French gold ring, fourteenth century (Louvre).
The peculiarity of many of the richer ornamental rings of this period is the tendency to place the stone upon a high case or stalk, so that the bezel is raised considerably above the hand. A curious example, dating from the fourteenth century, is in the Sauvageot Collection in the Galerie d'Apollon of the Louvre. It shows two dragons' heads issuing from crown-shaped ornaments supporting a sapphire in a high collet.
In the fifteenth century a large number of rings appear to have been habitually worn; and on the monument of Lady Stafford in Bromsgrove Church, Worcestershire (1450), every finger but the last one on the right hand is decorated with a ring. In many of the Flemish pictures of the same date we find ornamental rings set with table-cut or cabochon stones. The form of these is admirably represented in the portrait of a goldsmith, ascribed to Gerard David, in the Royal Gallery at Vienna. In his right hand he holds one ring, and in the left a short roll of parchment, on which are placed four more. The rings are somewhat massive, and thicken towards the bezel, where they are mounted with table-cut stones within plain claw settings. In the same gallery is John van Eyck's portrait, dated 1436, of John De Leeuw, jeweller to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. He holds between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand a gold ring set with a small cabochon stone.
This notice of mediæval finger rings may be concluded by drawing attention to a picture which, in view of the jewellery of the Middle Ages, is one of the most fascinating of all the productions of the Flemish school. The panel in question, the property of Baron A. Oppenheim, of Cologne, represents the legend of St. Godeberta and St. Eloy. It was painted in the year 1449 for the corporation of goldsmiths of Antwerp by Petrus Christus, who flourished in the first half of the fifteenth century, and died at Bruges about 1472. Appropriately enough, the patron saint of goldsmiths is figured in his shop; and the picture thus affords us a singularly interesting and attractive representation of the interior of a jeweller's shop in the middle of the fifteenth century with every detail of its glittering contents. St. Eloy or Eligius, whose figure, for all we know, may be the portrait of some well-known jeweller of the day, is seen seated at the goldsmith's bench, beside which stand Dagobert, King of France, and St. Godeberta. He is employed in weighing the ring with which the King seeks to espouse the Virgin Saint; but instead, so the legend runs, of giving her the engagement ring, he slipped on her finger a ruby ring, mystically espousing her to Christ. The King wears, pinned to the front of his black chaperon, a brooch or enseigne, set with a ruby surrounded by four pearls and having a pendent drop. Round his neck is a curb chain of alternate plain and beaded links, from which hangs a jewel formed of two lions affrontés. Godeberta's head-dress, or escoffion, is of embroidered gold sewn with pearls. The pendant of her neck-chain, hidden by the bodice, lies between the breasts.
Very carefully rendered is each item of the choice collection of objects that forms the goldsmith's stock-in-trade, exhibited on a stall covered with white linen on the left hand of the goldsmith-saint. Below is a box of rings, some plain, some mounted, ranged along three rolls of parchment. Beside them lie large pearls and precious stones, and seed pearls sorted in a shell by themselves. Behind, against the back, rest a branch of coral and oblong pieces of rock crystal and of opaque stone of porphyry-red. Above, on a piece of dark cloth, hang three splendid jewels—a pendant and two brooches, and next to them a pair of tooth-like pendants, probably glossopetræ. From the shelf on the top is suspended a string of red, amber, and pale blue rosary beads, and in the middle a girdle end of brown leather with buckle and mounts of gilded metal. The remainder of the collection, formed of various vessels, comprises a crystal cylinder set with gold and precious stones and a mounted cocoanut cup; and on the upper shelf a covered cup and a couple of tall flagons of silver parcel-gilt. This remarkable picture at once brings to mind that strangely interesting series of interiors afterwards produced by Quentin Matsys and Marinus van Romerswael, representing money-changers, bankers, or usurers busily engaged in counting up or weighing coins scattered before them on a table, upon which also sometimes lie a handsome ring or two, a richly jewelled pendant, or unset precious stones and pearls.
PLATE XXIV
