Reliquary of the True Cross, Byzantium,
12-13th centuries and Champagne, c. 1320-1340.

Silver gilt over a wooden core, silver and copper gilt,

25 x 38 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris.

 

 

Jewellery

 

It is scarcely credible that amid these delicate memorials of personal adornment, antiquity should have afforded us so many examples of art and good taste. The Egyptians and Greeks, actuated by a sentiment of pious reverence, used to surround their dead with the various objects they loved while living, and it was natural to suppose that, on opening their tombs, these precious evidences of the technical advancement of the ancients should come to light once more. But the truth must be told, greed anticipated the investigations of science; sacrilegious hands, frequently those of contemporaries, violated the tombs in order to plunder them of their treasures, breaking, as they did so, all other objects such as the painted vases, which in those days possessed no intrinsic value. These acts of pillage became well known and it soon became customary to surround the departed with simple imitations of jewellery, often made of stamped sheets of extremely thin metal. Our museums contain many of these fragile imitations.

As for the real jewellery, tombs concealed away or lost to sight in semi-barbaric countries have sufficiently preserved items of value and enable us to form an opinion on the skill of the goldsmiths of those days. The Crimea has been the principal theatre of these precious discoveries; Italian and French museums contain some most interesting collections which have been preserved intact amid the barbaric Scythians. The Egyptians, who were far advanced in artistic culture, knew how to chase gold with extreme delicacy and combine it with precious stones and enamels so as to form exquisite ornaments.

The Louvre has some superb jewellery to display: necklaces braided with fine gold threads with knotted tassels, combinations of small chains and precious stones, baubles, rings, plates inlaid with enamels and hundreds of things that reflect the advanced state of art among them. The Greeks, later, attained absolute perfection, and we stand in amazement before the works they have bequeathed to us. Is there anything in the whole of the Louvre more astonishing than the earrings where we see the sun on his chariot and two figures of victory laden with trophies leaning against a pavilion with finely woven chains wrought in palm leaves and with pear-shaped ornaments; or again these delicate buttons formed of granulated gold rosettes or with numerous petals which support a swan in white enamel here, a rooster or peacock surrounded by exquisitely delicate pendants there. Plenty of examples include clasps with rows of detached daisies, of filigree gold surrounding pearls, necklaces of braided gold wire, pliant as a silken braid on the head of Achelous[13] also of gold repoussé and granulated; also buckles ornamented with filigree and Etruscan inscriptions, bracelets and delicate crowns.

Let us elaborate on the Etruscans for a moment and the influence their art may have exercised over Roman art. The Etruscans, as we are aware, were of Oriental origin, and their great families, which founded the Etrurian Colony, retained the tradition of luxury and taste of Lydia, their ancient home. The artisans who came along with them, inspired from the same sources and gifted with a special delicacy of execution, always impressed the distinctive stamp of a somewhat meagre elegance on their works, which might be taken for a refinement of archaism. Etruscan jewellery can then vie with the best Grecian work, in the perfection of its chasing; as we may see for ourselves by the boxes belonging to the Campana collection and the articles preserved in the cabinet of medals. There we may see necklaces with five pendants, a consecrated number, in which baubles of gold alternate with little handleless vases of curious workmanship.