Crowns - (Puglia)

Archconfraternity  SS. Rosary

Foundation year: 1629

City: Bitonto (BA)

Archdiocese: Bari-Bitonto

Artistic artefact (canvas, fresco, statue, etc.): Gold and silver

Title: Crowns of Our Lady of the Rosary and baby Jesus

Dimensions:

Year of execution: end of the 18th century.

Author (with year of birth and death): Unknown Neapolitan silversmith

Brief description of the work and of the author's profile: The silver crowns, datable to the full late eighteenth-century Baroque maturity, complete the simulacrum of the Madonna del Rosario. The base consists of a band enclosed between two cords interrupted by full-bodied scrolls alternating with a series of bezels in colored glass paste. The first register is composed of cones of acanthus leaves and shells, crowned by triads of Marian stars, canonically twelve in toto. Five large volutes on the back of an inverted dolphin made up of opposing spirals of acanthus are connected to the central washer. The globe of the pseudogemmed zodiacal belt is enriched by pairs of seraphim. The apical attribute of the Marian crown is constituted by the dove of the Holy Spirit, while that of the crown of the child Jesus is represented by the rayed cross.