Widespread luxury accompanied the large importation of precious stones. Ladies made each new fête a pretext for greater extravagance and greater efforts to outshine their neighbours; and the ornament in which they seem above all to have delighted for the best display of their wealth of jewellery was the aigrette. This ornament, of which some mention has been made (p. 281), generally took the form of a bouquet of flowers on movable stalks, composed of clusters of precious stones in enamelled gold, accompanied sometimes by a jewelled knot, and was fixed in the hair on all occasions of ceremony. A large number of these bouquets are mentioned in the inventory of the French crown jewels of 1618. In default of actual examples we must rely on the designs which the jewellers of the day published for them, and also on contemporary portraits, which further illustrate a passing mode for plaiting strings of pearls through the hair.
PLATE XLII
seventeenth-century enamelled pendants
Of earrings, on the other hand, a considerable number of examples have survived. French and English portraits show at first only a large pear-shaped pearl in each ear. In the second half of the century more elaborate earrings came into use. Spain, where these ornaments have always been popular, produced at the time a number of portraits exhibiting earrings of open-work set with coloured stones. They are in the form of a rosette or bow-shaped ornament hung with movable pendants. The engravings of Rivard (1646), Lefebure (1647), and Gilles Légaré (1663) include designs for earrings; those of the last-named being such voluminous jewels, hung with triple briolettes, pendeloques, or pearls, that they might easily be mistaken for neck pendants. The majority of earrings of this period, now existing, are of Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian origin. The general type of earring then in use is well shown in Rembrandt's portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels (about 1652), in the Louvre, where it takes the form of an elaborate pendant terminating with a big pearl drop.
Necklaces of light open-work design are set with diamonds or coloured stones. These seldom have a special pendant; they were, in fact, fast disappearing to make room for rows of pearls. Jewelled pendants, often consisting of two or more mobile parts, were frequently attached to a velvet band that closely encircled the throat. More important pendants of this period are those which take the forms of mounted engraved gems or enamelled portraits, or else of miniature cases or lockets beautifully enamelled.
The finest series of mounted gems is that in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris. Some of the mounts are executed in the "pea pod" style in open-work; others are ornamented with champlevé enamel, after the niello designs in the silhouette manner; others again are of natural flower designs in painted enamel. There is a noteworthy example at Paris of the pea-pod style—a cameo (No. 791) of Louis XIII as an infant. It is in an open-work frame of opaque enamel—black, dark green, and white—of about 1605, which bears a very close resemblance to one of the published designs of Pierre Marchant. In the Gem Room of the British Museum is a still finer example, and one of the most splendid jewels from the famous Marlborough Collection. It is of open-work, enamelled white and green: the husks or pods, set each with a small diamond, are in green, and the little pea ornaments issuing therefrom are in white enamel (Pl. XLIV, 17). The work dates from the first years of the seventeenth century. The gem it serves to enrich, a fine onyx cameo of Lucius Verus, is slightly earlier. The choicest example of painted enamel of flower design in open relief is certainly the mounting or frame of a magnificent pendant (No. 961) in the Bibliothèque Nationale, set with a cameo of Lucrezia de' Medici, wife of Alfonso II, Duke of Ferrara. This frame, quite unmatched for its taste and skill, is formed of a garland of flowers, open-worked, and enamelled in the utmost delicacy with white, pale yellow, and light green enamel, heightened with reddish touches (Pl. XLIII, 6). Among other jewels of the same style, of which there are quite a number, one may mention the setting of an antique Roman cameo (Pl. XLIV, 15), and the reverse of the onyx "George" of Charles II (Pl. XXVIII, 1) both English work, at Windsor Castle[177]. Besides the two beautiful examples of his work already noticed (p. 288), it is usual to associate with Gilles Légaré the frame of birds and flowers, enamelled black and white, that surrounds Petitot's portrait of Louis XIV in the Jones Collection at South Kensington. The designs of Vauquer, also, seem to have been followed in many similar kinds of enamelled jewels.
PLATE XLIII