Design for a Monstrance 1700 - 1800

This is a design for a monstrance, made with pen and brown ink, and gray wash on laid paper. Its unknown author created the design to showcase the ornate metalwork that would have been required for the religious object’s production. The drawing is all about surface, the delicate interplay of light and shadow across the dense foliate decoration. It gives us a strong sense of the intended preciousness of the finished product, which would have been fabricated in silver or gold, perhaps studded with jewels. Monstrances like this were essential to Catholic worship, designed to display the Eucharistic host. They were not just functional objects but powerful declarations of faith, statements of wealth, and monuments to the skills of goldsmiths and other metalworkers. Considering this design, we can appreciate the essential role of drawings like this in coordinating skilled labor, blurring the lines between design and craft in the creation of devotional objects.