The Double Rosette

(via Diamond Cuts in Historic Jewelry:1381-1910) Herbert Tillander writes:

Because Rosettes were always in a closed setting with the stones fixed in a bed of black pitch, it was impossible to keep the stone clean, even though a sheet of foil protected them from the pitch. Moisture entered through the tiny gaps between the petals, causing the foil to tarnish and eventually decompose, and thus allow the pitch to soil the undersides of the diamonds. This is probably the main reason why the design was discarded after such a relatively short time. Open settings, which make it possible for the gems to be kept clean from underneath, might perhaps have saved these exquisite compositions.

In 1027 the Emperor Conrad II set a nobleman of Werd (now Donauwörth, in Bavaria) on a diplomatic mission to the Byzantine Emperor. On his return the nobleman brought with him relics of the Holy Cross which had been presented to him, and founded a small convent where they could be preserved. This convent later became the Benedictine Abbey zum Heiligen Kreuz at Donauwörth.

When he visited the abbey in 1496, the Emperor Maximilian I decided to donate a work of art worthy of containing the relics, and commissioned the Antwerp-born master goldsmith Lucas to create a richly decorated monstrance. It took Lucas seventeen years to complete it, and it can still be admired both as a beautiful receptacle for the relics and as a magnificent work of art worthy of the Emperor. When the abbey was closed at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the monstrance became part of the Oettingen-Wallenstein Library and Art Collection now housed at Harburg Castle, near Donauwörth. We know that Master Lucas received from the Emperor not only the silver for the monstrance but also the gems, including the Rosettes already set and needing only to be fixed to the frame. So the four diamond Rosettes, as well as the ruby and fluorite Rosettes, must all have been fashioned before 1496, in a specialist workshop.

Among the liturgical objects in the cathedral of Augsburg, in Bavaria, is a gold and silver cross set with diamonds, pearls and colored gems. The front of the cross is made of gold, the back of chased silver, hinged at the top to form a box for holy relics. It is dated 1494 and was executed by the brothers Jörg and Nicolas Seld, members of a well-known Augsburg family of jewelers. The most important part of this cross lies at its center—a beautifully executed and well-preserved ten-petalled Double Rosette. On the four arms there are less attractive five-petalled Single Rosettes. This work clearly demonstrates how a diamond Rosette can take the place of a single gem of equal size without any loss of magnificence.

The central eight-petalled Double Rosette in the wedding ring of Albrecht V, Duke of Bavaria, is one of the best known pieces of Rosette jewelry in existence. Sadly, however, its underlying foil has completely deteriorated, with the result that the diamonds have not only lost their original brilliance but now look like very ordinary, if translucent, black stones with only a faint surface luster.

A ten-petalled Rosette, the earliest documented, appears in a portrait of Princess Margaret, the three year old daughter of the Emperor Maximilian I, painted by the Master of Moulins in 1483 (now in the Musée de Versailles, Paris).

The small diamonds of the six-petalled Double Rosette in Duchess Anna’s pendant are all different, in outline as well as in faceting. The cutter had not worked with the precision normally required at the time, and this irregularity was probably the reason that the outer setting featured a series of additional prongs, placed against the blunt rounded ends of the fan-shaped outer diamonds, where the pitch was quite visible between the gems. The gems are at the lowest end of the scale in clarity, and have disturbing dark inclusions. The diamonds are not colorless, and one of them is distinctly brownish. It therefore seems that the pendant was never intended to display wealth, but was probably used as an amulet. In spite of all this, the original foils may have disguised many of these imperfections and achieved wonders of reflection.