Page:EB1911 - Volume 15.djvu/394

Rh The Greek jewelry of the best period is of extraordinary delicacy and beauty. Fine examples are shown in the British Museum from Melos and elsewhere. Undoubtedly, however, the most brilliant collection of such ornaments is that of the Hermitage, which was derived from the tombs of Kerch and the Crimea. It contains examples of the purest Greek work, together with objects which must have been of local origin, as is shown by the themes which the artist has chosen for his reliefs. Fig. 18 illustrates the jewelry of the Hermitage (see also ).

As further examples of Greek jewelry see the pendant oblong ornament for containing a scroll (fig. 19).

The ear-rings (figs. 20, 21) are also characteristic.

Etruscan jewelry at its best is not easily distinguished from the Greek, but it tends in its later forms to become florid and diffuse, without precision of design. The granulation of surfaces practised with the highest degree of refinement by the Etruscans was long a puzzle and a problem to the modern jeweller, until Castellani of Rome discovered gold-workers in the Abruzzi to whom the method had descended through many generations. He induced some of these men to go to Naples, and so revived the art, of which he contributed examples to the London Exhibition of 1872 (see ).

The jewels of the Roman empire are marked by a greater use of large cut stones in combination with the gold, and by larger surfaces of plain and undecorated metal. The adaptation of imperial gold coins to the purposes of the jeweller is also not uncommon.

With the decay of the Roman empire, and the approach of the barbarian tribes, a new Teutonic style was developed. An important example of this style is the remarkable gold treasure, discovered at Pétrossa in Transylvanian Alps in 1837, and now preserved, as far as it survives, in the museum of Bucharest. A runic inscription shows that it belonged to the Goths. Its style is in part the classical tradition, debased and modified; in part it is a singularly rude and vigorous form of barbaric art. Its chief characteristics are a free use of strongly conventionalized animal forms, such as great bird-shaped fibulae, and an ornamentation consisting of pierced gold work, combined with a free use of stones cut to special shapes, and inlaid either cloisonné-fashion or in a perforated gold plate. This part of the hoard has its affinities in objects found over a wide field from Siberia to Spain. Its rudest and most naturalistic forms occur in the East in uncouth objects from Siberian tombs, whose lineage however has been traced to Persepolis, Assyria and Egypt. In its later and more refined forms the style is known by the name, now somewhat out of favour (except as applied to a limited number of finds), of Merovingian.

The so-called Merovingian jewelry of the 5th century, and the Anglo-Saxon of a later date, have as their distinctive feature thin plates of gold, decorated with thin slabs of garnet, set in walls of gold soldered vertically like the lines of cloisonné enamel, with the addition of very decorative details of filigree work, beading and twisted gold. The typical group are the contents of the tomb of King Childeric ( 481) now in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris. In Figs. 22 and 23 we have examples of Anglo-Saxon fibulae, the first being decorated with a species of cloisonné, in which garnets are inserted, while the other is in hammered work in relief. A pendant (fig. 24) is also set with garnets. The buckles (figs. 25, 26, 27) are remarkably characteristic examples, and very elegant in design. A girdle ornament in gold, set with garnets (fig. 28), is an example of Carolingian design of a high class. Another remarkable group of barbaric jewelry, dated by coins as of the beginning of the 7th century, was excavated at Castel Trosino near the Picenian Ascoli, and is attributed to the Lombards. See Monumenti antichi (Accademia dei Lincei), xii. 145.

We turn now to the Celtic group of jewelled ornaments, which has an equally long and independent line of descent. The characteristic Celtic ornaments are of hammered work with details in repoussé, having fillings-in of vitreous paste, coloured enamels, amber, and in the later examples rock crystal with a smooth rounded surface cut en cabochon. The