Folia Historica 28. (Budapest, 2013)

II. KÖZLEMÉNYEK - Ewa Letkiewicz: The Hungarian King's Daughter Kinga's 13th Century Jewel in Polish Collections

Gems did not adorn the insignia of Church dignitaries, such as: miters, pastorals and bishops' rings. The synod of Milan in the 6lh century clearly prohibited that.11 Neither did gems decorate the liturgical vessels applied in the rites of the Holy Mass.11 12

Parallel to the application of gems in the works of sacred art, they were also used in lay circles, mainly as stamps, ceremonial ornaments, decorations of rings, pectorals, necklaces, brooches, earrings.13 Gems set in gold emphasized both the wealth of their owners and their romanitas, making them heirs and carriers of the classical intellectual, literary and artistic traditions. The willingness to participate in the grand classical culture constituted one of the great motivations of mediaeval western societies.14 In such a situation, the antique gems, as relics of that culture, gained importance, attractiveness and value, because their limited number could not be increased.

To obtain new copies and secure their inflow excavation antiquity searching were organized on the former Roman grounds,15 which, however, did not satisfy the increased, enormous demand for cut stones after the year 1204. Such a state caused that in the 13th century workshops started to appear that imitated the antique cameos and intaglios.16 The distinctive feature of 13th century gems became their tendency to imitate 'the antique manner'. For these purposes portrait busts or heads only, especially in profiles turned out to be the most desirable, as they were the most strongly associated with the antiquity, among others thanks to the profiled images of Roman emperors from Roman coins. Today the scale of this phenomenon is proven by the imprints of already nonexistent 13th century seals with ä l'antique images,17 as well as the drawings of gems on the margins of mediaeval manuscripts. The originally preserved gems are much less frequent than imprints.

11 Dalton, Ormonde Maddock: Catalogue of the Finger Rings, Early Christian, Byzantine, Teutonic, Mediaeval and Later. London, 1912. XXXV.

12 Krug, A. op. cit. 259.

13 Henderson, Georg: Wczesne sredniowiecze. Warsaw, 2000. 111.; Wentzel, H. Portraits „Ä l'antique" op. cit. 342.; Lightbown, R. W. op. cit. 23.; Krug, A. op. cit. 261-263.

14 Henderson, G. op. cit. 103., 113.

15 Such searches were organized in. a. by Benedictine abbots from St. Alban, which is known from the writings of Thomas Walsingham (d. 1422). The abbots commissioned the searches on the ruins of Roman towns in the area of the British Isles. Krug, A. op. cit. 274.

16 Wentzel, H. Portraits „Ä l'antique op. cit. 343.

17 Idem 342-344. A significant feature of the first western imitations of antique gems in the 13th century is almost total lack of the time-honored religious subjects connected with Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the apostles, the saints, scenes from the New Testament, although these were in the repertoire of Byzantine workshops. Rare examples of gems with religious scenes are contained in: Babelon, Ernst: Catalogue des Camées Antiques et Modernes. Paris, 1897. Table XLVI. The largest collections of mediaeval seal imprints are collected by the National Library in Paris. Until the year 1911 more than 700 of those made in the manner of ä l'antique were known. Wentzel, H. Mittelalterliche Gemmen op. cit. 77-78; Wentzel, H. Portraits

„A l'antique" op. cit. 342.

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