Highlights from the Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens

The Cypriot collection from the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens

Beautiful set with sapphires, gold earrings and a ring. In the top part of earrings some beads are missing, pearls perhaps? Jewelry has been found in the grave of a woman who was buried probably in the middle of the 4th century, in Chrysochous, the ancient Marion on Cyprus.¹

The most interesting for me, two sets of the ornaments – a necklace and a bracelet, from the same burial in Chrysochous.
The necklace, or set of ornaments which were sewn on to the garment, consist of six box-shaped elements with sapphires, and one with an emerald, and of sixteen ‘figure-eight’ elements with emeralds, garnets and sapphires in oval settings with round settings with pearls in between. Square elements are made in the opus interrasile, diatreta in Greek, a pierced openwork technique.
Maria Dhoga-Toli in the publication Transition to Christianity: Art of Late Antiquity, 3rd–7th Century AD describing this jewel
mentions that it was also interpreted as a diadem based on 4th century statues and coins². Necklace is 36 cm long³ and has no clasp, elements could be strung on a cord and tied at the back of the head.

The bracelet consist of eight box-shaped a pierced openwork segments, and the oval one. Unfortunately all gemstones are missing.

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SOURCES

¹An article “A set of jewelry from the Cyprus Collection of the Museum of Cycladic Art” by Professor N. Chr. Stampolidis, Director of the Museum of Cycladic Art

²Maria Dhoga-Toli, Transition to Christianity: Art of Late Antiquity, 3rd–7th Century AD, Edited by Anastasia Lazaridou. New York: Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, 2011, p.116. ISBN: 9780981966625

³Museum of Cycladic Art >> website

Silvia Pedone, The Jewels in the Mosaics of Antioch. Some Visual Examples of Late Antique and Byzantine Luxury, in «Rivista degli Studi Orientali», n.s. LXXXV, fasc. 1-4, 2012 (2013), pp. 391-410. ISSN 0392-4866

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