Byzantine, circa 12th century

Private collection, Gloucestershire, 1984 (by repute from the 1960s);

Private collection, London, 1984-1992;

Private collection United Kingdom, 1992-present

This beautiful reliquary cross compares closely in design and construction to a cross formerly in the Stoclet collection, which was sold in these rooms on 2 July 2019 (lot 4). Pendant reliquary crosses were made throughout the centuries in the Byzantine empire, but the combination of cabochons with filigree scrollwork seems to have occurred primarily in the Greek and Italian outliers of the empire around the 12th century. See a probably Greek enamelled reliquary cross with similar filigree at the sides in the Dumbarton Oaks collection (Ross, op. cit., no. 159) and various crosses from Italian church treasuries illustrated in Hackenbroch op. cit., figs. 31-54. The coin at the centre is datable to the late 6th century. Coins were frequently mounted on jewellery in the Early Byzantine period, as seen on a pair of 7th-century bracelets at Dumbarton Oaks (Ross, op. cit., no. 46).

RELATED LITERATURE

Y. Hackenbroch, Italienisches Email des frühen Mittelalters, Basel/Leipzig, 1938, pp. 49-66; M.C. Ross, Jewelry, enamels and art of the migration period, cat. The Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, vol. 2, Washington, 1965, pp. 44-46 and 109-110, nos. 46 and 159, pls. XXXVI and LXXIII