An extraordinarily uncommon amber pendant with an embedded portrait cameo of Queen Elizabeth I will probably be going underneath the hammer at Sotheby’s on July 1st. It dates to round 1600, the very finish of Elizabeth’s reign. What makes the heart-shaped Baltic amber pendant so uncommon is the microcarved portrait of Elizabeth encased inside it. The extent of element is so distinctive it makes the pendant one of the crucial subtle amber objects in existence immediately.
It’s not doable to find out the fabric the portrait was carved out of, however primarily based on different highly-prized amber objects from the interval, it was most likely made out of white amber or a compound with a excessive proportion of tin. A concave hole was lower from behind into the amber coronary heart and the portrait embedded underneath it. The curved floor served to enlarge the picture.
The painstaking method is typical of the work of the best amber jewellery makers within the city of Königsberg on the Baltic coast within the late sixteenth century. It’s due to this fact attributed to Hans Klingenberg or Georg Schreiber, goldsmiths and amber carvers on the court docket of Albert Frederick, Duke of Prussia, in Königsberg between 1593 and 1648. The marked similarities with the extremely beautiful amber chessboard King Charles I dropped at the scaffold on the day of his execution makes Georg Schreiber the main candidate.
Carved after a 1592 engraving by Crispijn de Passe the Elder, the portrait is surrounded by an inscription that reads: ELISABET · D · G · ANG: FRAN: HIB: ET: VIR: REGI: F: D + [ELIZABETH THANKS BE TO GOD QUEEN OF ENGLAND, FRANCE, IRELAND AND VIRGINIA DEFENDER OF THE FAITH]. The identical inscription frames Crispijn de Passe’s engraving. The reverse of the pendant has a cameo of a parrot or popinjay
The jewel additionally holds sturdy symbolic significance. On the time, encasing a portrait in amber was seen as a manner of preserving its reminiscence. The determine of Elizabeth I, enveloped within the golden radiance of the fabric, thus seems eternally preserved, as if to safeguard the reminiscence of the Elizabethan period. On the reverse aspect is an outline of a parrot, an emblem historically related to the Virgin Mary and purity—a transparent reference to the picture of the “Virgin Queen” that Elizabeth promoted all through her reign.
Its documented provenance goes again to the nineteenth century when it was acquired by the Scottish politician John Malcolm, 1st Baron Malcolm of Poltalloch, who amassed one of the crucial vital artwork collections in Britain. His Outdated Grasp drawings, together with works by luminaries together with Michelangelo, Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens and Canaletto, was so vital the British Parliament gave the British Museum a grant to amass it.
The pendant was within the Malcolm household by descent till final yr when it was bought to a non-public collector who’s now promoting it at public sale. The pre-sale estimate is £100,000-150,000 ($132,000-198,000).
