Pendant

This pendant composed of two panels of rock crystal backed by gold leaf engraved with images of St. Catherine of Alexandria and St. Christopher was probably worn as jewellery although this technique was also used for reliquary pendants. The workmanship is probably Italian though the images derive from fifteenth century German print sources. Both saints were very popular in the late 15th century. The wearer of the pendant probably believed that the saints depicted would protect him or her. Wearing the pendant also demonstrated the owner's piety and served as a reminder of the holy lives of the saints on which the owner might model his or her own life.
The technique used here is known as 'verre églomisé', even though in this case rock crystal has been used instead of the more usual glass. The term is also used anachronistically as Glomy was an eighteenth-century picture dealer who specialised in frames painted and gilded behind glass. The technique of engraving gold leaf backed onto glass seems to have been invented in Alexandria in the first century B.C. The deeper the line is engraved with a fine pointed stylus, the darker the effect, while a shallower mark is used to render half-tones.
This object was one of a number of outstanding objects presented and bequeathed to the Museum by the American collector Alfred Williams Hearn and his French wife Ellen, nee Joubert.