incredible survival from the 18th century. You have to imagine that anything that would’ve been made of gold or silver at some point or another would’ve been melted down during the Napoleonic wars, during social and economic upheavals because of course, silver and gold could be used as currency. Paradoxically, objects created in gold and silver were a lot more prone to destruction than objects made in poorer material. So to have survivals like this from Jerusalem is extraordinary because there is really nothing comparable surviving in Spain itself or in many of the countries we will encounter.

The last Spanish object in the exhibition is the dalmatic, another type of vestment, to the left of the altar. And here again, you see a very rich piece of embroidery and textile work. This one dates from the late 1750s, early 1760s, and this is a gift again of the king of Spain, Fernando VI, Ferdinand VI, who of course is identified by the royal coat of arms at the center of the dalmatic. You will recognize again the lions and the towers in the left corner, but somewhat confusing, you will also see the lilies of France in the middle. And why do you see the lilies of France? Because the dynasty of the Spanish crown had changed in 1700 from the Habsburgs, which were extinguished with Charles II, the king that commissioned the candlesticks, and started with a new dynasty in 1700 with Philip V, who was the grandson of Louis XIV of France. He was a Bourbon king who brought the Bourbon family to the throne of Spain. The current king of Spain, it’s still a direct descendant of that Philip V of Spain and eventually of Louis XIV.

The crown of Spain at this time was connected, in many ways, to the other state in the Iberian Peninsula, which of course was Portugal. King Ferdinand VI was married to Barbara of Braganza, who was the daughter of the king of Portugal. And the three objects you see next to this dalmatic are all gifts from the crown of Portugal.

We start with a long piece of textile, beautiful silk damask in velvet with gold thread and red decoration. And this velvet was actually originally made in the Italian city of Genoa, but then commissioned from the king of Portugal as a gift to decorate the Sepulcher. The large silver basin in the vitrine would’ve been used for washing the feet of pilgrims and priests on the Thursday before Easter during Holy Week. And of course the ceremonies on that Thursday recall what happens with Christ and the apostles at the Last Supper, where Christ washes the feet of the apostles. And you see on this object, the coat of arms of both Portugal and Jerusalem, created in 1673 as a gift from the king, Peter II of Portugal. This basin has been used at the Holy Sepulcher for the washing of the feet all the way to this day.

The last Portuguese object is the gold lamp next to it, which again is a gift of King John V of Portugal, one of the most important rulers of Portugal in terms of art commissioning in the 18th century. He ruled over Portugal for the first half of the 18th century. This dates to the 1740s towards the end of his reign. He dies in 1750. And again, you will recognize the coat of arms of Portugal, but it is worth here pointing out that an object like this, made out of gold, is again an incredible survival. There is nothing quite like this surviving to this day in Portugal or in Lisbon.

And looking at this gold lamp—you can look across the room, you have, of course the silver lamp from Spain—but there is a second gold lamp across the room from more or less the same period. The Portuguese one is from the 1740s, this one is from the late 1750s, a decade later. And this is a gift originally from Emperor Charles VI, in the 1730s, and then it was refurbished by his successor, Empress Maria Theresa, in the late 1750s. This was probably made in Vienna, and the objects in this section of the exhibition come from the Empire, the area in Central Europe, the capital of which of course was Vienna. The reliefs on this lamp show scenes from the Passion of Christ and the one of course facing you shows yet again the Resurrection as the Neapolitan relief you saw in the first room of the exhibition.

To the right is a vitrine with more objects in gilt silver and gold, and a number of precious stones, which were all given in the 1730s and the following decades to the Holy Sepulcher from Vienna. They had practical uses of different kinds. The ewer on the left and the basin would’ve been used for the washing of the hands of the priest. The central piece, two small containers for water and wine that would’ve been used during the liturgy, during mass, and would’ve been placed on the spectacular tray that you see hanging behind them. The chalice, of course, on the right, where the water and wine would’ve been mixed during Mass. And the other dish, the oval one, which was in this case purely decorative and would’ve been used to be displayed on a piece of furniture next to the altar to show the magnificence of a Mass of this kind. These objects are made by the best goldsmiths in the Empire, in Augsburg, in Vienna, and they relate to contemporary pieces made in the city. If you look at the decoration of the oval dish especially, the way it is decorated with geometric and vegetal patterns, those are very similar to the patterns you will encounter in other rooms in the museum on Viennese porcelain, on Du Paquier porcelain. If you go upstairs to the second floor in what we call the Du Paquier Passage, you will see a number of white and red and purple pieces of porcelain, which have very similar decorations made at the same time. And it is fascinating to think about this relationship between metalwork and porcelain at the same time in the same city.

