[Authors and Titles are listed at the end of the review]
Gemmae is a yearly journal introduced in 2019, devoted to the study of glyptics in Classical and Late Antiquity. The journal welcomes articles on hard stone artifacts and explores methodological, art historical, iconographic, and technical problems, as well as studies of collecting and confronting copies or forgeries.
The first volume included contributions on various subjects. Volumes 2 and 3 (2020-21), presented here, are dedicated to the “arts of luxury.” The bulk of the volumes introduce the Acta of the Colloquium “Ancient jewelry: from ornament to talisman. Identity and social practices”, organized at the University of Freiburg in 2016, by Véronique Dasen, Michel Fuchs and Fabio Spadini.
Papers by thirteen scholars are divided into two volumes: the first includes the introduction and papers on the Greek and Roman worlds, while the second volume encompasses papers focusing on magic and talismans. Papers are in English, German, French, and Italian; each has an English summary.
Volume 2 (2021)
Gemma Sienna Chiesa gives an outline of the contributions, which explore the anthropological, cultural and social significance of jewelry. As most of jewelry studies have tended to concentrate on technical, typological or chronological matters, the aim of the colloquium was to offer a new approach by viewing jewelry as a vector of identity and a source of valuable information on the social and religious norms of cultures.
Jörn Lang offers an obituary for the great Gertrud Platz-Horster who passed away just a year before this publication. A brilliant scholar, author of Statuen auf Gemmen[1] among other distinguished publications, Platz-Horster devoted her life to the Antikensammlung in Berlin where she served as a curator and then as an associate director in 1999. Her interest and deep knowledge in the ancient techniques of stone cutting, glass making and gold work are reflected in her work. Lang presents her life and scientific work, as well as a full bibliography in a volume which she would undoubtedly have greatly appreciated.
Veronique Dasen and Fabio Spadini interpret the ornament as a pointer of identity, society, and religion and approach the study of jewelry as a way of identifying cultural values. The authors divide the papers according to three main categories from the anthropological point of view: jewelry and rites of passage (Phialon, Schwarzmaier, Gherchanoc, Nagy and Belyacz); identity during the Roman Imperial period, a section that explores the function of jewelry and the cultural codes shared between members of the same community (Berg, Gury, Spadini); and the apotropaic use of jewelry during the same period (Perassi, Gagetti, Weiss).
The main part of the first volume on the Greek world is dedicated to the funerary or votive dimensions of jewelry. Starting from the Mycenaean period, Laeticia Phialon suggests that jewelry items from a burial context, whether personal possessions worn in life or offerings to the deceased, had a prophylactic character. The author also interprets certain types of jewelry (like earrings and necklaces) as integral components in rites of passages for young girls, a practice also known in Classical Greece.
Agnes Schwarzmaier attempts to interpret the meaning and function of Classical and Hellenistic gold work with figurative decoration, like the earrings with cupids or Nikes, or the moon-shaped pendants, through their iconographic depictions in other media with reliable context. She concludes that such jewelry played a significant part on special occasions in women’s life like wedding, pregnancy and childbirth, by helping or protecting them against dangers.
Florence Gherchanoc analyses the role that jewelry and especially necklaces worn by young girls and brides in ancient Greece, play from Archaic to Hellenistic times, suggesting that they had a strong seductive power, reflected in myths like the well-known seduction scene of Hera and Zeus in the Iliad.
Françoise Gury addresses the political aspect of jewelry in the iconography and written sources and uses as a case study, pearls, the ornament par excellence from Asia that became popular after the conquests of Alexander the Great. Although in Asia they were worn by both men and women, in the collective consciousness of the Roman world, pearls became the attribute of powerful men or emperors like Caesar, Nero and Caligula that were demagogues or tyrants.
Ria Berg deals with a local type of jewelry, the gold bracelets consisting of a chain with a series of hemispherical gold beads (armille a semisfere), produced in the region of Pompeii during the 1st cent. AD. Although such pieces have been traditionally connected to elite matrons, the author, based on the context in which most of them were found, as well as on iconography and literature references, suggests that they were probably anklets worn by courtesans and prostitutes.
Volume 3 (2022)
Katalin Belyacz and Arpad M. Nagy, based on the representation of a warrior’s departure on a column krater by the Syracuse Painter at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Budapest, discuss the amuletic/protective use of jewelry in war, in particular of ribbons around the ankles of warriors, depicted on early red-figured vases from Athens. They further suggest that in the 5th c. BC Greek society there was no clear distinction between religion and magic or between jewelry and amulets and that certain types were meant to protect warriors or heroes from misadventures.
Claudia Perassi deals with the use of ornamental coins in jewelry from the end of the 1st cent. AD. Even though she is mainly concerned with the chronology and typology of this jewelry in a variety of forms, she also attempts to provide answers to questions like their attribution mainly to women, based both on excavation finds and depictions of coin-jewelry on the Fayum portraits, and the function of coins as status symbols, amulets or even for the healing properties of gold.
