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1/1040 | Intelligible Beauty

With the transfer of the imperial capital to Constantinople, the

centre of gravity of not only the administration but also of

artistic development moved to the East. Specific changes tookplace and, in art in particular, these led to an aesthetic

displaying obvious Hellenistic influences and with ancient

roots in the eastern Mediterranean. Art, primarily sculpturemade during the preceding period of the military emperors

and the tetrarchs, witnessed an upsurge of heavy figures in

frontal poses, characterised by harsh features and geometric

treatment of garments. These traits cannot be attributed to

technical ineptitude or an inability to imitate Classical models.On the contrary, they were the result of a conscious choice of

styles designed specifically to serve the needs of propaganda,to transmit from above messages of political power and

totalitarianism.

Beginning in the reign of Constantine the Great, however,

we can detect a merging of these traits with other, lighter,classicising models, characteristic of the eastern

Mediterranean; these were destined ultimately to prevail in the

formation of the art of Constantinople. This phenomenon canbe seen, for example, in large scale sculpture such as the

sarcophagus of Junius Bassus,1 on which an Early Christian

thematic repertoire also appears. Such works of Hellenisticcharacter reveal the technical ability of their creators as well as

the orientation of the sophisticated and educated strata of

society, who endeavoured to keep this tradition alive. It is no

accident that this tendency is particularly evident on luxuryobjects such as the ivory diptych of Symmachon and

Nikomachon2 executed with a purely classical rendering of the

figures and Greek iconography.Similarly, a large number of silver vessels dating from the

2nd to the 5th century are decorated with classicising figures in

mythological scenes.3 This trend was prevalent even in the

western provinces of the Empire, as evidenced by major

treasures or hoards such as those found at Mildenhall4

andKaiseraugst,5 despite many questions concerning the origin of

these objects and their absolute dating. Classical remnantsincluding gods and heroes, symbols, vegetal motifs and

geometric patterns survived and were repeated conscientiously

on silver vessels made as late as the 7th century, appearing

alongside Christian subjects, as for example on the David platesfrom the second Cyprus treasure.6

In jewellery this classicising trend is especially apparent in

the decoration, which had already excluded the human figurefrom its thematic repertoire, but retained f loral and geometric

motifs which emanate a delicacy and grace which recall

Hellenistic creations.7 The shape and decoration of somebracelets which survived essentially throughout the durationof Byzantine goldwork serve as examples of this tendency.

With few exceptions, characteristic elements of Hellenistic

jewellery such as the Herakles knot, coiled snaked bracelets

and bracelets with animal-headed terminals steadilydiminished in popularity throughout the Roman period up tothe 3rd century.8 One survival of the latter type (Pl. 1) is a

bracelet with confronted panthers in the Dumbarton Oaks

Collection.9 The felines bodies are rendered with particularcare, while their forelegs hold a mount for a precious stone. The

combination with the pierced-work technique on the back of

the mount suggests the bracelet should be dated to the 7thcentury. Even if the earlier dating proposed by Zwirn10 proves

not to be valid, nonetheless the craftsman was surely familiar

with bracelets with animal-head terminals and the manner of

rendering them.

Another category is that of bracelets composed ofinterlocking elements; these, too, are of Hellenistic origin. An

interesting example is the bracelet in the Zintilis Collection,11now in the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens (Pl. 2). It

comprises a row of interlinked plaques with inlaid stones, now

lost, and light pierced-work filling decoration; the central

plaque was set with a larger stone. It can be related to acorresponding necklace in the same collection and is dated to

the late 4th century. Much later is a bracelet in the Pantalica

Treasure,12 with rows of interlocking heart-shaped elements,each one enclosing an arrowhead motif. This bracelet is dated

to the 7th century. It is puzzling, given how common this

technique is on necklaces, that bracelets with interlockingelements have not survived in greater numbers.

