17th century Enameled Spanish Devotional Jewel

A lovely c. 1670 Spanish ‘filigraneros’ devotional pendant, intricately crafted with lace-like gold filigree and embellished with pearls and foiled rose cut amethysts, the center an enamel plaque of Christ Child watched over by San Juanito (the child St. John), the reverse bearing a parchment fragment of another saint (likely St. Christopher or St. Joseph) with Christ Child. The pairing of infant Christ and St. John is a popular theme in European art, often referred to as “the holy infants.” The present pendant’s exact form can be found in a c. 1670 portrait of a young girl by Sebastián Herrera Barnuevo. Yet another filigree devotional pendant can be found in another c. 1670 portrait of a young woman by Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo. Both artists were Spanish court painters working in Madrid; from their work we know that this pendant type was worn by women over the lace collar as a bodice jewel. According to a jewelry publication by the Spanish Ministry of Culture and Education, the devotional pendant was a kind of essential, regular-wear “daily jewel” for most Spaniards, replete with special symbolic and prophylactic value. The wearing of such jewelry also amounted to a public profession of the Catholic faith, which, through rite and ritual and social capital, was an indelible element of the Spanish identity. 17th c Spanish jewelers cleverly integrated this social expectation with consumer demand: most of these ‘filigraneros’ devotional jewels were designed as a rectangular or circular frame with a highly decorative non-religious surround; the devotional element could be inserted or removed from the center per the owner’s needs, thus enabling the jewels themselves to be interchangeably devotional or secular. Folio 48r of the 17th c Codex of the Jewel of Guadalupe shows drawings for such versatile filigree frames. Similar filigree devotional pendants can be found in the Madrid Museum of Decorative Arts (inv. 112, 12.040, 1.529, 1.674) and the Madrid Archaeological Museum (inv. 1.933/99/4). An earlier devotional pendant with a parchment fragment similar to the present pendant’s reverse is in the MET (no. 30.135.91). In Europe, there is a tradition of using gold filigree to craft reliquaries and other devotional jewelry, inherited from a yet earlier Byzantine tradition. The present pendant’s filigree floral settings for the pearls is stylistically similar to two older 16th century reliquaries in the Walters Museum (57.1511, 57.1511B).
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