I spend more time than is probably acceptable leafing through old eighteenth and nineteenth century antiquarian magazines looking for transcripts of old household accounts and inventories. But late one night I came across something that made me stop and blink.
In 1880, Queen Victoria commissioned an inventory into her ancient jewels, to be used for ‘Her Majesty’s private information’. The results were published in that year’s edition of Archaeologia, Volume 45, published by the Society of Antiquaries.
The sparkly collection, stored in the Private Audience Chamber of Windsor Castle, included items passed down by previous royals, as well as items the queen had obtained more recently.
The men commissioned to complete the inventory, in their dark suits and high-collared shirts, marvelled at the jewels, some of which were as much as two thousand years old.
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| Alexander Bassano, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons |
Among the items carefully noted on the inventory was an intaglio impression of a cupid ‘bending his bow’, in red, and set in an oval ring. It was believed to have been made in around 200 BC. There was also a cameo of a Roman emperor wearing a wreath on his head, depicted in profile. This had been in the royal collection for two centuries, previously owned by Charles I before he was king. It was made of agate, and had been broken at one time into eleven pieces but there were clear signs of repair, and was set in a gilt mount. According to an inventory of Charles I’s, ‘this cameo 'was cracked and broken in a former time by the lady Somerset while her husband was Lord Chamberlain’.
Other items included an oval cameo of red and white of ‘a warrior kneeling, with lance over the right shoulder; the Gorgon on his shield’. This piece was dated to around the late third century. Another cameo depicted a female portrait in profile, inventoried as ‘antique Roman work of the third century’. Some of these had been in the collection since the Tudor period, reflecting perhaps the sixteenth-century love of the Renaissance and ‘rebirth’ of classical art, something very much in fashion. This female portrait had been set in the sixteenth century in a gold mount, along with another piece depicting a ‘small figure of a faun or satyr’, dated to the third century, which had a seventeenth century gilt mounting.
Victoria also owned depictions in rings and pendants of the head of Isis, an Egyptian goddess also worshipped by the ancient Romans; more cameos of male and female busts and one of a lion. Another brings to mind gladiatorial combat, noted as ‘two helmeted heads facing each other, enclosed in a raised rim or border reserved in the blue stratum’, although the helmets were worked in the colour brown. This piece was dated to the third or fourth century.
Of course, there were some later heirlooms which Victoria might have brought out for a special occasion. An onyx cameo of St George and the Dragon dating to the tenth or eleventh century; a portrait of the medieval French king Louis XII on a ring and a cameo pendant of Elizabeth I. One Italian item created in the sixteenth century was acquired under the queen’s Tudor ancestors and sounds particularly striking. It was noted as a pendant, in enamelled gold and set in a ‘monster pearl, which forms the body of a mermaid. She holds a mirror in the left hand and is dressing her hair with a comb held in the right. The tail is set with rubies on green enamel’. The jewel was suspended by two chains, above which was an ornamental flower, a mother of pearl hanging over the mermaid. Dangling below were three hanging pearls with diamond clasps.
All these priceless jewels – and many more - survived two thousand years of ownership and ended up in one of Queen Victoria’s cabinets at Windsor in 1880. Many pieces in the collection were clearly diplomatic gifts, like the portrait of Louis XII - while others were picked out by earlier monarchs with a keen eye for a sparkling decoration. Jewels dating to 200 BC were mended and reset in the sixteenth century, demonstrating that care was taken to preserve these items during the English Renaissance. It wasn’t only figures like Isabella de’Este in Mantua who sought out ancient jewellery and artwork for her own collection but also the Tudor and Stuart monarchs, who repaired and safeguarded this jewellery for their descendants. We don’t often think of Queen Victoria as the owner of ancient items of jewellery like these, but her commissioning the inventory towards the end of her reign suggests that she wanted to document them and ensure they would be cared for. A fascinating glimpse into the Victorian Royal Collection.
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Interested in the way Classical works triggered change during the Renaissance? My book, Power Couples of the Renaissance, features relationship dynamics that went against accepted norms of the period and power-hungry couples who ruled, fought and spread the patronage of art, science and culture across the globe during one of the most tumultuous periods of history. Find it on the Pen and Sword Books website.
Source: Archaeologia, Society of Antiquities, Volume 45, London. 1880.
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