gems, beryl, emerald, famous emeralds

Among the treasures from the Grünes Gewölbe brought to the United States in the loan exhibition The Splendor of Dresden, the Mohr mit der Smaragdstufe — “Moor with the Emerald Cluster” — was among the most striking objects, even within that dazzling assemblage (Figures 1–2).¹ The Moor is represented as a muscular youth striding forward with swaggering confidence. He is carved from pearwood and lacquered a deep brown. His broadly smiling face, with its wide blunt nose and full lips, was clearly intended to depict a Black African; yet his curly hair is — when viewed from the front — almost entirely concealed beneath a jewelled gold feather crown of a type more commonly associated with romanticized images of Native Americans. The Moor’s dark brown skin is covered over the arms, legs, and torso with intricate tattoo designs, meticulously executed through thousands of tiny dots of blue-black lacquer pigment. Set in splendid contrast against this dark surface is an extravagant display of gem-set jewellery: necklace, pectoral ornament, armlets, knee bands, cuffs, greaves, and a belt heavily laden with pendants forming a fringed skirt.² The figure carries a tray of tortoiseshell³ supporting a matrix of emerald crystals. This specimen had been presented to Elector Augustus of Saxony (1553–1586), founder of the Dresden Kunstkammer (1560), by his friend Rudolf II in 1581, when Augustus visited him in Prague shortly after Rudolf’s recovery from a serious illness. The emeralds were kept “in a black box lined with crimson velvet” and catalogued under the section “Precious Stones, Unicorn and Rhinoceros Horns.” They were said to have originated from the “West Indies” — probably from Muzo in present-day Colombia — and were presumably sent to Europe by a Spanish conquistador.⁴ Elector Augustus valued them so highly that he decreed they should remain forever, “in eternal memory,” inalienably attached to his house.⁵