The jewelry of classical Greece

Magazine Antiques, Dec, 1994 by Joan R. Mertens

The words classical Greece evoke marble and monumentality, exemplified by the structures crowning the Akropolis in Athens. This view of Greek art between the end of the Persian Wars in 480 B.C. and the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. is based upon the political primacy of Athens and its extraordinary artistic production, at least through the end of the Peloponnesian War in 404 B.C. Both the extant archaeological record and the scantier written sources make clear that monumentality of scale was more pervasive during this period than ever before, not only in architecture and stone sculpture but also in bronze sculpture and wall painting. Against such a background of grand achievement and of commanding personalities such as the sculptors Pheidias and Polykleitos and the painters Polygnotos and Mikon, the work of the goldsmith has been treated very much as a minor art.

The traveling exhibition Greek Gold: Jewelry of the Classical World, opening this month at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, presents jewelry as an art that is as rich in technical, formal, iconographical, and cultural information and complexity as any other of its age. The exhibition consists of almost two hundred pieces of gold and silver jewelry from the British Museum in London; the State Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Whereas the traditional approach to ancient jewelry has been to chart the variety and development of types (such as necklaces, bracelets, pins, and earrings), the organizing principle of the exhibition is geographical. Its exceptional strength and distinction lie in the fact that it documents the interplay of regional diversity and typological consistency in superlative works produced between about 500 and 200 B.C. in the major jewelry producing regions of classical Greece. These were the mainland and the islands; the cities along the western coast of Asia Minor (present-day Turkey); the rich trading settlements around the Black Sea; the colonies in southern Italy and Sicily; and the multicultural communities in Cyprus, Egypt, and other parts of the eastern Mediterranean.

Vital to an appreciation of the exhibition is the recognition that the objects were made to be worn (primarily by women, but also by men). Except for the diadems, wreaths, and other accouterments made specifically for the grave, there are no decisive criteria for distinguishing jewelry worn in life from that offered at sanctuaries and placed on cult images. In fact, the two uses were not mutually exclusive since an appropriate object could, at any time, be given to the gods. The jewelry artificially isolated in the exhibition would have been used in various combinations and would have complemented fine clothing (see Pl. III).

A second, and directly related, aspect of the exhibition concerns the primacy of the human figure and the study of the human body, which were central to Greek art at all times but can be said to have reached their apogee during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. In addition to the surviving works of art, the sculptor Polykleitos wrote a treatise in which he sought to define the proportions of the body in concrete terms. The principles governing the representation of the human figure extended to its embellishments, including jewelry. Indeed, Roman authors credit Pheidias, among other sculptors, as proficient in working precious metals.

A third point made by the exhibition is that a constellation of factors, including affluence, peace, the ready availability of gold and silver, and the existence of patrons, permitted goldsmiths to attain great technical mastery. In the manipulation of minuscule wires and grains of gold, in the use of enamels and inlaid stones, or simply in the articulation of a form by chasing, the craftsmanship existed to achieve virtually any effect.

A sympathetic understanding of the human body is implicit in the various types of jewelry made in classical Greece. One of the most extraordinary achievements is the strap necklace that consists of individual interlocked fiat loops finished with an intricate fringe of pendants. Whatever other factors may have furthered the popularity of this type of necklace, there can be no doubt that the flexibility of the strap and the movement of the pendants were deemed flattering to the wearer. By the same token, while pendant earrings had already enjoyed a long history, during the fourth century B.C. they attained an unprecedented degree of complexity in the intricacy of surface detail, the inclusion of miniature sculptures, and the restrained polychromy of inlays in enamels or semi-precious stones. It is essential to think of such earrings as constantly shifting, catching the light with the wearer's every movement.

The repertory of established forms in ancient Greek jewelry gave rise to unusual variants such as a necklace consisting of chains that pass through a bead that can be slid up and down at will. The ends are finished with tassels in the form of rosettes, buds, or pomegranates. This type of necklace seems to have been favored in Aegean and Ionian Greece. Its antithesis is the rigid torque. The example in Plate II terminates with mounted Scythian horsemen. The strap necklace can plausibly be considered women's jewelry, while the torque illustrated was found on the skeleton of a man. The torque shape and the barbarian riders catered to the specifications of a patron living north of the Black Sea, although the object itself can be considered Greek. Wholly Greek in approach and execution is the entirely organic transition from necklace to finials as well as the articulation of the men and their mounts. The juxtaposition of one rider holding the reins in both hands with another who grasps the reins with one hand while the other hangs back loosely occurs on the frieze of the Parthenon in Athens. One wonders whether the torque harks back to that unquestionably influential model of about a century earlier.