Luigi Valadier in Nicaragua

In 1767 and 1768, a number of objects made by renowned 18th-century Roman goldsmith Luigi Valadier (1726–1785) were sent from Rome to an unnamed “principal church in Mexico,” among them, a monstrance (a vessel in which the consecrated Host is shown). All were thought to be lost. During The Frick Collection’s 2018 exhibition Luigi Valadier: Splendor in Eighteenth-Century Rome, Xavier F. Salomon kept asking himself whether the lost treasure might be found.

The odds were slim because objects made of gold, silver, and precious stones have so often been melted for cash or recycling. But after an extensive search, Salomon located the monstrance in the Cathedral of León in Nicaragua, along with approximately twenty-five other “lost” objects—chandeliers, reliquaries, a chalice, and candlesticks—all works by Valadier, and many of them still in daily use in the cathedral. For more than 250 years this sacred treasure—the largest surviving Valadier collection in the world—has been known only to worshippers in León, their origin a mystery, until now.