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Artwork Details
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Title:Devotional diptych pendant
Date:2nd half 16th century
Culture:Mexican
Medium:SIlver, boxwood, humingbird feathers, and glass
Dimensions:H. 5 cm, w. 2.5 cm, d. 6 cm
Classifications:Jewelry, Precious Metals and Precious Stones
Credit Line:Robert Lehman Collection, 1975
Object Number:1975.1.1535
The use of boxwood carvings against a ground of hummingbird feathers appears to have been a specific form of decoration in sixteenth-century Mexico. A magnificent silver-gilt and rock-crystal chalice, stamped with the town mark of Mexico City, dated to the second half of the sixteenth century, is in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It has ten boxwood carvings, four depicting scenes from the Passion and six depicting two saints each.(1) In addition, a lantern-shaped pendant enclosing boxwood carvings of Ecce Homo and the Crucifixion in the British Museum, London, is thought to have been made “possibly in Mexico, ‘New Spain’” and dated to the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century.(2) A further lantern-shaped pendant in the Museo Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid, is described as “Mejicano o peninsular” and dated about 1550.(3) However, these gold enameled works are somewhat grander than the Lehman pendant. Small silver pendants enclosing boxwood carvings also have survived. One in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, which has a central panel of the Deposition carved to a very similar scheme as the Lehman relief, was described by Oman as having “no fellow in the Peninsula.” He concluded that it, too, was made in Mexico in the last quarter of the sixteenth century.(4) A silver triptych, engraved on the outside with strapwork and flowers, containing a comparable Deposition carved in boxwood, is in the British Museum, London. This work is also described as late sixteenth-century Mexican.(5) Unfortunately, the saints depicted on the pendant do not indicate its origin. Saint Apollonia was martyred in Alexandria in a.d. 249; Saint Lucia suffered the same fate in Syracuse about a.d. 304; and Saint George was probably martyred at Lydda (Lod in modern Israel) in the late third or early fourth century. He is the patron saint of a number of countries, cities, and churches, whereas Saint Apollonia is invoked to ward off toothaches, and Saint Lucia eye infections — afflictions common in the sixteenth century, especially in the New World.
Catalogue entry from: Charles Truman. The Robert Lehman Collection. Decorative Arts, Vol. XV. Wolfram Koeppe, et al. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in association with Princeton University Press, 2012, pp. 108-9.
NOTES: 1. Hugh Tait, Catalogue of the Waddesdon Bequest in the British Museum. Vol. 1, The Jewels. London. 1986, pp. 233 – 36, figs. 200 – 204. 2. British Museum, 1.48.24.20 (ex coll. William Randolph Hearst; ibid., pp. 231 – 37, no. 46, figs. 197 – 99). 3. Museo Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid, 810. 4. Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 226-1866 (Charles Oman. The Golden Age of Hispanic Silver, 1400 – 1665. Victoria and Albert Museum. London, 1968, Addendum, p. 57, no. 104a, pl. 177, figs. 275, 276. 5. Dora Thornton, "Mixed Culture." British Museum Magazine, no. 60 (Spring – Summer 2008), p. 45.
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The Robert Lehman Collection is one of the most distinguished privately assembled art collections in the United States. Robert Lehman's bequest to The Met is a remarkable example of twentieth-century American collecting.