A BYZANTINE GOLD AND AMETHYST CROSS CIRCA 7TH-9TH CENTURY A.D.

拍品描述

A BYZANTINE GOLD AND AMETHYST CROSS PENDANT, EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN, CIRCA 7TH-9TH CENTURY A.D. Of Latin-cross form, composed of four tapering amethyst arms set into gold sleeves and converging on a central gold roundel, the whole surmounted by a ribbed suspension loop above a beaded collar. The amethyst shafts are cut as truncated cones, each socketed at its outer terminal into a cylindrical gold cap bordered by twisted filigree in the form of a laurel or wheat-ear plait. The central medallion is framed by a double band of the same plaited filigree and inset with a domed amethyst cabochon in a plain collet. The suspension element rises from a similarly plaited drum, with a small gold bead at the junction of loop and shaft. The gold throughout is of warm tone and matte finish, the filigree crisp and the collets cleanly turned. The cross takes the simple equal-armed and slightly elongated form characteristic of Byzantine personal devotional jewellery of the early medieval centuries, when the cross worn at the breast served both as a confession of faith and as an apotropaic device. The central cabochon, encircled by its laurel-wreath frame, recalls the iconography of the crux gemmata, the jewelled cross of Late Antique and Byzantine imperial and ecclesiastical art, in which the instrument of the Passion is transfigured into an emblem of victory and eternity. The laurel plait around the medallion and at each terminal carries forward a Late Roman vocabulary of triumph, here transposed into a Christian setting. The use of amethyst is significant. In the Late Antique and Byzantine world the stone was associated with sobriety, vigilance against intoxication, and, by extension, with episcopal and clerical dignity, an association still reflected in the later Western tradition of the bishop's ring. Its deep violet was also a colour of high status, adjacent to the imperial purple reserved for the Augusti, and amethyst was among the stones most often selected for cross pendants and reliquary mounts intended for persons of rank within the Church or court. The combination of high-karat gold, plaited filigree, and translucent purple stone places the present pendant within a luxury tradition of Byzantine goldsmithing whose centres lay in Constantinople and the major cities of the eastern provinces, where techniques inherited from Hellenistic and Roman jewellers were continued and refined in the service of Christian patronage. The construction, in which the cross is built up from separate stone elements held by gold mounts rather than carved from a single block, is itself characteristic of this milieu. It allowed the goldsmith to exploit the colour and translucency of the amethyst while displaying the filigree and chased ornament of the metalwork as a frame, and it permitted the incorporation of stones of unusual size by drawing on several smaller pieces. The pendant exemplifies the Byzantine tradition of the personal crux gemmata, in which the form of the cross is realised through the deliberate pairing of gold and a stone of high symbolic charge. Surviving examples in amethyst are markedly fewer than those in rock crystal or garnet, and the present cross stands as a coherent expression of the type, in which devotional function, courtly material, and the refined goldwork of the eastern Mediterranean workshops are brought together in a single object. Height: 6.5cm

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