The bracelet type of greatest longevity was that with a hoop

formed from two moveable parts fashioned of thick wire or of

thin cylinders intertwined, secured by a plain or more

Important Bracelets in Early Christian and ByzantineArt

Aimilia Yeroulanou

Plate 1 Bracelet, Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks Collection (Acc. no. 3866)


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Important Bracelets in Early Christian and Byzantine Art

Plate 2 Bracelet, Athens, Cycladic Museum (Thanos Zintilis Collection)

Plate 3 Bracelet with Athena, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art , Giftof J. Pierpont Morgan (Inv.-no. 1917,17.190.2053)

Plate 4 Bracelet with busts of Christ and the Virgin, Athens, NationalArchaeological Museum, Stathatos Collection

Plate 5 Pair of bracelets, WashingtonDC, Dumbarton Oaks Collection(Acc. nos. 38. 6465)

Plate 6 Pair of bracelets with agates,Richmond, Virginia Museum of FineArts, Purchase, The Adolph D. andWilkins C. Williams Fund(67.52.32.1/2)


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Plate 8 Bracelet, London, BritishMuseum (GR AF 2817)

Plate 9 The group of 19 bracelets from the Hoxne Treasure, London, British Museum (PE 1994,4-8,11-29)

Plate 10 Bracelet with inscription from the Hoxne Treasure, London, BritishMuseum(PE 1994,4-8,29)

Plate 11 Bracelet, Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum (83.AM.227.3)

Plate 12 Bracelet, Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks Collection (Acc no. 75.1) Plate 13 Bracelet from the Tns Treasure, Algiers, Muse National desAntiquits



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bracelet from the same hoard, with horizontal and verticalbands creating panels of pierced-work scrolls of the same

simple workmanship as the previous bracelets. The bracelet

with the openwork inscription, vtere felix domina iuliane,

which serves the same function of consolidation of the

openwork surface, belongs to the class of jewellery withinscriptions.29 This last bracelet, another with mainly blank

circular discs on the surface, is reminiscent of easternMediterranean traits such as the pierced-work decoration that

forms around the discs, nested lozenges and a straight stem

with tiny ivy leaves placed symmetrically on either side (Pl.

8).30Exceptionally fine and strictly disciplined workmanship

also appears on a bracelet in the Getty Museum, on which

concentric circles of very fine stems are formed around smallanimals, birds, leaves and rosettes (Pl. 11).31 Exactly the same

arrangement is seen in the concentric circles and lozenges on a

bracelet in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection (Pl. 12),32

despitethe fact that on the criterion of shape it belongs within the

category of bracelets with moveable geometric openings.

Nonetheless, the similarity in the rendering of the pierced-

worksurface permits its almost certain attribution to the sameworkshop.

In every attempt at classifying or dating pierced-work

jewellery it is important to focus on the motifs and themes ofthe decorative programme of the pierced-work surface and

secondly on the shapes, the use of stones, and so on.

On the bracelet from the Tns Treasure (Pl. 13),33 a

geometric border encloses the vine leaves and the birds, with a

more lavish interposing of gold surfaces. The same principle isapplied on the large bracelet from the Hoxne Treasure, with

the cut-out leaves.34 Here, however, a lack of balance isobservable in the arrangement of the decorative motifs. More

accomplished is the composition on the Audemer bracelet,

where oak leaves are interposed between the wavy band, while

the pierced-work scroll is extremely fine and balanced.35These large bracelets recall a pair from Syria, now shared

between Berlin (Pl. 14) and Saint Louis in the USA.36 The

bracelet hoop differs and is of hexagonal cross-section, has nocut-out surfaces and is rendered completely in pierced work,

with concentric geometric shapes. The workmanship is

remarkably fine, so that the surface almost resembles filigree.In the central zone of both bracelets is the Greek inscription (use it for [your] luck throughout

life) and (beautiful,healthy soul, wear it). These bracelets are among the most

important and ty pical examples of the pierced-work technique.Some bracelets with hoops in the form of a pierced-work

