A BYZANTINE SILVER & GARNET CROSS, CIRCA 7TH-9TH CENTURY A.D.

拍品描述

A BYZANTINE SILVER AND GARNET CROSS, CIRCA 7TH-9TH CENTURY A.D. Of Latin form, the four arms of solid silver rod, faceted and tapering gently toward flattened terminals, the upper arm continuing into an integral rectangular suspension tab pierced for a cord or chain. At the crossing, a circular bezel of pale metal collar retains a domed garnet cabochon, seated proud of the surface and forming the sole decorative accent against the darkened, softly patinated silver. The construction is direct and without applied ornament: the arms meet at a plain axis around which the bezel is set, and the whole is worked from heavy stock rather than sheet, giving the pendant weight in the hand disproportionate to its size. The surface carries a stable grey-black tarnish with pale earthen accretions along the shafts, consistent with long burial or reliquary storage. The garnet is unfaceted, polished as a low cabochon, and shows the deep purplish-red typical of almandine. The pectoral cross was among the most widely produced items of personal devotion in the Byzantine world, worn by clergy and laity alike from Late Antiquity onward. Silver examples with a single central stone follow a formula that draws on earlier Late Roman jewellery convention, where the cabochon at the crossing carries protective as well as ornamental force. Garnet in particular was associated across the eastern Mediterranean and further east with apotropaic properties and with the blood of Christ when set at the centre of a cross, a reading reinforced by its placement here at the point where the arms intersect. The metal itself, silver rather than the base copper alloys used for the majority of surviving pectorals, indicates a commission of some means, though below the gold register reserved for court and high ecclesiastical use. The plain, rod-form arms distinguish this piece from the flat sheet-metal crosses more commonly encountered from the middle Byzantine period, and align it instead with a group of pectoral and processional crosses of the seventh to ninth centuries in which volume and stoutness were preferred to engraved decoration. The integral suspension tab, worked in one with the upper arm rather than added as a separate loop, is a characteristic of the earlier end of this range. This cross exemplifies the sober devotional aesthetic of the middle Byzantine pectoral tradition, where the cruciform itself, weighted in silver and marked at its centre by a single blood-red stone, was thought sufficient to carry the whole theological argument without further ornament. Dimensions: Height 5.7 cm

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