An Important Victorian Hardstone Intaglio Necklace

An Important Victorian Hardstone Intaglio Necklace

Description

An Important Victorian hardstone intaglio necklace, composed of eight Roman intaglios depicting seven of the Olympian gods, with a central drop depicting and a scene from the Aeneid, an epic Latin poem which told the life of Aeneas, a Trojan who left his home city and eventually reached Italy, where he was a progenitor of Rome. The precise scene depicts the moment that Aeneas carries his father, the elderly Anchises, from Troy, after it has been sacked by the Greek army, each intaglio rubover set to oval filigree decorated gold plaques, alternating with similarly design flower heads, attached to a yellow gold mesh chain, intaglios circa 1st to 3rd AD inspected by Richard Falkiner, gold necklace circa 1880, measuring approximately 38cm long, the central section measuring approximately 5.1cm, gross weight 42.2 grams.

A spectacular and historic necklace. During the Victorian era, archaeological discoveries of the ancient world led to renewed interest in the Ancient Etruscan, Greek, and Roman styles. This led to Victorian jewellers creating reproductions of Ancient styles of jewellery. This important piece features a Victorian gold necklace set with hardstone intaglios. These intaglios are not reproductions: they all date from the 1st to 3rd centuries AD. Seven of the intaglios depict the gods of the Greek and Roman pantheon, and the eighth, which is a dropped pendant, depicts a detailed scene from the Aeneid. These intaglios are a true piece of collected ancient history, magnificently set into bright yellow gold by a nineteenth-century jeweller. The gold settings for the intaglios have been created using the ancient technique of filigree wirework, and the lovely gold rosettes in between each intaglio draw clear inspiration from ancient jewellery. This is a remarkable piece of history.