band (Pl. 15) are enriched with precious stones. One pair from

the de Clerq Collection and one bracelet in the Cabinet des

Mdailles, Paris, are of the same shape, with two zones of

pierced-work scrolls separated by tooled wire.37

The onlydifference is that the single bracelet in the Cabinet des

Mdailles has a moveable clasp. The pierced-work scroll is alsothe same on the two bracelets, with a clear design rendered on

a rather thick surface, so that the scroll has substance and is

discernible on the reverse too. A bracelet from Cologne38 is also

in the form of a fine pierced band with precious stones (Pl. 15).The scrolls in particular, which describe a largepelta, bring to

mind the corresponding design on the medallions of

Constantine the Great.39To the group that combines pierced-work technique with

inlaid precious stones belong also some bracelets with hoops of

semi-circular cross-section but which are not closed at theback, like the tubular bracelets. In this way they achieve the

desired transparency. On a pair of high quality bracelets in the

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Pl. 16), the running scroll, above

and below the settings with sapphires and emeralds, formsextremely fine concentric circles with details that are

encountered on other bracelets.40 The delicacy and the balance

of the accomplished workmanship are due to the manner inwhich the pierced work is executed, by excising the gold

completely and neatly, leaving the design clearly visible on the

reverse as well. Very closely related are a bracelet from the

Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and one in the Rmisch-

Plate 14 Bracelet, Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Antikensammlung (30219, 509) Plate 15 Bracelet, Cologne, Rmisch-Germanisches Museum (1498)

Plate 16 Pair of bracelets, Richmond, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, TheAdolph and Wilkins C. Will iams Fund (67.52.31.1/2)


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Oaks Collection: this has a scene on its circular clasp of an

emperor in a chariot accompanied by Victories.49 Depicted on

the hoop is a vine branch enclosing animals and birds. Two

bracelets of the same type were found at Hebron in Palestine.

On another group of bracelets, vine stems enriched with leavesand bunches of grapes are worked on the hoop (Pl. 22). The

bracelets in the second Lambousa treasure, on which the same

symmetrical vine stem also fills the disc of the clasp,

50

arecharacteristic of this type. The Lambousa treasure includes

some of the most important pieces of jewellery known from the

6th to 7th century.

Two more pairs of bracelets, also with vine stems, butvaried by the addition of precious stones, are known: one is

from the Assit treasure, 51 now in Berlin, the other from Varna

in Bulgaria (Pl. 23).52 The first have openwork vine scrolls aspart of the hoop and a clasp, which are slightly wider than the

height of the hoops, in the shape of multi-petalled rosettes. On

the second pair, the vine scrolls are contained between two

fixed tooled wires that form the hoops, laden with bunches of

grapes formed by pearls and leaves of pale green stone. Finally,one more important bracelet with a hoop and circular clasp

from the Assit treasure, now in the Metropolitan Museum ofArt, is encrusted with splendid precious stones and only the

reverse of the disc has a design of pierced-work interlace (Pl.24).53

Bypassing the dark age of the 8th century, we come to theperiod when the use of enamel prevails in the goldsmiths art. It

features mainly on ecclesiastical objects, icons, book covers,

and so on, preserved in church sacristies, while items ofjewellery are few and these predominantly religious amulets.

One exception is the pair of armbands from Thessalonica (Pl.25), a unique example of enamelling, which continues the

tradition of depicting birds and plant motifs with particularlyharmonious colours.54

There is a notable decline in both the production and the

quality of bracelets surviving from the subsequent periods ofByzantine art. Wars, looting, and economic difficulties were all

factors that contributed to this apparent decline in jewellery.

Even so, representations of emperors bedecked in magnificent

jewellery, and of ordinary persons too, as attested by the wall-

paintings in the early 14th-century church of St Nicholas theOrphan in Thessalonica, as well as other representations,

Plate 20 Pair of bracelets, Athens,Benaki Museum (18351836)

Plates 21a and bRepoussmedallions of a bracelet, Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks Collection (Acc. no. 50.37)

Plate 22 Pair of bracelets , New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gif t of J. Pierpont Morgan (Inv. no. 17.190.148149)

a b

a b




Plate 23 Pair of bracelets, Varna,Narodni Museum

Plate 24 Bracelet, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of J. PierpontMorgan (Inv.-no. 17.190.16701671)

