SPAIN AND PHILIPPINES AT THE "VATICAN WORLD EXHIBITION" OF 1888: GOLDWORK, TEXTILE ART AND DECORATIVE OBJECTS

The Vatican World Exhibition, sponsored by Leon XIII, constituted an outstanding event devoted to break the international isolation of the Vatican and show the validity of the catholic art and industry in front of a world where the secularism began to dominate. Spain with her overseas possessions were very important at that time; the Philippines for example, participated in the exhibition with an artistic repertoire with a traditional style which was dominated by the goldsmith and embroidery arts which show the craft of the best artists at those times with her particular character as a Catholic and conservative nation. At the same time in that Spanish participation identity elements and symbols of each counties and regions of Spain where the imaginary collective of the bourgeois society in the Restauration had taken on as own.