Censer with hemispherical brazier or casca with a wide projecting and stepped edge, preceded by a concave bottleneck. The body of the smoke, set to let out the incense, consists of a straight socket, a convex body section perforated by three portholes for the chains, a smooth, sloped ring and a torch and bulbous lantern that ends in a dome. It finishes in a ring for one of the four long chains that allow it to be lifted from the handle.
With a convex profile, the maniple is decorated with leaves and raised nails with scalloped and ogee edges with incised ridges. The foot appears smooth, low and conical, however, it is the result of a subsequent intervention. All the ornamentation, composed almost entirely of striped backgrounds, is made up as a whole by leaves, acanthus and braids, which form crowns, quadrifolias on spades around circular mirrors and borders; scrolls of pierced gloss in the maniple and under the edge of the censer, and ellipsoid cartelas framed by vegetal aligners.
Of mannerist descent, its decorative language, treated under the naturalistic influence of the first baroque, places us within a chronological frame that extends from the last third of the seventeenth century to the first half of the following century. However, there are few Mexican censers cataloged in this period to establish comparisons (1). In general , all of them respond to the same typology, characterized by their squat structure with bulbous hull and narrow cylindrical lantern crowned by a dome, as well as its ornamentation inherited from mannerism.
The structure of the piece differs in this case from known pieces, especially in the marked frustoconical and banked form of the body of the smoke, two thirds higher than the brazier and dome without a separation fillet. Only in the motifs and in the organization of the decorative themes of the intermediate band and the terminal cap of the lantern, as in the row of recessed buttons that runs along the top of the censer, do we find coincidences with the censer of the church of Santa Cruz de Lanz (Navarra), marked in the City of Mexico by Ribas in the 1720's (2). This would help us to assign a parallel or approximate chronology.
The absence of marks also does not help to specify its nature. It does not seem, however, to be a work made in Mexico City and the aforementioned rosary of incised points of the bottleneck of the container, so much to the taste of the Puebla workshops, does not seem enough reason to grant it this origin. However, and with the prudence that the case requires in the absence of more information, the technical and formal parallels that we observe with the other side of the collection make us think of a common origin, perhaps Oaxaca or some other provincial center of Southeast Mexico.
1. From 1673-1677, it is the one from the church of Firgas (Gran Canaria), around 1700 the copy of the Museum Franz Mayer, and towards 1723 the one from Santillana of the Sea (Santander). Cfr. C. Esteras, La platería del Museo Franz Mayer…, ob. cit., pp. 147-148, nº 39; S. Carretero Rebes, ob. cit., pp. 154-155, nº 128, lám. 144; A. de Valle-Arizpe, Notas de platería, México, 1941, fig. 52; y J. Pérez Morera, Ofrendas del Nuevo Mundo. Platería americana en las Canarias Orientales, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 2011, pp. 23 y 39, fig. 5.
2. Cfr. M. C. Heredia Moreno et al., ob. cit., pp. 67-68, nº 24.
