A Central American parcel-gilt silver chalice, maker's mark indistinct, Santiago de Guatemala (Antigua), circa 1560

shaped stepped foot rising to vase stem and cup fitted with detachable calyx, embossed and chased with panels of grotesque ornament including masks, banners, vases, ribbons and flowers, cockle of St James city mark struck twice and with two other indecipherable marks

The town marks are relatively clear, one a little distorted. The two makers marks are indecipherable. The foot rim as probably had repairs as the chasing appears a little crude/naïve. The gilding and cast decoration is however good throughout. The bowl a little bruised and misshapen with the same around the junctions of the lowed girdle. Generally good condition of good colour and gauge.
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The Santiago de Guatemala town marks on this chalice concord with those reproduced by Christina Esteras Martín for the period 1550-1580. (Marcas de Platería Hispanoamericana Siglos XVI-XX, Madrid, 1992, nos. 260-263a). Another Santiago de Guatemala chalice dated to circa 1550, made by the goldsmith Pedro Xuárez de Mayorga, can be compared to the present example for stylistic reasons; the alternate facing cherubs with touching wing tips, the rayed discs above and below the stem, which is of the same form and equally tooled with gadroons to simulate fur or wool. The Vares Fisa chalice is dated on stylistic grounds; on the record of the goldsmith Mayorga being established in Santiago de Guatemala in March 1568; and the fact that its construction most probably predates the appointment of the assayor Cosme Román in 1553, who otherwise would have marked it. This comparable Chalice from the Varez Fisa collects ion is used by the author to exemplify the exceptional standard of the early Guatemalan workshops, which were producing silver in up to date European style, within a relatively short period of the Spanish invasion (Christina Esteras Martín, La Platería de la Collección Várez Fisa, Madrid, 2000, no. 14) pattern books of ornament may have come from Europe via Mexico. A chalice,`last quarter of the 16^th century’, with Mexico city marks and strikingly similar ornament to the present example is in the Victoria and Albert museum (Charles Oman, The Golden Age of Hispanic Silver 1400-1665, London, 1968, no 104, lllus. Fig. 196.

The city of Santiago de Guatemala, founded at its current position in 1543, was the capital of Guatemala from the early days of the conquest. This began in 1524 with the arrival of a Spanish army and its Mexican allies, under the command of Pedro de Alvarado (1485-1541). It became one of the richest cities in Spanish America and the administrative centre of an area which included Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Chiapas, now part of Mexico. The Catholic Church was present in Guatemala from the earliest days of Spanish occupation. Chaplins held an open air mass at Salcaja in February 1524, chosen as site for the first church in Guatemala (La Conquistadora, still standing) which is reputed to have been built sufficiently by 30 March that year to be to celebrate the Easter mass. The first bishop of Guatemala de Santiago, a Dominican, Francisco Morroquin (1499-1563), briefly became governor of Guatemala after the death of Pedro Alvarado’s widow during an earthquake in 1541. Another parcel-gilt silver Guatemalan chalice from the same period, thought to have been made to commemorate a martyr from the Dominican monastery, Santo Domingo was sold Replica Shoes 's Paris, 30 October 2008, lot 171.