Description
Exceptional and rare devotional Renaissance pendant with crucifixion and annunciation
Gold pendant in the form of a small altar retable with arched top, framed by twisted wires and traces of translucent dark green and black enamel and twisted wire suspension loop. A collet-set convex-shaped grey and white banded brown agate forms the reverse of the pendant, the front consists of a hinged gold panel held by a pin. It depicts an engraved Annunciation scene outlined in black enamel: The Virgin kneeling in prayer is greeted by the Angel Gabriel and hovering above the dove of the Holy Spirit. When opened the agate creates a niche for the miniature sculptural Crucifixion scene. Christ is nailed onto a red enameled cross with INRI plaque, standing on a green and red enameled mound. Minor loss of enamel in some areas is due to wear and age, the pendant is in good wearable condition.
Literature:
The tradition of miniature diptychs, triptychs or even polyptychs with intricately enameled scenes from the Life of Christ, such as this one, goes back to the Middle Ages. The small size allowed these to be handheld when praying or meditating. During travels it would have been carried in a pouch and would have acted as a miniature altarpiece, see: Marian Campbell, Medieval Jewellery in Europe 1100-1500, London 2009, pp. 82-83.
Devotional pendants with small-scale sculptural scenes in enamel became ever more popular during the Renaissance period in Catholic countries, such as Italy, Spain and France. However, these were often incorporated in elaborate openwork pendants, encased in rock crystal medallions, rarely as lockets. The use of agate for the encasing here suggests the pendant was probably made in Italy, cf. a locket with a mythical story in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore (cat. Jewelry, ancient to modern 1980, p. 214). Another example also from Italy is a similar type pendant, formed like a miniature folding altar with saints on the outer panel in black-enameled outline concealing inside the portrait of Duke Philibert II of Savoy (1480-1504), in the Treasury of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, probably Milan (?), c. 1501-1504, see: Yvonne Hackenbroch, Renaissance Jewellery, Munich- New York 1979, pp. 11-12, fig. 27 A-E.
The owner of this rare, jeweled pendant would have worn this piece in public, closed and perhaps outwardly flaunting its beautiful agate, but in private when touched and opened to reveal the hidden scene, it became a vehicle for an intimate form of worship and prayer.