OUR LADY OF ROCÍO’S SILVER SHIP

Abstract

An ambitious research programme which entailed the restoration and preservation of the Andalusian historical heritage was set in motion by the project Andalucía Barroca 2007 (2007 Andalusian Baroque). One of the tasks undertaken was the restoration of a silver ship which is incorporated to the statue of Our Lady of Rocío, at the well-known shrine of El Rocío, in Almonte, Spain. The ship, long attributed to seventeenth-century French silversmith Claude Ballin, turned out to be in fact the work of a German early twentienth-century artist; it had been made at the Ludwig Neresheimer Silversmith Company workshop in Hanau, Germany.