Brooch with Assyrian and Achaemenid Persian-inspired design

Following the excavation of Assyrian palaces in the mid-nineteenth century, ancient Mesopotamian imagery began to be used in European decorative arts, including jewelry and ceramics. Publicity in the form of news coverage and popular books around the excavations, removal of many sculptures from sites in northern Iraq to England and France, and public spectacles such as the reconstructed ‘Nineveh Court’ in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, London, fostered a fascination with Assyria and Assyrian art among the Victorian public.

The design on this brooch features images loosely based on sculptures from the Assyrian palaces and from Persepolis in Iran. In the center is a human-headed winged lion based on the colossal guardian sculptures found flanking important gateways in the palaces that became the modern icons of the Assyrian excavations and were the motif most commonly used in Assyrian revival jewelry and decorative arts. The lion is flanked by human figures that are closer to those seen on reliefs at the Achaemenid Persian capital Persepolis than in the Assyrian palaces. Persepolis also featured winged bulls closely modeled on the Assyrian examples but given the prevalence of the Assyrian revival tradition in the later nineteenth-century it is likely that the designer here intended an Assyrian rather than Persian association. The reverse of the brooch has a compartment for holding miniature portraits or other keepsakes, the glass face of which is now missing.