A HELLENISTIC GOLD PENDANT WITH AGATE INTAGLIO, LATE 4TH-2ND CENTURY B.C.

拍品描述

A HELLENISTIC GOLD PENDANT WITH AGATE INTAGLIO, LATE 4TH-2ND CENTURY B.C. Of oval form, the pendant set with a domed banded agate intaglio in warm carnelian-orange tones bordered by a paler white stratum along the upper edge. The stone is engraved with a quadriga in motion, the four horses shown at full gallop with their forelegs raised and manes streaming, drawing a light two-wheeled chariot in which a single charioteer stands to the right, the reins gathered in his hands and his body leaning forward with the momentum of the team. The gem is held within a gold bezel edged by a finely worked band of triangular tongue ornament, surmounted by a rectangular suspension loop decorated with two vertical rows of applied granulation flanking a central bar. Three pendent drops in the form of elongated bud or amphora shapes hang from small ring attachments along the lower edge of the bezel, each terminating in a small gold sphere. The subject of the quadriga carried a dense set of associations in the Hellenistic world. Chariot racing was among the most prestigious of Panhellenic athletic events, and the four-horse chariot served in coinage and glyptic as an emblem of victory, aristocratic wealth, and divine favour, most famously in the Syracusan dekadrachms of the late fifth century and in the coinage of Philip II of Macedon. In private glyptic the motif operated as a personal device of success and standing, worn on the finger or, as here, suspended as a jewel. The compact framing of horses, chariot, and driver within an oval field required considerable control of the wheel and drill, and the theme remained a test-piece for engravers from the Classical period into the Roman Imperial workshops. The materials themselves speak to the character of Hellenistic personal ornament. Banded agate was prized for the natural stratification that engravers exploited to model figures against a contrasting ground, and its hardness made it a durable seal-stone as well as a display piece. The gold mount belongs to a well-established Hellenistic vocabulary: granulated collars, tongue-pattern bezels, and pendent amphora- or bud-shaped drops recur across jewellery from the Greek East, from Macedonia and the northern Aegean through Asia Minor to the Ptolemaic sphere. Such pendants combined the apotropaic and identifying functions of the engraved gem with the display value of worked gold, and were suspended from chains or worn as the central element of more elaborate parures. This pendant exemplifies the Hellenistic taste for combining a figural intaglio of Classical subject with a gold setting elaborated by granulation and hanging drops. The pairing of an engraved quadriga, a motif of aristocratic and agonistic prestige, with the mobile ornament of the pendant drops locates the piece within the mature repertoire of Greek gold-and-gem jewellery in the centuries following Alexander. Dimensions: Length of stone: 3 cm

图片