Vatican Museums

This catalogue presents an unpublished core of pre-Columbian jewellery artefacts, mostly connected with the Muisca culture, belonging to the collections of the Profane Museum in the Vatican Museums.

The volume, the result of a long research and cataloguing process begun in 2016, aims to offer a study tool to subject-matter experts, as well as to bring this little-known collection to the attention of the wider public, also through a short historical introduction dedicated to the collection’s arrival in the Vatican. The detailed sheets presenting the works, organized into three sections according to the object type, include technical data such as measurements, material, provenance, inventory number, and historical and contextual notes necessary to explain the purpose of the artefact. The rich photographic setting alternates between general and detailed images of the individual works, in addition to comparative photographs. The volume concludes with the results of diagnostic analyses carried out on some sample artefacts to identify the composition of the metal alloys, and an accurate bibliography.