A PAIR OF ROMAN GOLD & GARNET CAMEO EARRINGS, CIRCA 2ND-3RD CENTURY A.D.

拍品描述

A PAIR OF ROMAN GOLD AND GARNET CAMEO EARRINGS, CIRCA 2ND-3RD CENTURY A.D. Each earring of pendant form, suspended from a gold shepherd's-hook wire and composed of two principal elements. The upper element takes the form of a circular gold rosette worked in fine filigree, the petals rendered as tiered rows of teardrop-shaped wire loops radiating from a central granulated boss, the whole worked in the manner of a stylised chrysanthemum or many-petalled flower head. From this rosette hangs a circular medallion of red-orange carved cameo, each set within a plain gold bezel encircled by a border of applied granulation forming a beaded sunburst. The cameos are carved in low relief with the frontal head of a woman, her hair centrally parted and swept back, the features softly modelled. From the lower edge of each medallion depend three loop-in-loop chains of graduated length, terminating in pear-shaped cabochon garnets set in gold collets with twisted-wire borders. The frontal female head carried on each cameo follows a type long established in Roman glyptic and jewellery production, in which the idealised feminine visage, without specific attributes, may be read either as a generic beauty, an image of the wearer, or as a divine or semi-divine figure such as Venus, a Nereid, or a personification. The choice to render the head frontally rather than in the profile more usual to gem cutting gives the cameos an iconic, portrait-like quality suited to their function as the visual focus of a pendant ornament. The pear-shaped garnets suspended below serve both as terminals and as chromatic counterpoint, their deep translucent red picking up and intensifying the warmer red of the carved medallions. The techniques deployed here belong to the mature Roman goldsmith's repertoire inherited from Hellenistic practice: filigree wire built up in tiered loops, granulation applied along bezel edges, and loop-in-loop chain drawn and woven by hand. The rosette form, in particular, descends from Etruscan and Hellenistic disc earrings and remained a favoured motif in provincial Roman workshops of the eastern Mediterranean into the Imperial period. Garnet, imported into the Roman world from India and Sri Lanka along established trade routes, was among the most prized coloured stones of the period, valued for its clarity and its association with the blood-red hues reserved in earlier centuries for elite adornment. The carved medallions, whether of red jasper or of a comparable hardstone or vitreous paste, imitate the effect of cornelian or sard cameos of the type worn as personal amulets and portrait tokens. Earrings of this composite construction, combining a filigree upper ornament with a figural medallion and pendant chains terminating in coloured stones, belong to a class of Roman ear-jewellery produced from the second century onward and worn in the wealthier households of the Empire and its provinces. The form is documented in painted portraits from Roman Egypt and in surviving finds from the Levant and Asia Minor, where cameo-set pendants are recorded in tomb contexts of Imperial date. This pair exemplifies the middle-Imperial Roman taste for polychrome ornament, in which the goldsmith's structural repertoire, filigree, granulation, and woven chain, is set in dialogue with the lapidary's carved medallion and the coloured cabochon. The survival of both cameos and both sets of pendant garnets makes the pair a substantially complete example of a type more commonly encountered in fragmentary condition. Dimensions: Height: 7 cm

图片