The National Museum of Ireland is pleased to announce the forthcoming publication (in April 2011) of the next title in its Academic Monograph series, entitled Franciscan Faith: Sacred Art in Ireland, AD 1600–1750. The volume accompanies an exhibition at the National Museum of Ireland celebrating the material heritage of the Irish Franciscans in the late and early post-medieval periods.
The volume catalogues some 50 of the finest pieces held by the Order, consisting largely of altar plate but also including sculpture, furniture and seal matrices. The catalogue is accompanied by a series of essays dealing with aspects of the material culture of the Irish Franciscans: church furnishings, objects of personal devotion, a unique collection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century silver chalices, as well as contemporary secular silver in Ireland and English Catholic silver.
The volume will be of interest to historians, art historians and specialists in silver. It opens up a whole new perspective on the cultural heritage of Ireland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European influence on sacred art, patterns of patronage and the identification of regional silversmiths’ workshops in Ireland.

Contents:
Irish Franciscan church furnishings in the pre-Reformation period. R. Ó Floinn, Head of Collections at the National Museum of Ireland
Fabrics of faith: the material worlds of Catholic Ireland and Protestant Ireland, 1500–1800. Toby Barnard, Fellow and Tutor in History at Hartford College, University of Oxford
English Catholic silver in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Tessa Murdoch, Deputy Keeper of Sculpture, Metalwork, Ceramics and Glass at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Silver in Ireland 1600–1750. Michael Kenny, Keeper of the Art & Industrial Division, National Museum of Ireland
Personal devotional objects: Ireland and the influence of the Franciscans, 1500–1800. Jill Connaughton, Research Student in the History of Irish Art, TRIARC, Trinity College, Dublin
‘Me fieri fecit’: Franciscan chalices 1600–1650. Ma?gorzata Krasnod?bska-D’Aughton, Department of History, University College, Cork
Catalogue. M. Krasnod?bska-D’Aughton (with contributions from Mailan Doquang and Raghnall Ó Floinn)
Lavishly illustrated with over 100 colour plates. 206 pp, hbk. Price €35 + €5 p+p (total €40/£34stg).

FOR DELIVERY END APRIL 2011