Pyx. Money. Palencia, Spain. Pedro De Palacios, Juan De Peso Hallmark, Circa 1530.

Pyx. Silver. Palencia, Spain. Pedro de Palacios, Juan de Peso hallmark, circa 1530.
With contrast marks and engravings.
Circular box with a pointed lid, in natural and gilt silver, decorated on the exterior with a series of oblique segments or waves on the body and lid, and with moldings featuring concatenated beads. The piece is surmounted by a sphere divided in two by a band of small lines. The interior is gilt. Typologically, it follows a very common pattern for pyxides in 16th-century Spanish goldsmithing. Compare, for example, with the one dated to the third quarter of the 16th century (inventory 2165) in the Lázaro Galdiano Museum in Madrid, Spain, which also features spirals on the lid and a cruciform finial that the present example lacks; or several examples in the Diocesan Museum of Pamplona Cathedral. Or there is another example with vertical drawers in the lid at the Museum of Sacred Art in Bilbao (Eleiz Museoa; inv. 0578) by Izangabea, dated between 1525 and 1530. At the base are the engraved mark and the hallmarks of the city and the goldsmith. One is the city hallmark, referring to Palencia (Spain). The other, with letters beneath a scale, is that of the assayer Juan de Peso, who worked from 1526 to 1532 (experts suggest that the triple hallmarking began in 1528). The third is that of the goldsmith Pedro de Palacios (elected city assayer in 1532). Similar markings appear on the arm of the reliquary of Saint Lawrence in Santoyo, a work by Pedro de Palacios dated between 1528 and 1532, or, according to other experts, around 1526.
Weight: 217 grams. Dimensions: 9 x 9 x 11 cm