Regalia Accessories

European Cathedrals and Parish Churches are so richly adorned, inspiring feelings of awe and reverence. The many large niches with life size statues wearing the most splendid crowns are exquisitely beautiful. The history of ecclesiastic regalia is very meaningful with sacred symbolism and intention.

Santos were found in various art forms in Spain and areas where colonies existed from of the Kingdom of Spain. They originally consisted of wooden or ivory statues that depict various saints, angels, or Marian titles, or one of the personages of the Holy Trinity. This practice produced mannequin-style religious images which were commonly vested in ornate religious clothing  (often expensive and funded by religious devotes). One of the earliest known examples is the 1555 Statue of Infant Jesus of Prague. 

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries continued this adornment of the Madonna and the Infant Jesus. The Santos Statue became adorned with a crown based on the idea of the coronation of Mary in Heaven after her Assumption took its rise in an accommodation of the words in the Song of Songs (4:8)

“Come, my bride, from Lebanon..thou shalt be crowned..,” and was chiefly developed and popularized by iconography.

The color of the glass or precious stones encrusted into the crowns have significance: white-faith, green-hope, red-charity, blue-purity, purple-sovereignty of Christ. 

French crowns are most often gilded with large glass or precious stones. Italian and Spanish crowns are typically silver and unadorned with stones. These precious adornments are a disappearing and unreplenished historical commodity. Antique and Vintage Santos only increase in value as they age due in large part to the difficulty in obtaining them.