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Pair of Earrings

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Pair of Earrings

Place of OriginPossibly the Black Sea region (Ukraine or Romania)
Dateabout CE 200
DimensionsL: 3 in. (7.6 cm)
Mediumgold, garnet, pearls, plasmas and green glass
ClassificationJewelry
Credit LineOrion Fund
Object number
2007.101A-B
On View
Toledo Museum of Art (2445 Monroe Street), Gallery, 02, Classic
DescriptionEach earring is approximately 7.6 cm in length and formed in a distinctive navicella (boat-like) shape. A bezel-set garnet tops each earring, from which radiate fifteen gold wires tipped with pearls. These support a large, triangular openwork element decorated with repousse fish, birds adorned with filigree and granulation, and garnet cabochons set in dog-tooth bezels. Additional pendants, including amphora-shaped forms and a central drop-shaped garnet, hang below. A circular green glass cabochon is centrally placed among the lower decorations.
Label TextNavicella (“little boat”) earrings are so-called from the Latin navis, or ship, because the curved form of the principal pendant is reminiscent of a ship’s keel. These large and complex earrings show the continuation of Hellenistic Greek tour-de-force jewelry making traditions combined with the later Roman taste for colorful semiprecious stones (garnets, green plasmas or glass, and pearls) and symbolic animals (birds, fish). A wealthy lady, such as Umm’abi (depicted in the funerary relief nearby), would have worn similar jewelry, and would have been dressed in her finest things for entombment. Similar forms have been uncovered in elite Sarmatian female burials in modern-day Ukraine and Romania, prompting reassessment of the regional reach of such jewelry types. The Sarmatians were a group of Iranian-speaking nomadic peoples who dominated the Eurasian steppe from around the 5th century BCE to the 4th century CE. They are considered part of the larger Scythian cultural horizon and were known for their interactions with both the Roman Empire and neighboring cultures like the Thracians, Greeks, and Parthians.Published ReferencesAncient Jewelry, sale no. 1914, Christie's, New York, Thursday, 6 December 2007, p. 87, lot 464.

Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo Museum of Art Masterworks, Toledo, 2009, p. 97, repr. (col.).

Comparative ReferencesSee also, Hugh Tait, ed. Seven Thousand Years of Jewellery (London: Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum Publications, 1986) p. 87, no. 193, length 10.7 cm. Where the hair ornament is also illustrated.

See also F. H. Marshall, Catalogue of the Jewellery, Greek, Etruscan, and Roman, in the Departments of Antiquities, British Museum (London: The British Museum, 1911) 311, cat. no. 2697, pl. LVII (gold necklace of 15 cylinders decorated with large granulation, filigree leaves and rosettes, and set with both round and pear-shaped garnets), dated first century CE based on comparison with a necklace of similar type from Pompeii.

See also Etienne Coche de la Ferté, Les Bijoux Antiques (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1956) pair of triangular earrings made of sheet gold with blue and red glass and pseudo-granulation (Louvre BJ 433-4, H 7 cm), from Kerch, formerly Messeksoudy Collection, pp. 90,95, pl. XLIII.3.

See also R. A. Higgins, Greek and Roman Jewellery (London: Methuen and Co Ltd, 1st ed., 1961) p. 183, ill. Pl. 62C, colorpl. D facing p. 184: Roman hair ornament (inv. GR 1903.7-17.3 = Marshall cat. no. 1866, pl. LXVI, "composed of a row of oval and rectangular bezel-settings, some filled with plasma [plasma is a bright to emerald-green chalcedony; these are emeralds per Tait 1986], some now empty, surrounded by a row of pearls in bezel-settings. Below hangs a horizontal rod, from which are suspended three vertical rods, threaded two with pearls and one with a sapphire," found at Tunis with a gold-mounted sardonyx cameo brooch of the birth of Dionysos (=Marshall cat. no. 2867) and a bracelet (= Marshall cat. no. 2824, dated 3rd cen. CE), "closely paralleled on Palmyrene statues of the second and third centuries." Note that the bracelet's openwork band is a row of ivy leaves made using the opus interrasile (aka diatrita) technique that became commonly used during the second century CE.

See also Barbara Deppert-Lippitz, Ancient Gold Jewelry at the Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art in association with the University of Washington Press, 1996) cat. nos. 101 (DMA 1995.26, necklace with garnet cabochons) and 102 (DMA 1996.???, pair of earrings with suspended garnets and pearls = Higgins 1980 pl. 54b), both 2nd-early 3rd century CE. The necklace is said to come from Nabataea.

See also Anna Gonosovà and Christine Kondoleon, Art of Late Rome and Byzantium in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond, VA: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 1996), cat. no. 19 (VMFA 82.65.1/2, pair of disc, bar, and pendant earrings with garnets and cornelian), "probably made after the mid third century when this earring type received its most interpretations," here with openwork disc and crossbar.

See also Objects of Adornment: Five Thousand Years of Jewelry from the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore (Baltimore, MD: Walters Art Gallery and the American Federation of Arts, 1984) cat. nos. 54 and 55 (WAM 57.376 and 57.382, pair of gold bracelets with garnet, glass, and pearl insets, and pair of earrings from the Olbia Treasure, dated first century BCE) and cat. no. 58 (WAM 57.1552, gold hoop, disk, and pendant earring with garnets and pearls, dated second century CE)

Diadem
250-150 BCE
Circle Brooch
Sybil Dunlop
about 1900
Brooch with Head of Medusa
George Hunt
about 1935
Heraldic Chatelaine
François-Desiré Froment-Meurice
about 1845-1848
Ancient Splendor
Edris Eckhardt
1962
Pendant
Ch'ing Dynasty (1644-1912)
Jug in the Shape of the Head of a Woman or Dionysos
Workshop of the Floating Handles
first half CE 1st century
Double Blackberry Rings
Anna Bacchelli
1940s
Blackberry Ring
Anna Bacchelli
1940s
Blackberry Ring
Anna Bacchelli
1940s

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