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Chains Part 5 |
One of the more distinctive Renaissance styles, popular in the 16th century and on through the 19th, is what I've come to think of as "suspension" pendants. These were rather large, y elaborate pendants, suspended on either end from chains (usually open link) that would then meet above the pendant and be connected, by a ring or a jewel.
 Tait explains: "Such huge pendants were intended to be worn over rich brocades, particularly for pinning on high up on stiff sleeves so that the jewels were free to swing, catching the light as they moved." While a great deal of medieval and Renaissance jewelry had religious themes, these large suspended pendants often depicted fantastical creatures made of gold, enamel, and gems. Here's a delightful 17th-century emerald dragon, with extraordinary front-and-back views, from the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Mythical themes were also popular. The Cooper-Hewett has a suspended pendant dated to late sixteenth-early seventeenth century that shows a tiny enameled Europa being borne off by almost equally tiny bull. Another well-known pendant in this style depicts Venus and Cupid sitting on the back of an enameled sea monster. The pendant is suspended by two gold chains; one connects to the sea monster’s back fin, the other to his little gold crown. Venus and her son, charmingly nude, are encircled by a golden scarf. This pendant, which currently resides in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, dates back to the end of the 16th century.
Of course, not everyone in Europe was weighted down with heavy gold and extravagant gems. Though long chains began to go out of fashion in the early 1600s during the reign of James I, chains themselves never really disappeared. Even commoners continued to wear chains, sometimes wrapped twice around the wrist as a bracelet. In 1912, a collection of jewelry -thought to have been part of a jeweler's stock - was found underneath the floorboards of a house in Cheapside, London. Called the Cheapside Hoard, these items are thought to have been the sort of jewelry worn by lesser nobility and the families of wealthy merchants during the Jacobean and Edwardian eras. The collection, currently split among the British Museum, the Museum of London, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Guildhall Museum, features absolutely lovely jewels. In addition to rings, earrings, and pendants, there are a number of fine chain necklaces, many of them alternating delicate gold links with enamel flowers, pearls, or cabochon and faceted gems:
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Chains Part 4 |
In Metropolitan Jewelry, a beautiful book which examines jewelry in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sophie McConnell writes: "One of the widespread fashions of the early sixteenth century was the wearing of large, heavy chains. In England Henry VIII gave them as presents to ambassadors and as rewards to men who had rendered a service to the crown. In Germany and Flanders, however, they were mostly worn by women".
In this painting by Luger Tom Ring the Younger (German, 1522-84):
McConnell explains that the mother and daughter (to the right of Jesus) are dressed piously yet fashionably, each wearing a large, and undoubtedly heavy, gold chain. The daughter (far right) wears not only the long chain but a jeweled pendant suspended from another more ornate open-link chain around her throat.
 In Hans Brosamer's dour portrait "Katharina Merian" (painted in Germany, mid-sixteenth century), the subject wears a necklace whose gold chain is made of flat circular links, so simple that the necklace almost looks contemporary. Of course, the pendant is pure elaborate Renaissance.
 As for Henry VIII, he was often depicted wearing both a jeweled collar that spans his shoulders, as well as chain suspending a jeweled pendant, as in this painting by Hans Holbein the Younger. |
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Chains Part 3 |
In Jewelry,a volume in the Smithsonian Illustrated Library of Antiques, Marie-Louise d’Otrange Mastai, explains that during the sixteenth century certain styles of jewelry became strongly connected to certain regions. Wearing gold chains became the trend in Germany, where the chains were valued not only for suspending pendants but were considered important in their own right. As an example, she cites this portrait:
Painted by Hans Krell, about 1530, it shows Princess Emilia of Saxony in her betrothal finery, wearing three neck chains beneath a choker. The chains are quite obviously a display of wealth and status.
 Italy had a slightly different take on wearing chains if the woman in the sixteenth-century painting "A Lady as Lucretia" by Lorenzo Lotto is typical:
The young noblewoman is wearing a jeweled pendant suspended from a tangle of gold chains that are tucked into the bodice of her dress |
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Chains Part 2 |
When you think about the fact that for centuries chains were painstakingly handcrafted, link by link, it's all the more amazing to see a gold Minoan earring, dated to the 17th century B.C. in which delicate charms, shaped like owls and disks, are connected to an elaborate central disk by fine gold chains.
Gold chains with pendants were found at Dashur in the tomb of Princess Khnumet, who lived during Egypt's 12th Dynasty (c. 1991-1786 B.C.) Khnumet's taste in jewelry seems surprisingly contemporary. One delicate gold rope has a butterfly made of gold wire hanging from it. Two granulated gold star-shaped pendants hang from another, and the pendants on a third gold chain are described as "formalized flies," which actually look like upside-down gold hearts.
Although the earliest chains were made of simple links, woven chains have been found that date back to pre-Roman times. According to Tait, during the Hellenistic Age (325 B.C.-27 B.C.), gold became more available in Greece, "because of the intensive mining operations in Thrace, initiated by Phillip II, but mostly from the dissemination of the captured Persian treasures. The jewelry in Greece began to take on new forms, incorporating Asian and Egyptian motifs. Among the pieces that have survived from this age is a 2nd-century B.C. necklace from Taormina, Sicily. Its pendant, an inverted gold crescent decorated with filigree and granulation and set with lustrous red garnets, is suspended from a graceful woven gold chain.
The Romans also used woven gold chain in their jewelry. A treasure from the 1st century A.D. is an exquisite necklace, its delicate woven gold chain linked to cabochon garnets, also set in gold.
Chains continued to be meticulously made by hand throughout the Middle Ages. The Metropolitan Museum of New York has a pair of Frankish fibulae (brooches) dating to the 7th century A.D. in the form of gold-plated birds (possibly worn for luck), that are connected by a gold chain.
Much of what we know about jewelry and how it was worn in earlier times comes from paintings. Portraits of the once rich and famous give us a good idea of the jewelry of the times, or least what was worn by the upper classes. A fascinating Flemish painting by Petrus Christus, dated 1544) shows a goldsmith in his shop, with a wealthy young couple behind him.
 But this isn't just any goldsmith, the clue being the delicate halo around his cap. He is Saint Eligius, the patron saint of goldsmiths and jewelers, and he's shown holding a pair of scales, preparing to weigh a gold ring, which some scholars say will be used in the wedding. What's interesting, for purposes of this article, is the heavy and obviously expensive gold chain that the young man behind him wears so casually around his neck. |
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