Pendant with Saint Anthony of Padua and Saint Ursula

This reverse gilded and painted rock crystal pendant is double-sided. One side shows Saint Ursula, a fourth-century virgin martyr who was killed in Cologne by the Huns alongside her 11,000 female companions during their pilgrimage to Rome. The reverse of the pendant depicts Saint Anthony of Padua, a Franciscan preacher canonized in 1232. The delicate rendering of the faces and garments of the saints in this piece recalls the craftsmanship of another pendant in the Walters Art Museum (46.26), suggesting that both pieces might have been made in the same workshop in seventeenth-century Spain.

The first step of the amalierung technique, used to decorate this pendant, involved the application of a layer of gold leaf onto the reverse of a piece of rock crystal. Next, the negative space would be scratched away with a stylus to create the details of the saint’s halos and garments. Then, the artist would paint the image with translucent, colored resins. This technique required the reversal of a painter’s usual practice, as highlights in the foreground needed to be added before figures and the background, requiring the artist to keep the finished image in their mind while applying each layer. Finally, a sheet of reflective silver foil would be added to the back of the composition. Light is refracted through the rock crystal, passes through the translucent resins, and reflects off the backing, giving the image a luminous quality.

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Provenance

Provenance (from the French provenir, 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody, or location of a historical object. Learn more about provenance at the Walters.

Henry Walters, Baltimore, [date and mode of acquisition unknown]; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.