We’ve looked at some of the main centers of Catholicism in Europe. We’ve looked at France, Paris. We looked at Spain, Madrid, of course, but also Sicily. We’ve looked at Portugal and Lisbon, and we’re now looking at the Empire and Vienna. We now move for the rest of the exhibition to Italy. And we have to think that Italy until the 1860s was really a combination of different states, different countries. And so we will be looking at two republics and a kingdom. The first republic is the Republic of Venice, and the next set of textiles, this red chasuble and white miter, were made in Venice for the Custody in the late 1600s, late 1660s, early 1670s, and they’re part of a larger set of vestments, red and gold, from that period.

But the really extraordinary Venetian objects are the two large candlesticks, torchères, that flank the central altar on the other side of the room. These are monumental silver objects that were made in 1762. They followed a tragic series of events at the Holy Sepulcher from a decade earlier. On the 2nd of April 1757, a group of Greek Orthodox priests attacked the Latin Catholic priests at the Holy Sepulcher. And during this attack, many of the liturgical objects, especially silver lamps and objects of that kind belonging to the Catholics, were smashed and destroyed by the Greeks. It was an incredible event in terms of violence and misunderstanding between different denominations at the Holy Sepulcher. And the Catholics managed to rescue some of that damaged silver and sent it off to Venice to create new objects with those damaged objects from the Sepulcher. And of course, these two torchères are made with that damaged silver that came from Jerusalem.

So we have to imagine that this is silver that in a way has existed at the Holy Sepulcher in different forms over the centuries and traveled back and forth between Europe and Jerusalem more than twice. The torchères are almost identical in design in terms of their structure, but the reliefs on them show different scenes from the Passion of Christ. The base of the two torchères are identical, and they display again the coat of arms of Jerusalem with the five crosses, the coat of arms of the Franciscans with the two arms and the cross. And the third one has the date, 1762, the date of the completion of the objects. The figures, the large figures at the base, again, you can recognize as the Evangelists John, Matthew, and Luke at the bottom, with the eagle, angel, and ox. And above the coat of arms of Jerusalem, St. Mark with his lion. Why is St. Mark more prominent than the other three? Because of course, St. Mark is the patron saint of Venice. And so of course, these being a gift from the Venetian state to some degree and being made in Venice, and coming from Venice, they promoted their patron saint and placed him more prominently.

At the upper level, around your eye level, more or less, are three female figures. One is veiled with a cross and a chalice, and that is the representation of Faith. Another one holds an anchor and that is Hope, and the third one is a mother with children representing Charity. And those three are the three key virtues of Christianity. Above that, you see more scenes of the Passion of Christ and angels, some of which are holding instruments of the Passion.

These two very large torchères are still used to this day, to the sides of the main altar of the Franciscan Church of Saint Savior in Jerusalem, which is the headquarters of the Custody and the Franciscans in the city. These were cleaned for the exhibition, and it is extraordinary to have them here for the first time in New York and in the United States.

Directly across from the Venetian vestment is the last vestment in the exhibition, which is also one of the most spectacular in terms of its design. Interestingly enough, it is not as precious as the other vestments you’ve encountered so far because it does not include gold or silver thread. It is only colored different silk threads. But what is fantastic about this object is the quality of the embroidery and the detail of the fruit, the flowers, the various garlands. It is an absolutely stunning object. This was made in the Italian republic that was the main enemy of Venice, and that is the Republic of Genoa. Genoa and Venice were the two large harbors in Italy, one on the Adriatic eastern coast of Italy, the other one on the Tyrrhenian western coast.

