gems, history of gemology, Venice, Renaissance, culture, history of jewelry, history of gems, corundum, ruby, history.1, carbuncle, balas ruby

In Private Lives in Renaissance Venice, Patricia Fortini Brown argues that material culture served as a means by “which Venetians attempted to define and defend family identity and social rank.” Her seminal study examines a wide variety of objects, including furniture, tapestries, glassware, and, of course, portraits. According to Fortini Brown, items in the latter category served as “an important emblem of an aristocratic lifestyle.” This interpretation clearly applies to Lorenzo Lotto’s Portrait of a Lady as Lucretia (fig. 11a) and Paolo Veronese’s Portrait of Jacob König (fig. 11b). However, the two portraits share more than the early modern goal of defining an elite public identity. Rather, jewelry and gems figure prominently in both images. As is common in such portraits, the combination of gem and gesture mediates between viewer and object. In both portraits, the sitter draws the viewer’s attention to a precious object. Lucretia’s upturned palm and fingers point to a beautiful jeweled pendant that spills down over her corseted bodice, while König leans toward the viewer to display the massive emerald in his right hand. Yet a fundamental difference exists in the objects of display in these two images. The gems in Lucretia’s pendant play a supporting role as part of a larger gold setting. In Veronese’s portrait of König, the emphasis remains squarely on the emerald. While it might be tempting to attribute these representational decisions solely to the necessities of gender conventions, a larger issue informs this comparison. As will be demonstrated, in the sixteenth century jewelry featuring elaborate decorative settings such as Lucretia’s pendant would come to be matched by a newfound fascination with the natural stone itself.