The great monstrance of Seville’s Corpus Christi

A work of the great goldsmith and sculptor Juan de Arfe y Villafañe (Léon 1535 – Madrid 1603), la Custodia Grande in Seville is a beautiful silver monstrance used to carry the Blessed Sacrament in procession on the day of Corpus Christi. The work, which grows in height by more than three meters long and weighs over 3 tons, is composed of four circular columns in a superimposed structure, consisting of four floors with a diameter which is progressively closer, culminating in a lantern. In the great monstrance of the Corpus Christi of Seville episodes and characters of the Holy Scriptures and of ecclesiastical history are carved. In some cases, these are the same scenes that are proposed in the pasos and the same characters (Saint Isidore, Saint Leander and the Saints Justa and Rufina) parading in the wake of the monstrance.