The Garden of Earthly Delights, Hortus Deliciarum, was a medieval manuscript written by Herrad of Landsberg an Alsatian nun from Hohenburg Abbey, better known today as Mont Sainte-Odile. It was perhaps the first encyclopedia, begun in 1167 as a pedagogical tool for the young novices of the convent. Today, however, it is a Gucci high jewelry collection. The third collection that takes its name from the work of the medieval nun (the first was presented in 2019). In fact, the new collection is inspired by something else: in Rome, first of all, which is also the city of the creative director of the Maison, Alessandro Di Michele.
And, instead of the Middle Ages, Hortus Deliciarum makes a leap of about seven centuries to land between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when neo-classicism made us rediscover the vestiges of the past. In Europe for the rich, noble and intellectual young people of the Northern countries, the use of the Grand Tour spread through Italy, to discover the past of the classical era. The collection is divided into five chapters.
For this reason, some jewels of the new Hortus Deliciarum collection use medallions made in micro mosaic between 1850 and 1870 and which depict monuments and architectures: the Colosseum, St. Peter’s Square, the Pantheon as it was in the nineteenth century, the Roman Forum, the Temple of Vesta, the Temple of Hercules in Cori, the Tivoli waterfalls, the Pyramid of Cestius. These medallions are applied to necklaces or bracelets which prove to be a grand tour of gemology. Rubellite, imperial topaz, yellow beryl, tourmaline, garnet, in addition of course to precious stones, make up the palette used by Alessandro Di Michele.
Who, however, in addition to the Grand Tour also thinks of art deco, the 1940s, up to the youth travels of the 1970s, with a journey through time together with Jessica Chastain, the face of the advertising campaign. One of the chapters of the collection concerns, for example, pearls, brought to the West with trips to the East via Indonesia, Australia or Polynesia.
