A ROMAN GOLD NECKLACE

CIRCA 3RD CENTURY A.D.

Details

A ROMAN GOLD NECKLACE
Circa 3rd Century A.D.
With five pendants, each disk-shaped, with embossed sheets set back to back in imitation of an aureus, one side with a portrait, perhaps to be identified as Antoninus Pius (one facing left, one facing right), Caracalla (one facing left, one facing right) and Julia Domna facing right, the other side with a deity driving a quadriga, a standing deity, a reclining figure, a winged Victoria, and a lion, each pendant with an openwork foliate border and a ribbed suspension loop, the pendants threaded on four lengths of doubled loop-in-loop chain and interspersed by four profiled tubes, two of the chains secured to perforations on one edge of a large bead, and two of the chains extend through the beads, their ends crimped together by a thin sheet, the large beads ornamented with scallop shells, pelta shields and heart-shaped motifs
25 in. (63.5 cm) long

Lot Essay

For a related necklace in the Walters Art Gallery, said to be from Egypt, see no. 328 in Oliver in Garside, ed., Jewelry, Ancient to Modern. Oliver sites other examples, also said to be from Egypt, one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and one in the Kunsthistorische Museum, and a fourth found in the Hadra cemetery of Alexandria, which confirms the supposed Egyptian provenance of this style of necklace.

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