SUMPTUARY ART – SILVER

After the attempt to found a convent of the Dominican Order in the Sanctuary of Nuestra Señora de las Nieves, the temple was elevated to the title of Parish in 1657. For this reason, the temple began to be equipped with the essential items for the spiritual needs and the administration of the sacraments of the parishioners attached to it, made up of the areas of Velhoco, Mirca and La Dehesa. Offered by the devotees or ordered to be made ex profeso, these are works made by island silversmiths from the 17th century onwards. These pieces, destined for divine worship on the main feast days, were made with special sumptuousness and apparatus, paid for by the factory’s revenues or donated by devotees of the Virgin. Due to the devotion that the people of Palma paid to their Patron Saint and in gratitude for the fortune obtained in the New World, the Sanctuary is the Canary Island temple that treasures the largest volume of American silverware on the islands. From nostalgia for the land of their birth, the people of La Palma implored the protection of their Virgin of Las Nieves, invoked by the hard work on the plantations, mining settlements, incessant trade between the Indian cities and the dangers of crossings, in the midst of storms during the coming and going of the ships that brought so much wealth to this shore. Gifts were brought from Mexico, Peru, Cuba and Venezuela, both for the adornment of her holy image – jewelry and textiles – as well as objects for divine worship: monstrance, candelabras, lamps, chalices and altar sets, processional crosses and altar crucifixes. But it was not only gifts from the New World that arrived, Our Lady was also presented from Europe with sumptuary objects such as votive lamps from Flanders, or sacred vessels and altar sets brought from mainland Spain.