Fig. 12  Gold double-sided pendant executed in opus interassite technique and embellished with precious stones and cloisonne enamel. 
Dimensions: 7.9 X 6.4cm. l7th century.
Athens, Byzantine Museum, T 464.

Fig. 13  Silver buckle from Philippopolis, with embossed floral decoration. Dimensions: 12.5 X 8.2cm. 
l9th century.
Athens, Byzantine Museum, T 640.

Fig. 14 Buckle from Asia Minor. Gilded silver with perforated reticular decoration and repousse floral motif at the centre of the two plates and clasp. Dimensions: 31 X 11.5cm. 
l9th century.
Athens, Byzantine Museum, T 1548.

Fig. 15  Gilded silver belt of articulated plates and integral buckle with floral ornaments in filigree, glass-paste 'gems' and enamel. Dimensions: 77 X 11.5cm. 
1836.
Athens, Byzantine Museum T 1402.

Fig. 16  Buckle from Asia Minor, of gilded silver decorated in filigree and granulation. The double rosette at the center is set with a large green artificial gem of glass paste. Dimensions: 9.5 X 7.7cm. 
19th century.
Athens, Byzantine Museum T 1566.
 

The imperial and other important workshops of the Capital obviously attracted the most accomplished artists in the state. In the Queen of Cities, eternal melting pot of men and ideas, the dominant stylistic tendencies were shaped and moulded, and from there they diffused, determining likewise in different eras the structure, types and forms of jewellery in its constant variations and musical harmonies.

Definitive were the spiritual and artistic roots of the ancient Greeks, continuous and vital presence in both the Classical and the ecclesiastical humanistic education, which set their seal on the Byzantines' love of beauty. After Justinian the intellectuals of the Capital initiated the `renaissances' of the Macedonian, the Comnenian and the Palaeologan emperors, which were forged with `nostalgic' recourses to the past and bore fruit in diverse categories of art, inspiring jewellery too with animating style.

Very few of the masterpieces of Constantinopolitan goldsmithing have survived of the precious crowns and the other insignia of royal authority, of the treasures of the imperial palace, the courtiers, the military officers and the prelates, of the sacristies of Hagia Sophia and the other churches and monasteries. Those pieces preserved over the centuries, despite times of economic hardship, were mostly lost during the sack of the world's richest and most magnificent city, by the Crusaders in 1204 and in the final fall to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.

Myrtali Acheimastou-Potamianou, Ph D
Director of the Byzantine Museum, Athens

Greece jewellery pages Copyright © by Add Information Systems. (Greece)