Life at its longest is fleeting, but beauty is an enduring symbol: the destroyers of the royal treasure are scorned today almost more than the regicides. The current Crown of Edward the Confessor, therefore, is a replica, even if the old one was authentic. Less suspect is the great sapphire, which Edward wore in his coronation ring, and which today is the central stone in the cross atop the British Imperial Crown of State.
Growth of the Goldsmiths’ Guild
Less than a century after Edward, in the reign of Henry II, the first Plantagenet ruler of England, the Goldsmiths’ Guild was formed. By 1380, two hundred years later, it was one of the most powerful guilds in the country, with rigid rules for admittance and for the quality of materials and workmanship. Although the artists worked for the king and the nobles, the bulk of their production was for ecclesiastical and general religious use. As a result, they developed greater refinements and further elaborations in this field. We have already noticed the rosary beads that open, disclosing scenes of the life of Christ or the Virgin Mary. But a cardinal without succumbing to the sin of pride might wear a jeweled pendant if the hanging box of gold opened upon a crucifix, or adorn his robe with a rich chain of gold if its links were medallions designed with holy scenes. Cardinal Wolsey, whose kitchen boasted twenty-two specialty chefs, vied with his lusty monarch, Henry VIII, in many ways, but he could never hope to match the King’s jewels which included almost 250 rings, well over 300 brooches, and one of whose diamonds, an observer reports, was bigger than “the largest walnut I ever saw.”
The Italians in the Renaissance
The Italian Renaissance started earlier than and outshone the English. The great jewel collections of ancient times, of the Emperors Julius Caesar and Hadrian of Maecenas were dwarfed by the collections of the Medici and the Borgias. The styles favored in those days are still vivid in the portraits of the period. Many of the painters and sculptors, indeed—Donatello (1386-1466), Pollaiuolo (1429-1498), Botticelli (1444-1510), Cellini, to name but four—began their careers as goldsmiths and jewelers. They fashioned works with painstaking devotion and venturesome skill for their generous but exacting patrons.
Lorenzo de Medici collected the antique cameos and intaglios freshly unearthed in Italian soil; under the spur of his interest, intaglio jewels achieved a new delicacy. Metal was worked with greater deftness, flat, chased, or répoussé. Faience, the art of painting and glazing ceramics, was added to the colorful arts of enameling.
Enseignes became popular, badges of dignity in the form of a gold adornment on a man’s hat, with the nobleman’s crest or other identification caught into the design. All over the continent, and even among the Italianate Englishmen of Elizabeth’s court and James’, the enseigne was worn as a clasp to hold the plume, while from one ear beneath dangled a golden ring or a pear-shaped pearl.
Rings of all sorts were again in demand, especially signet rings, fede (clasped hands) friendship rings, gimmals or gemmels (twin rings that could be separated for two lovers to wear)—and poison rings.
Particularly popular was the pendant, in many forms and positions. Pendant earrings again grew, until almost too large to wear. Even larger pendants, many opening on cameos, dangled upon the breast. Pendants of all sorts hung from the girdles, utilitarian in the shape of golden keys or scissors, religious in the shape of a crucifix or the relic of a saint, along with purely aesthetic medallions of animals or flowers, or golden spheres—so many as to make a tinkling when one walked.
A new fashion in the pendant was introduced, a jewel on the forehead, hung from a hair band or adornment; in India, similar pendants had for centuries hung from the veil. This new pendant was called the ferronière, from La Ferrionière (“the ironmonger’s wife”) whose portrait survives, probably painted by Leonardo da Vinci when she was mistress of Francis I of France.