Plate 25 Pair of bracelets, Thessalonika, Museum of Byzantine Culture (BKU 262/6)



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Here the hoop is decorated with three relief medallions, eachdecorated with a banded cross with four volute palmettes. The

presence of the cross places it in the sphere of purely amuletic

jewellery. The other bracelet has bosses decorated with

palmette interlaces and arabesques in niello on a silverground.61

Although these bracelets of the 11th to 12th century are

devoid of opulence and offer little information regarding thediversity of decoration, we should note that bracelets overall,

and those included in this short article, constitute a

particularly interesting corpus of jewellery, which has given usexquisite examples of superb art, as well as ample ground fordeliberation on problems.

Notes1 W.F. Volbach,Early Christian Art , London, 1961, pls 413.2 K. Weitzmann (ed.),Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early

Christian Art, T hird to Seventh Century, New York, 1979, nos 1656.3 See for example thesitula with six deities, ibid., no. 118.4 Ibid., no. 130.5 Trsors d orfvrerie gallo-romains (Exh. cat.), Paris, 1989, no. 224.6 Weitzmann (n. 2), 47583, nos 42533.7 Cf. a necklace with coin pendants: T. Hackens and R. Winkes (eds),

Gold Jewelry: Craft, Style and Meaning from Mycenae to

Constantinopolis, Louvain-la-Neuve, 1983, no. 36.8 Cf. the central piece of a diadem in the Benaki Museum:, , Athens, 1999, no. 68 as well as thesnake bracelets nos 88, 89, 90 and the bracelets nos 56 and 57.

9 M.C. Ross, Catalogue of the Byzantine and Early Mediaeval

indicate that a love of luxury continued to exist. Braceletscontinued to be produced with a band hoop. The most

important example of this group which dates to the 11th12th

century is the bracelet in the Kanellopoulos Collection, on

which lions, griffins and birds are represented on either side ofa braided repoussstem (Pl. 26).55 This piece is made of gold

and along the edges is a palmette volute picked out in niello.

There is a corresponding silver bracelet with the samerepresentations of animals and the niello scroll on the edge, in

the Dumbarton Oaks Collection (Pl. 27),56 and a similar but

wider bracelet in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.One bracelet in the Benaki Museum has griffins inscribed

in squares all around the hoop (Pl. 28).57 Even though the

griffin was a common subject in ancient Greek art, here it may

bear witness to Islamic inf luence in this period, becausefantastic creatures of this kind were much in vogue in

Constantinople, both in ceramics and textiles. Griffins in the

same arrangement are encountered also on a silver bracelet inthe Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, although on this example

the borders enclosing the design are more pronounced and the

hoop is much narrower.58 On one other bracelet in the Benaki

Museum, square panels enclose pseudo-Kufic letters inlaid in

niello, while the whole is surrounded by a band of scrolls.59

The last two bracelets in this sur vey, again from the Benaki

Museum, appear to be related to the previous ones in theirmaterial, their nielloed decoration and their shape (Pl. 29).60

Plate 26 Bracelet, Athens, P. and A. Kanellopoulos Museum (no. 14) Plate 27 Silver bracelet, Washington DC, Dumbarton Oaks Collection, (Acc.no. 59.53)

Plate 28 Silver bracelet , Athens, Benaki Museum (11454, 11455) Plate 29 Silver bracelet, Athens, Benaki Museum (11457)


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Antiquities in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection , Vol. 2: Jewelry,Enamels, and Art of the Migration Period , Washington DC, 1965, no.47.

10 Stephen Zwirn in his lecture Out of the seventh century: wheredoes some Byzantine jewellery belong?, given at the BritishMuseum Byzantine Seminar on Intelligible Beauty: Recent

Research on Byzantine Jewellery, advanced the theory that thebracelet is much older.

11 A. Yeroulanou,Diatrita: pierced-work gold jewellery from the 3rd to

the 7th century, Athens, 1999, no. 232, f ig. 91.12 New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Inv. no. 52.76.1;ibid.,233, fig. 92. See Baldini Lippolis, this volume, Pl. 17.

