The Uffizi in Florence, a world-famous museum that preserves the jewels of painting. But also jewels in paintings. Now a book reveals the passion for jewels of painters such as Artemisia Gentileschi, Botticelli, Tiziano, Giotto, Goya, to name a few. The book is titled Diamanti rubini e smeraldi. Il linguaggio dei gioielli nei dipinti degli Uffizi (Diamonds Rubies and Emeralds. The language of jewels in the Uffizi paintings, Nomos editions, around 75 euros purchased online) and was written by Silvia Malaguzzi, art historian and one of the world’s leading experts in the field of goldsmithing. The volume considers a hundred works kept in the Florentine museum in terms of the jewels represented in the paintings.
Because jewels in paintings are not always simple ornaments, but often also have a symbolic, juridical, religious aspect and, given that scientific knowledge was scarce in the past, gems were also considered to have magical and therapeutic virtues. Thanks to the illustrations and the author’s analysis, for example, the diadems worn by the angels in Giotto’s Majesty, the parure by Battista Sforza in the portrait of Piero della Francesca, the cockade worn by the Countess of Chinchón by Goya are explained. The jewels also appear in many portraits by Bronzino, such as the one of Eleonora di Toledo as the subject or that of Maria de ‘Medici with little Bia, who wears a medal with the profile of her father.
