Renaissance jewelry, made in Europe from roughly the late 15th to the early 17th century, is known for sculptural gold pendants covered in bright enamel, irregular baroque pearls, and table-cut diamonds and rubies. Artists designed jewelry as well as painted it, and portraits from the period show sitters covered in chains, pendants and jeweled hat badges. The Cheapside Hoard, found in London in 1912, preserves the actual stock of a jeweler from around 1600.
A new kind of jeweler
The Renaissance revived interest in classical art, and goldsmiths shared in it. Many leading artists trained as goldsmiths first, including Lorenzo Ghiberti, Andrea del Verrocchio and Sandro Botticelli. Benvenuto Cellini, the Florentine goldsmith and sculptor, wrote a treatise on goldsmithing and an autobiography that describe the workshop methods of the time. His gold salt cellar for Francis I of France, in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum, shows the sculptural enamel and gold work of the period, though it is tableware.
Jewelry design spread through printed pattern books. Engravers in Germany, France and the Netherlands published designs for pendants, rings and borders, and goldsmiths across Europe copied them. That is one reason Renaissance jewelry looks broadly similar from Italy to England.
Holbein's designs
Hans Holbein the Younger, the German painter who worked at the court of Henry VIII in England, drew dozens of jewelry designs. A large group of these drawings survives in the British Museum. They include pendants with interlaced initials, arabesque patterns for enamel, and settings for large table-cut stones.
Holbein's portraits record the jewelry of the Tudor court closely: Henry VIII's heavy gold collars, jeweled doublets and hat badges, and the initial pendants worn by women such as Jane Seymour. Painters were careful to show jewels because they signaled wealth, rank and allegiance.
Enameled pendants
The pendant was the signature jewel of the Renaissance. Typical pendants were three-dimensional, built of gold and covered in opaque and translucent enamel, then set with gems and hung with pearls. Subjects included:
- Mythological figures such as Venus, Neptune, Diana and Cupid
- Animals and sea creatures: mermaids, dragons, sea monsters, ships
- Religious scenes and the initials IHS (a monogram of Christ)
- Monograms and initials of the wearer or a loved one
Enamel types included champleve (enamel in carved hollows), basse-taille (translucent enamel over engraved metal) and enamel on rounded surfaces, called en ronde bosse, which coated three-dimensional figures. The cloisonne page compares these methods.
The Canning Jewel in the Victoria and Albert Museum is a famous example: a merman whose torso is formed from a large baroque pearl. It was long thought to be 16th-century Italian, though some scholars have since dated it later.
Baroque pearls
Pearls were the most fashionable gem of the 16th century. Elizabeth I of England wore ropes of them, and her portraits show pearls sewn onto gowns and set in the hair. Irregular pearls, which jewelers later called baroque, inspired a particular kind of pendant. A jeweler would look at the shape of a large uneven pearl and build a figure around it, using the pearl as a body, a torso or a ship's hull.
Most pearls still came from the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Mannar between India and Sri Lanka. After Spain reached the Americas, pearl beds off Venezuela and Panama supplied large quantities to Europe in the 16th century. The natural pearls page covers these fisheries. La Peregrina, a large drop pearl from the Gulf of Panama, passed through Spanish royal hands and later belonged to Elizabeth Taylor.
Table-cut stones
Faceting improved during this period. The table cut, made by grinding the top point off an octahedral diamond crystal to leave a flat square face, was the standard diamond cut of the 16th century. Table-cut diamonds look dark and mirror-like compared with modern brilliants, and they appear almost black in many portraits. Rose cuts, with a flat base and a domed top of triangular facets, came into use toward the end of the period.
Colored stones were also table-cut or left as cabochons: rubies, emeralds (newly abundant from Colombia), sapphires and spinels. Stones sat in closed-back settings, often with colored foil underneath to deepen their tone. Our pages on the history of faceted gems and diamond cutting history cover these cuts.
Cameos and hardstone carving
Renaissance collectors prized ancient engraved gems and commissioned new ones. Lorenzo de' Medici gathered a famous collection of antique cameos and intaglios. Workshops in Milan and Florence produced cameos of rulers and classical subjects, and cameo portraits of Elizabeth I were given to courtiers. The Renaissance gem cutters page covers these engravers and the pietra dura workshops.
Hat badges, chains and rings
Men wore as much jewelry as women. A hat badge (enseigne) pinned to the brim might show a religious or classical scene in enameled gold. Heavy gold chains, sometimes wound several times around the shoulders, displayed wealth and could be broken up and spent if needed. Rings were worn on every finger and on several joints at once, and signet rings, memento mori rings with skulls, and gimmel rings were all popular.
The Cheapside Hoard
In 1912, workmen demolishing a building on Cheapside in the City of London broke into a cellar and found a large cache of jewels. The hoard contains several hundred pieces, apparently the stock of a jeweler, buried sometime in the early to mid-17th century and never recovered.
Its contents include chains of enameled gold links, rings, pendants, cameos, a watch set into a large Colombian emerald, and loose stones from around the world: Colombian emeralds, Indian diamonds, spinels, sapphires, rubies, amethysts, topaz, garnets, opals, chrysoberyl, lapis and turquoise. The hoard gives a snapshot of where gems came from in that period. It is held by the London Museum (formerly the Museum of London).
The end of the Renaissance style
By the early 17th century, fashion shifted toward lighter, flatter jewelry, with stones set in clusters and enamel used on the back. Improved faceting made gems themselves the main attraction, and the enamel-heavy sculptural pendant gave way to designs that showed off cut stones. The style came back in the 19th century as the Renaissance revival, part of Victorian jewelry taste. The earlier background is on the medieval jewelry page.
Frequently asked questions
What is a table-cut diamond?
A table cut is an early diamond cut made by grinding the top of an octahedral crystal flat. It was the main diamond cut in 16th-century Europe and looks darker and glassier than a modern brilliant.
What is the Cheapside Hoard?
It is a cache of several hundred jewels and gems found under a building on Cheapside in London in 1912. It appears to be a jeweler's stock buried in the 17th century and is held by the London Museum, formerly the Museum of London.
Why are baroque pearls linked with Renaissance jewelry?
Renaissance jewelers used large irregular pearls as the bodies of figures in enameled gold pendants, such as mermen, animals and ships. The pearl's natural shape suggested the design.
Did Hans Holbein design jewelry?
Yes. Holbein drew many jewelry designs while working at the court of Henry VIII, and a large group of them survives in the British Museum.