13 For one example, see a bracelet in the Benaki Museum:(n. 8), no. 103.

14 Weitzmann (n. 2), no. 282.15 C. Johns and T. Potter, The T hetford Treasure, London, 1983, pl. 3b,

no. 26.16 J. Heurgon,Le Tresor de Tns, Paris, 1958, 47.2, pl. V,4.17 E. Kypraiou (ed.), , 6000 , .

. . , Thessalonika, 1997/8, nos 172, 173, 243, 244,255.

18 . Coche de la Fert, Collection Hlne Stathatos: les objetsbyzantins et post byzantins, Limoges, 1957, nos 1415, 32, pls III, V.

19 Ross (n. 9), no. 46.20 W. Dennison,A Gold Treasure of the Late Roman Period (University

of Michigan Studies in East Christian and Roman Art), New York,1918, nos 30, 31.

21 Ibid., no. 34.22 C. Lepage, Les bracelets de luxe romains et byzantins du IIe au Vie

sicle: Etude de la forme et de la structure, Cahiers Archologiques21 (1971), 123, at 57, fig. 10.

23 A. Gonosov and C. Kondoleon,Art of Late Rome and Byzantium inthe Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, The Virginia Museum of Fine

Arts, Richmond, 1994, nos 1315.24 Kypraiou (n. 17), nos 225 and 231.25 Yeroulanou (n. 11), nos 197, 198.26 Ibid., no. 113.27 Ibid., no. 210.28 I. Baldini Lippolis,Loreficeria nellimpero di Costantinopoli tra I V e

VII secolo, Bari, 1999, 184, 2.VI.3.C1.

29 See Yeroulanou (n. 11), 1649.

30 C. Johns, The Jewellery of Roman Britain, London, 1996, 11617.31 B. Deppert-Lippitz, A Group of Late Antique Jewelry in The Getty

Museum, Studia Varia from The J. Paul Getty Museum 1 (1993),10740, at 1201, fig. 12 ac.

32 D. Buckton, The beauty of holiness: Opus interrasile from a LateAntique workshop,Jewellery Studies 1 (198384), 1519, at 1518,figs 67.

33 Heurgon (n. 16), 4850, fig. 16, pl. V.1 and XXV.34 Johns (n. 30), fig. 5.31.

35 Yeroulanou (n. 11), no. 201.36 Lepage (n. 22), 1012, figs 1718.37 Ibid., 1213, figs 201.38 Yeroulanou (n. 11), no. 205.39 Buckton (n. 32), 16 and 19, no. 9, fig. 7.40 Gonosov and Kondoleon (n. 23), no. 16.41 Yeroulanou (n. 11), nos 2078.42 J. Durand (ed.),Byzance. Lart byzantin dan s les collect ions

publiques franaises (Exh. cat., Muse du Louvre), Paris, no. 75.43 Deppert-Lippitz (n. 31), 11417, no. 4, fig. 6ab.44 Lepage (n. 22), 17, fig. 28.45 Durand (n. 42), no. 76.46 Dennison (n. 20), nos 267.47 D. Buckton (ed.),Byzantium: Treasures of Byzantine Ar t and

Culture from British Collections (Exh. cat., British Museum),London, 1994, no. 99.

48 (n. 8), no. 113.49 Ross (n. 9), no. 2A.50 A. and J. Stylianou, The Treasures of Lambousa, Nicosia, 1969, 55,

fig. 43.51 Dennison (n. 20), nos 323.52 Weitzmann(n. 2), no. 299.53 Dennison (n. 20), nos 289.54 Kypraiou (n. 17), no. 275.55 Ibid., no. 282.56 Ross (n. 9), no. 108.57 Kypraiou (n. 17), no. 284.58 Gonosov and Kondoleon (n. 23), no. 18.59 Kypraiou (n. 17), no. 285.60 Ibid., no. 126.61 Ibid., no. 127.

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