Cross carved from a single piece of rock crystal with beveled edges. The inside is hollowed out and infilled with twisted silk ribbons in blue and white. Each terminal is adorned with gold mounts decorated with floral and foliate motifs, bordered with egg-and-dart patterns, all in white, blue, red, and green enamel. At the top, the pendant loop in blue and white enamel is supported by translucent green foliage. The lower and side mounts terminate in finials enameled in white, blue, and red, with suspending baroque pearl pendants. The cross is in good, wearable condition, showing light signs of age. The enamel decoration is notably well-preserved.

Literature:

Since Antiquity, rock crystal has held special significance and was believed to possess talismanic powers across various cultures. In the Middle Ages, relics were often encased in rock crystal, a material associated with Christ for its clarity and purity. St. Gregory the Great (540-604 AD) interpreted crystal as a symbol of the Resurrection. Rock crystal was also thought to be petrified water — transformed from liquid to solid — a notion that evoked the miraculous transformation of Christ’s body rising from the dead (see: Magie des Bergkristall, exhibition catalogue, Schnütgen Museum, Cologne, Munich, 2022, pp. 255–267).

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, cross pendants carved from rock crystal were popular in Spain. Their designs vary primarily in the treatment of the mounts, some of which display elaborate enamel decoration, as seen in the present example. Rare is the twisted silk ribbons within the hollowed crystal cross, which may represent the column to which Christ was bound during the Flagellation of Christ during the Passion.  

Comparable rock crystal cross pendants, differing mainly in the style of their mounts, are preserved in several Spanish museum collections, for example in the Lazaro Galdiano Museum, Madrid (Letizia Arbeteta Mira, el arte de la joyería en la colección Lázaro Galdiano, Segovia 2003, nos. 119, 120, 122- 124, 16^th -17^th century); Museo Arquelógico Nacional, Madrid (exh. cat. La Joyería Española de Felipe II a Alfonso XIII, Madrid 1998, no. 23, 17^th or 19^th century). For further parallels, cf. Deborah Elvira, Love & Devotion. Jewels from the 16^th, 17^th and 18^th centuries, Oropesa del Mar, Castellón 2017, no. 4, c. 1600); Carolina Naya Franco, Joyas y Alhajas del Alto Aragón, Huesca 2017, p. 55. For an example attributed to Italy, 16th century, see a cross with heliotrope insert in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. no. 32.100.305).

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