Necklace (100s BCE): Art, History and Details

Necklace (100s BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Alternating semiprecious stones and granulated gold beads come together to form this magnificent necklace, capped with a gold clasp framed by banded agate cabochons. The pendant portion of this necklace is centered around a large translucent moonstone in a gold setting, framed by smaller garnet ovals, also set in gold. Two tiny gold lynx heads clasp the garnet settings in their mouths. Small baroque (nonspherical) pearls dangle from these central settings. The combination of multiple precious and semiprecious stones with complex goldwork suggests that this necklace was originally made in one of the Greek kingdoms in the Black Sea region.

Object facts

• Title: Necklace
• Date: 100s BCE
• Culture: Greece
• Type: Jewelry
• