Pendant in the form of a parrot

A comparable pendant from an inventory preserved in the Archivo del Real Monasterio in Guadalupe, Spain, is illustrated by Priscilla E. Muller, who noted that parrots were preferred subjects for Spanish Renaissance jewels and that another Spanish inventory of 1559 described one of “green-enameled gold” with “a pearl as its body, two suspended from its wings, a third atop the jewel.”[1] Some of the feathers of the Linsky parrot jewel show evidence that they have been reenameled in blue and red over the translucent green with which they were originally enameled. A piece of mother-of-pearl fitted to the back of the bird may have been added when the jewel was reenameled.


Footnotes:
[1] P. E. Muller, Jewels in Spain, 1500–1800, New York, 1972, pl. IV, pp. 76-77.


[Clare Vincent, The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1984, p. 182, no. 99]