And Genoa’s patron saint, just like St. Mark was the patron saint of Venice, was St. George. And of course you see at the center of this piece, St. George killing the dragon while holding a shield, which is the cross of St. George, the red cross on a white field. Now, that cross of St. George has been used by various countries as their symbol because of their connection to St. George. You see it again in the top upper corners of this cope, and that is of course, the symbol of Genoa as well as being the symbol of England, whose patron saint is also St. George. And again, you see it here combined next to it with the five crosses of Jerusalem in the next coat of arms.

This is a cope which would’ve been worn on the shoulders of a high level priest, usually a bishop or the Custos, and it would’ve been used only during solemn Masses. And you have to imagine that, like this piece, the Custody has almost twenty pieces made in Genoa like this, from the same set of vestments. So there are different ways in which the skills of artists can be displayed, not just through precious materials, but also through different techniques and the ways in which these objects can look so splendid in a number of different ways.

The last group of objects in the exhibition is a group of objects from the Kingdom of Naples. And these objects are probably the most spectacular objects in the show because there was a very direct link between the Kingdom of Naples and the Holy Sepulcher and Jerusalem. At the time of the Crusades, in the 11th century, the last king of Jerusalem was an Angevin from a French family, the same family that ended up inheriting the throne of Naples.

And because of this, traditionally after 1187, when Jerusalem was conquered by Islam and became an Islamic state all the way through the early modern period, the kings of Naples always kept the honorific title of “Kings of Jerusalem.” And because of this link, the Neapolitan sovereigns always felt a particular closeness to Jerusalem and to the Holy Sepulcher. The earliest of these Neapolitan gifts to the Holy Sepulcher is the altar frontal between the two Venetian torchères. Made in 1731, this altar frontal, or antependium is of the type made of metal, which is of course of a different type than the one you see directly across made out of fabric, the one we saw earlier, probably from Sicily. So you get a sense of how richly an altar could be decorated in different ways.

This is a tour de force of silversmith work in Naples. It is signed and dated by the artist. If you look at the top part of the base, you will recognize the name of Gennaro de Blasio and the date, 1731, on it. But it also talks about how this was sort of created through the agency of one of the commissaries of the Holy Land who sent it from Naples. The central scene represents Pentecost. Pentecost is the moment after the death and Resurrection of Christ when the apostles and the Virgin Mary meet in the historic site where the Last Supper had taken place, trying to decide what will be of their future. And this is really the beginning of Christianity because what happens is the dove of the Holy Ghost appears and invests the Virgin Mary and the apostles with flames that you can see over their heads. And the holy scriptures tell us that the apostles started speaking in tongues. And the idea is that this is the beginning of evangelizing the world for Christianity where the apostles started traveling to the far corners of the earth to bring Christianity to other countries. So it’s a key moment in Christianity.

But it is important for the Franciscans of the Holy Land because the site of the Last Supper and of Pentecost was actually their first headquarters in the Middle Ages in Jerusalem before they moved to the church of Saint Savior. The two saints on each side, the full figures flanking the relief are two Franciscan saints, St. Bonaventure on the left and St. Louis of Anjou on the right, and they reinforce the Franciscan link between this object and its purpose.

At the very center of the room, the one area that is at the core of this exhibition, are four incredible objects. This is a group of extraordinary objects that was given by the king and Kingdom of Naples to the Holy Sepulcher over a period of a decade, from 1746 to 1756. Yet again, they are extraordinary survivals of goldsmith work from this time.

These are objects made out of gold and precious and semi-precious stones. Nothing like this survives, to this day, in Naples except from one chalice in the cathedral of the city. So objects of this scale and this importance are unbelievably rare anywhere in the world, and these are a unique survival in terms of objects of this kind.

As you look at the central object, you will realize that this also is a throne of Eucharistic exposition. Look to the right, and you will remember the one from Philip IV of Spain at the center of the other altar. This is from the king of Naples, Charles III, who will eventually, for a number of reasons, also become king of Spain, subsequently and will later commission the silver lamp you see next to it. But at this point, in 1754, he is the king of Naples. This throne of Eucharistic exposition is designed to hold, to contain the monstrance on the right.

