Display Case & Pair of earrings with dove pendants

Display Case, 2022

Sophia Papadonatou

digital painting

Often when earrings—and other forms of jewelry—are displayed in a museum setting, they are mounted plainly in a case. However, jewelry is meant to be worn. No matter how beautiful a piece is on its own terms, it is typically not meant to be appreciated in a vacuum—flat, desaturated, artificially lit display cases—but rather on a body. When people buy jewelry today, they usually do not do so solely on the jewelry’s own merit—they try them on first. Yet you rarely ever see ancient jewelry in such contexts or even approximations.

I wanted to approximate the original context of the earrings I chose. Jewelry was often reserved for special occasions like a wedding. I digitally painted a portrait of a woman in the middle of her bridal preparations—after she had bathed and dressed and bound her hair up, putting on her earrings, with two attendants hovering in the background. She might put on more jewelry—a necklace, a bridal crown, a belt—and finally veil herself to conclude her preparations. I have based her face mainly on an Attic portrait statue from roughly the third to mid-second century BCE, the statue of Aristonoe from Rhamnous (National Museum inv. 232, Athens).

I left details vague, however, as the earring are dated to the third century BCE and the vase painted I referenced is an Attic red-figure lebes gamikos from the late fifth century (Antikenmuseum und Sammlung Ludwig BS 410, Basel). However, the clothes the women are wearing, chitons, were worn into Hellenistic period and women still bound up their hair as well. The bride would also likely have worn a himation, which could be lying draped over the unseen parts of her body.

I left the women in grayscale while rendering the earrings in color to allude to the way in which the original wearers of such earrings are deemphasized in today’s museum context and in imitation to the often black or white background in the cases they are displayed in.

---

Pair of earrings with dove pendants, 299 - 200 BCE

Greek

Gold; garnet

RISD Museum, Gift of Ostby & Barton in memory of Englehart Cornelius Ostby 22.177

The spiral wound hoop of each earring terminates in the setting containing a round garnet cabochon—shaped and polished but not faceted as many modern gemstones are. The setting is ringed by a filigree of two, thin, wound wires.

On each hoop is a pendant in the shape of a dove. The body of the dove was likely modeled free-hand using the repoussé method as one piece. It is hollow, as is evident by the whole behind the left eye of one of them. Details—the eyes, the wings, a sort of collar composed of two lines above a trio of what might be feathers—have been added in filigreed, wound wire. The legs seem to have been made separately out of twisted wire, bent, and then added. Attached to the feet is a roughly square-shaped base.

Gold—beyond precious stones and other metals—was especially prized in the ancient world, especially for jewelry. Indeed, it seems likely that the trajectory of Alexander the Great’s conquest was driven in part by the location of gold fields. Consequently, after his death, the remains of his empire were flooded with gold and the jewelry made thereof.

In Ancient Greece, into the Hellenistic period, jewelry was considered a sign of femininity. Wearing jewelry, in addition to flaunting the wealth of one’s family, was meant to enhance a woman’s beauty—to strengthen her distinctly feminine appeal. However, a “proper” woman was only meant to wear her gold on special occasions, like her wedding.

Earrings were a popular form of jewelry in the ancient world. While there were several different styles of earrings, this particular pair is an example of “hooped-shaped earrings,” a style which originally appeared in Italy in the sixth century BCE and was “refined” in Greece in the late fifth century BCE. It was a popular style in Greece and remained popular into the Roman period. It was common for the head of some creature—human, mythological, or beast—to serve as decoration.

An animal head at the end of a piece of jewelry was a distinctly Persian trait that became common throughout Alexander’s sphere of influence early in the Hellenistic period. While these earrings are not exactly of this type (a more typical example would be Acc. no. 1994.230.8, .9 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art) they are not quite of pendant type either (see Obj. no. 22.176 at the RISD Museum), for which the pendants are usually bigger and more ornate. Its filigree ornamentation is, however, distinctly Greek. The earrings serve well as an example of the confluence of cultural aesthetics in Hellenistic Greece.

Birds were a popular decorative motif for earrings in the Hellenistic period. At least two pairs of hoop earrings decorated with doves are held by the Met (Acc. nos. 25.78.41, 25.78.39-40). Both are from the Hellenistic period (although 25.78.41 is from the second century BCE, not the third) and the doves are decorated similarly with filigree. Doves were evocative of Aphrodite and her dove-drawn carriage, an association that in turn drew the connection between jewelry and desire.

Unfortunately, beyond a broad dating to the Hellenistic period, the original context of the earrings is unknown. Many such pieces of jewelry whose provenance is known were unearthed from hoards buried in antiquity or from tombs. Given that both earrings of the pair are together, they were likely found together and looted from a tomb. It is unclear, therefore, whether these earrings were worn in life or if they may have been buried with a deceased person as solely a grave good. If they were worn in life, they may have seen many years of use—gold jewelry was often kept as an heirloom, worn for several generations before perhaps being buried with their owner.