Veronique Dasen explores Late Republican/Imperial engraved gems of red jasper depicting Omphale, the queen of Lydia, as identified by inscriptions and attributes. The combination of material, image and inscription gave to these intaglios the power to protect the wearer against evil. Omphale, paired with Hercules, recall also in their attributes the Egyptian god Bes and his feminine counterpart Beset, both associated with childbirth since the Pharaonic period, indicating the transcultural koina of symbols in Roman times.[2]
Fabio Spadini examines Greco-Roman astrological gems and through them, the eternal desire of people to control or change their destiny. In the early Imperial period, the stars were perceived as the physical embodiments of the gods and possessed magical properties; people wore gems with their personal or the world horoscope with the bust of an emperor, in the hopes of attracting good fortune.
Carina Weiss focuses on heart-shaped amulets and cameos of petrified star coral in ancient and modern times and concludes that even though they come from different periods and cultures, they always belong primarily to the female world of fertility, well-being and prosperity.
The academic prestige of the editorial team and the participants, as also the careful choice of subjects that do not just reproduce old theories but rather present types of jewelry through new perspectives, is the strong point of the volumes. As a whole, they present an interesting assemblage of case studies for the significance of jewelry in many sectors of life and beliefs, from the Mycenaean to Roman. They succeed in showing the multitude of ways people used jewelry: to protect themselves or their loved ones, to heal (Schwarzmaier), to seduce (Gherchanoc, Berg), to defend against enemies (Belyacz and Nagy, Weiss), to ensure participation in a community of privileged members (Perassi), to enter a new stage in their lives (Phialon), to send a political message (Gury), to express gratitude to their gods or control their fate (Spadini). Specific materials (precious metal, coral or semi-precious stone) and shapes, colors and images, each had their own meanings and roles (Dasen). In past societies, it seems that representational art chose to depict only those types of jewelry that had a symbolic significance, serving as a kind of special language or coded message for its spectators.
The discussions of typical jewelry like Roman coin jewelry and the chains/anklets of Pompeii through a fresh perspective, or lesser known types like the petrified coral cameos, are welcome.The excellent drawings in Perassi’s chapter are worth mentioning, while in general, the quality and quantity of the illustrations is fairly satisfactory.
On the drawbacks of the edition, I mention the chronological inconsistency, with only onepaper concerning the Mycenaean period, which makes it seem isolated from the rest of the contributions that mainly focus on the much later Hellenistic and Roman times. With the addition of a couple of more papers on the Geometric and Archaic periods, readers could perhaps discern social or religious practices that connected the successive periods to each other and contributed to the formation and establishment of certain traditions; moreover, it would be the most appropriate place to elaborate more on the transcultural exchanges of ideas and symbols, like the one mentioned in one of the papers (Dasen) between the mythological pair of Omphale-Hercules and the Egyptian divinities Bes and Beset.
Authors and Titles
Volume 2 (2020)
Gemma Sena Chiesa, «Gemmae» 2-3 2020-2021. Due numeri speciali: le arti del lusso.
Jörn Lang, Erinnerung an Enthusiasmus – Gertrud Platz-Horster (1942 – 2019) und die Erforschung antiker Glyptik.
Véronique Dasen, Fabio Spadini, Bijoux antiques: de l’ornement au talisman. Identités et pratiques sociales;
Laetitia Phialon, Aegean Jewelry and its Relationship to the Body in Late Bronze Age Mortuary Contexts.
Agnes Schwarzmaier, »Der Frauen schönste Zier« – Griechischer Goldschmuck mit figürlicher Dekoration und seine Bedeutung.
Florence Gherchanoc, Histoires de bijoux. Des colliers pour jeunes filles et pour épouses en Grèce ancienne.
Françoise Gury, La perle, un signe transgenre de la démesure à Rome. Perles et parure des tyrans.
Ria Berg, Bracciali matronali o cavigliere di cortigiane? Ambiguità su status e significato delle ‘armille a semisfere’; Sommario generale.
Volume 3 (2021)
Katalin Bélyácz, Árpád M. Nagy, Periammata. Amulettes sur les premiers vases attiques à figures rouges.
Claudia Perassi, Wearing Coins in Roman Times: When, How, for Whom and Why?
Véronique Dasen, Omphale and Heracles: A Knotted Life
Fabio Spadini, Identité et astrologie dans la glyptique romaine.
Carina Weiß, Sternkoralle – Hexenstein. Herzförmige Amulettanhänger und Kameen aus fossiler Koralle in Antike und Neuzeit.
Irene Favaretto, La Dactyliotheca Zanettiana: un’avventura editoriale nella Venezia del Settecento.
Gabriella Tassinari, Il commiato di Ettore da Andromaca: riflessi nella glittica postclassica (II); Sommario generale.
Notes
[1] Gertrud Platz-Horster, Statuen auf Gemmen, R. Habelt 1970.
[2] Elisabetta Gagetti presented a unique piece of jewelry with Hercules from a larnax burial of a female who was possibly a priestess of Omphale at the conference. Although the contribution is unfortunately not included in the volume, it is mentioned by both Dasen and Spadini.