A BYZANTINE GOLD AND GARNET CROSS CIRCA 5TH-7TH CENTURY A.D.

拍品描述

A BYZANTINE GOLD AND GARNET CROSS PENDANT, EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN, CIRCA 5TH-7TH CENTURY A.D. Of Latin form, the cross composed of four tapering arms of rounded section that swell slightly toward their flared, rounded terminals, the arms meeting at a raised circular collet set with a cabochon garnet of deep wine colour. The upper arm rises to a small integral cylindrical mount surmounted by a plain suspension loop drawn from the same sheet, allowing the pendant to be worn at the throat. The surface retains a soft, slightly granular bloom characteristic of high-carat gold of the period, with minor irregularities along the lower arm and faint reddish traces near the terminals. The form belongs to the class of personal devotional crosses produced across the early Byzantine world, where the cross had moved within a few generations from a sign concealed by the faithful to the principal emblem of imperial and ecclesiastical authority. The single central stone, rather than the five-stone arrangement evoking the wounds of Christ, places the emphasis on the cross itself as the instrument of victory, the crux gemmata reduced to its essential form for private wear. The flared arm-ends recall the shape of the jewelled processional and altar crosses of the same centuries, here translated into a portable object intended to rest against the body of its owner. The choice of gold and garnet carries weight beyond the obvious value of the materials. Garnet, imported into the Mediterranean from sources as distant as Sri Lanka and the Indian subcontinent through the late antique trade routes, was the favoured red stone of the period, used in Byzantine, Sasanian and Migration-period jewellery alike, and prized for a colour that was read as both regal and Christological. Set in a plain bezel against unworked sheet gold, the stone is allowed to carry the ornamental burden alone, in the restrained manner favoured by goldsmiths working for the urban Christian clientele of Constantinople, the Levantine coast and Egypt between the fifth and seventh centuries. This pendant exemplifies the early Byzantine reduction of the jewelled cross to a personal scale, where the iconography of imperial triumph and Christian salvation is carried by a single gem at the crossing. Its quiet proportions and the survival of its original cabochon place it within the small group of intact gold and garnet crosses from the period before the Arab conquests, when such ornaments were produced in the goldsmiths' workshops of the eastern Mediterranean for both lay devotion and burial. Height: 3.9cm

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