A PAIR OF BYZANTINE GOLD HOOP EARRINGS, 6TH-7TH CENTURY A.D.

拍品描述

A PAIR OF BYZANTINE GOLD, AMETHYST, GARNET AND PEARL HOOP EARRINGS, 6TH-7TH CENTURY A.D. Each earring formed from a plain gold hoop of circular section tapering to a hooked closure, the lower arc supporting a rectangular openwork frame suspended by short gold rods. From these rods hang graduated strings of garnet cabochons and baroque seed pearls, drawn together at a horizontal gold bar ornamented along its upper edge with granulated wire volutes and small pyramidal clusters of granulation flanking a central granulated collar bead. Beneath the bar, a large pear-shaped amethyst drop is set on a gold pin, terminating in a single pearl, and enclosed on either side by a U-shaped loop of twisted gold wire wound in tight spiral coils that returns to the base of the frame. The composition follows the crescent-and-pendant scheme characteristic of Early Byzantine ear ornaments, in which the plain hoop passes through the ear and the ornamental register hangs below the lobe. The visual reading moves from top to bottom through a sequence of colour and material: the warm red of garnet, the cool white of pearl, and the pale violet of amethyst at the centre, with the whole framed by the yellow of the gold wire. The paired coiled loops that flank the amethyst drop echo the shape of the hoop above, giving the ornament a doubled crescent silhouette that would have moved and caught light as the wearer turned her head. The materials are neither incidental nor decorative alone. Amethyst carried strong associations in the Late Antique and Early Byzantine world, believed to guard against intoxication and, in Christian usage, adopted among the stones of the episcopal ring and associated with sobriety and spiritual clarity. Pearls, imported from the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, were among the most valued stones of the Byzantine court and appear repeatedly in imperial portraiture, most famously in the mosaics of San Vitale at Ravenna, where the pendilia of Theodora's crown terminate in pearl drops of comparable form. Garnets, worked as polished cabochons rather than faceted, were traded across the Mediterranean and into the northern kingdoms during the same period. The combination of these three materials on a single gold armature identifies the wearer as a woman of considerable rank, drawing on the same visual repertoire as court jewellery while adapted to private use. The technical vocabulary, hand-drawn wire, granulation applied in pyramidal clusters, twisted-wire coils forming subsidiary loops, and stones threaded on plain pins rather than set in bezels, belongs to the goldsmithing traditions of the eastern Mediterranean workshops active from the reign of Justinian into the seventh century. Related crescentic and rectangular-frame earrings have been recovered from sites across Syria, Egypt, and the Levantine coast, and the type continued in modified form into the Umayyad period, where its structural logic was preserved even as the ornamental grammar shifted. This pair exemplifies the Early Byzantine taste for polychromy achieved through the juxtaposition of coloured stones and pearl against yellow gold, and for architectonic ornament in which the frame itself, rather than a figural or narrative device, carries the design. The survival of both earrings with their full complement of stones and their coiled side-loops intact makes them a coherent record of a jewellery type more often encountered in fragmentary form. Dimensions: Height: 6cm. Total Weight: 18g.

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