P R E FA C E
Well-qualified to explore the theme of “Byzantium and the West” through
his many admirable publications, Professor Spier has organized the diverse jewels in four roughly chronological and coherent groups: late Roman rings before Byzantium (3 r d century), late Roman rings at the end of the western Empire (4th and 5th centuries), Byzantine rings and jewelry of the 6th and 7 th centuries, and jewelry of the Migration-era in the 6 th and 7 th centuries. Some highlights are worth signaling. There is a parure (cat. no. 14) with carefully matched pieces that includes the only complete marriage ring assembled with an engraved disc portraying the couple (14d) and a pectoral cross and earrings of exceptionally high quality and clearly the work of a single goldsmith (14a-b). Fashionable among wealthy and pious Byzantine women, an embossed pectoral cross is one of the finest known (cat. no. 15). A finely made monogram ring presents the only known version of a complex hinge construction (cat. no. 23), found more typically in bracelets and necklaces. Most Byzantine monogram rings were made for men, but this group exceptionally includes two monogram rings for women, named Theodote and Anna (cat. nos. 21 and 22). A fine parure that belonged to an Ostrogothic woman (cat. no. 33) reveals parallels with both Byzantine and Anglo-Saxon jewelry, such widespread influences typical of Migration-era art. This study concludes with a remarkable Frankish disc brooch of the mid-seventh century (cat. no. 34). Iconoclasm, the debate about the legitimacy of religious art, began in Byzantium
around 730 and continued until about 787. During this period and for the last two centuries of the millennium, there is a paucity of surviving Byzantine jewelry and few rings of note. At the same time, goldsmiths in the West evolved, developing their own indigenous styles. As Jeffrey Spier eloquently states: “by the seventh century Byzantium was only a dim and distant presence to most of the Germanic people in the West.” Sandra Hindman
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