The connection between art and faith is ancient. Man has always tried to transmit his devotion through pieces of art, whether paintings, frescoes, sculpture, architecture or many other arts.
We see displays of religious art in the most wonderful monuments that are still objects of study in Rome, Paris, Milan, and throughout the world.
This connection is also visible in the art of jewelry, where jewels transform an amulet into a piece of high beauty.
Leitão & Irmão, perhaps because of its historical heritage, but also because of its recognition of making high quality pieces in the best materials and respecting the best manufacturing techniques, was chosen by the faithful to manufacture the crown of Our Lady of Fátima in the Sanctuary of Fátima.
This feat has been repeated and when there was a need to create new crowns for other purposes, Leitão & Irmão brought the best their artists and goldsmiths know to the creation of a piece of art in jewelry.
The history of the Precious Crowns, how they were made, how the creative and manufacturing process took place is now recorded in a book edition of the Sanctuary of Fátima with the coordination of Ana Rita Santos and Marco Daniel Duarte.
The records of Casa Leitão were consulted so that historically it was possible to record the steps that led to the creation of one of the works of contemporary Portuguese religious art.
In this edition we can find precious information such as the fact that the image of Our Lady of Fátima in the Chapel of the Apparitions in Fátima did not always have an associated crown.
Although the representations of Our Lady of Fátima are finished with the crown, it was without a crown that according to the reports it appeared to the pilgrims.
Only in 1941, a group of Portuguese started a movement that culminated in a national collection to manufacture a queen’s crown destined for Our Lady of Fátima. Jewels were asked, not money, in order to materialize the crown directly with the gifts of each one.
In 1989 the precious crown was enriched with a strange element: the bullet extracted from the body of Pope John Paul II after the attack in Rome on May 13, 1981.
