Memento Mori ring
, England, late 16th - early 17th century
Memento Mori ring
Description
A MEMENTO MORI WORN CLOSE AT HAND
Gold ring with D-section hoop, plain on the interior, the exterior terminating in capital-shaped shoulders decorated with black and white enamel. These support a flat quatrefoil bezel with foliate decoration and central square outlined in black enamel. At its center is a skull in black and white enamel, framed by the black-enameled italic inscription: “Die to live.” The ring shows signs of wear through age and is in good wearable condition.
Provenance
United Kingdom, The Jonest Collection, published in: Diana Scarisbrick and Sonja Butler, Marvels in Miniature, The Jonest Collection of Rings, London 2024, p. 135, no. 94.
Literature
Fashionable from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, Memento mori rings such as the present example conveyed a powerful moral message. Symbols like skulls, skeletons, and hourglasses reminded their wearers of the inevitability of death and the Christian imperative to lead a virtuous life. The descriptive Latin phrase memento mori—“remember you must die”—conveys the same theme found in contemporary Vanitas paintings where skulls appear alongside worldly riches as reminders of the transience of life. Here, the inscription “Die to live” makes the moral message explicit: the wearer should relinquish earthly attachments, accept mortality, and aspire to eternal life in Heaven.
Comparable signet rings typically feature a white-enameled death’s head surrounded by an inscription, on round, foliate, or hexagonal bezels. Examples are found in the British Museum (Dalton 1912, nos. 1448, 1450) and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (Oman 1974, pl. 85B–C; Church 2017, pp. 46, 49, figs. 50, 54), all dating to the late sixteenth century.
Similar death’s-head rings also appear in contemporary portraits, often worn by men on the index finger of the left hand. See, for example, Portrait of a Gentleman Aged 41 of 1567 by Hans Eworth (Scarisbrick 2007, pp. 164–165) and the Portrait of Edward Goodman of Ruthin, c. 1550, in the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff (inv. no. NMW A 3450, fig. 1). The latter bears an inscription in Welsh “Without God, without anything / God is enough” and “Be humble and meek / Soberly, justly, piously,” neatly encapsulating the moral message of memento mori rings.