A ROMAN AMETHYST & GOLD AMULET, CIRCA 1ST-2ND CENTURY A.D.

拍品描述

A ROMAN AMETHYST AND GOLD AMULET, CIRCA 1ST-2ND CENTURY A.D. Of melon-form, the amulet is carved from a single translucent amethyst of pale lilac tone, the body divided into rounded vertical lobes radiating from a central axis. The stone is set between two gold mounts: at the base, a collar of beaded and pleated sheet gold cupping the lower terminal, and at the top, a coiled gold wire forming a tiered collar from which rises a substantial suspension loop. Surface accretions of pale ochre adhere within the fluting and across portions of the stone, and minor fissures run through the body of the gem, consistent with long burial. The melon or gadrooned bead is a familiar form in Roman personal ornament, drawn from a wider Mediterranean and Near Eastern vocabulary of ribbed beads in gold, glass, and hardstone. Worn singly as a pendant, as here, or strung in series, such beads carried apotropaic as well as decorative function, the lobed body evoking fruits and seed-vessels associated with fertility and abundance. The simple wire suspension and beaded base collar are characteristic of Roman goldsmithing of the early Imperial period, in which the setting is calibrated to frame and secure the stone rather than to compete with it. Amethyst held a particular status in the Roman world. Pliny records the stone among the most prized of the coloured gems, valued for its clarity and violet tone, and reports the belief, embedded in the Greek etymology of the name, that it guarded the wearer against drunkenness. The stone was imported into the Empire from sources in Egypt and further east, and its use in personal jewellery was associated with women of standing. Set in gold and worn at the throat or wrist, an amethyst pendant of this scale would have functioned simultaneously as adornment, as talisman, and as a marker of means. This amulet exemplifies the Roman taste for hardstone jewellery in which the gem is allowed to carry the design, the goldwork reduced to the minimum required for suspension and visual punctuation. It belongs to a class of small, intimate personal ornaments that survive in numbers from the early Imperial centuries, and in which the symbolic charge of the material itself, amethyst against gold, was understood to do the work of more elaborate ornament. Height: 1.5cm

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