And the monstrance on the right was in fact the first of these objects to be sent to Jerusalem in 1746. This is made of solid gold, decorated with precious stones, and a monstrance is the object that is used to display the consecrated host, a piece of bread, the Holy Host, which for Catholics represents the body of Christ. It is effectively displaying God in the most visible possible form for a Catholic. Therefore, the monstrance with the Holy Host in it becomes one of the most precious objects you could have in a church. And to make it even more spectacular, a throne of exposition becomes the architectural framework within which something like this is displayed. You are basically coming face-to-face with God. In a Catholic Church, people tend to kneel on one knee, but when you are in front of a monstrance with the Holy Host, it’s the only time that you kneel with both knees all the way down.

Therefore, this object would’ve been an incredibly precious gift by the king of Naples to Jerusalem. And the more closely you look at it, the more you realize that you will recognize many of the symbols you’ve seen before. The column and whips of the flagellation, the rooster of the Passion, the cross, the lance, many of the objects of the Passion of Christ made out with rubies and emeralds. And of course around the central part, grapes because of the wine, the blood of Christ, and wheat because of the bread of the Last Supper, and therefore the Holy Host.

Turning back to the throne of Eucharistic exposition, you will see again the incredibly precious materials with which this is made. The crown above it, which in a way echoes the crown of the king of Naples, but it’s also meant to simply crown the host in the monstrance. And underneath the crown, you can see a dove, a gold dove, which is the symbol of the Holy Ghost.

At the bottom of the base is an inscription. To the side, on the left, barely visible, is a tiny little name of Antonio de Laurentiis, the goldsmith who made this object, and the name of the king and the queen of Naples are on the base together with the date 1754. So this was made a few years after the monstrance to accompany the monstrance. At the center, you have the coat of arms of Jerusalem and the horse, which represents the Commissariat of Naples for the Custody. On the left, the coat of arms of the king of Naples, Charles III. On the right, interestingly enough, is the coat of arms of Saxony and Poland because the queen, the wife of Charles III, was Maria Amalia of Saxony, and the Saxon princes were then also kings of Poland. This, of course, is an extraordinary object and an incredibly unique survival from that time.

It is also extraordinary because if you were not displaying the monstrance and the Holy Host in this throne of exposition, you could just show a crucifix. And the object on the left is the crucifix that could have gone in the throne if you didn’t want to display the monstrance. And this again is made out of gold, precious stones, and lapis lazuli. And this was made a couple of years later to accompany the throne of exposition. So you can imagine that this is a commission that happened over a period of years where the monstrance comes in first, then the throne of exposition and the cross, the crucifix that could go into it.

The last of these four objects is the crozier. The crozier is basically a staff that denotes the person holding it usually as a bishop—a bishop, an archbishop, a patriarch. In this case, these croziers were made for the Custos, the head of the Custody, who had a role in Jerusalem equivalent to that of a bishop of Jerusalem at that time. And again, this is a gold object made in Naples as a gift from the kingdom. And it displays the five crosses of Jerusalem at the top. And below that, four saints, three of which are Franciscan saints, Francis of Assisi, Bonaventure, and Louis of Anjou. But the fourth, facing you as you look at this object from the front, is St. Gennaro, Januarius, who is the patron saint of Naples. So in the same way that St. Mark appears in the Venetian torchères, or St. George appears in the Genoese cope, St. Januarius appears here as the patron saint of Naples in this gift from Naples to the Holy Land.

This exhibition brings these objects together for our audience here at The Frick Collection, and I think it is an exhibition that builds up on the previous exhibitions we’ve had on metalwork and goldsmith work in the early modern period in Europe, exhibitions we had on Neuber, on Gouthière, on Valadier, and this is really following in the footsteps of those.

But at the same time, it also draws links with other objects in the exhibition. Think of the French vestments from Louis XV and the Fragonard Room. Think of the altar in this room commissioned by Philip IV and the Velázquez portrait. Think of the Viennese silver work and the decoration of Du Paquier porcelain. So there are all sorts of conversations between this group of objects and other masterpieces at The Frick Collection. But this is also just designed to give you a taste of this extraordinary collection. These are just the highlights of the Terra Sancta Museum, one of the most extraordinary collections of objects of this kind in the world. And with this, we all very much look forward to the opening of the Terra Sancta Museum in Jerusalem in the next few years, and I hope you will all be able to visit it once it opens. Thank you for following me today, and I hope you enjoyed your tour of this exhibition.