Jewelry

Large and charming Italian Renaissance Marriage Pendant

Double-sided circular pendant with gilded copper frame consisting of twisted rope ornament, with a foliate base for pendant loop. Inserted are round medallions in silver, engraved with niello inlay depicting on the obverse the busts of a couple in profile facing each other with the tree of life and rosette between them, on the reverse is the HIS monogram for Jesus. The pendant shows signs of wear through age and is in good wearable condition. 

Provenance

Ralph T. Coe Center for the Arts Collection, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Literature

Such pendants with inserted medallions in silver and niello were popular in Northern Italy in the second half of the fifteenth century, and the iconography was both sacred and profane, and even amuletic. The most common motifs are a woman in profile view, the busts of a couple facing each other, like here, or religious scenes, Agnus Dei and often on the reverse the IHS monogram (a monogram symbolizing Christ).

Their function ranges from being a love token, a betrothal or wedding gift, to use as a reliquary and even amulet for soldiers. The couple facing each other here is most likely to symbolize love, underlined by the attributes of a rose and tree of life. In Renaissance Italy wedding portraits of couples were emerging and becoming fashionable to celebrate the union. The HIS monogram symbolizes Jesus and God’s presence in daily life with protective qualities, especially in the sacrament of marriage.

This pendant is most likely to have been a marriage pendant, cf. Yvonne J. Markowitz, Marriage Pendant, in: Artful Adornments: Jewelry from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 2011, p. 107.  Other examples are known in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. nos. 17.190.965, 966 and 968, and with a female figure (17.190.967), see: exh. cat. Art and Love in Renaissance Italy, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2008, nos. 35 a-c. Further examples are known in the British Museum, London (AF.2894 and single female bust AF.889, AF 2891).  Many more pendants of this type can be found in European museums, e.g. Museum of Decorative Arts MAKK, Cologne, for a compilation of unpublished examples, see: Anna Beatriz Chadour/Rüdiger Joppien, Schmuck I and II, Kunstgewerbemuseum, Cologne 1985, vol. I, no. 53.

Rings, probably for betrothal or weddings and belt-buckles with facing portraits sometimes even including a coat of arms, in the same style and technique were also favored, see: Chadour, 1994, vol. 1, no. 624 and for the iconography of the belt Beatriz Chadour-Sampson, The Power of Love, Jewels, Romance and Eternity, 2019, pp. 33-34, fig. 2.11.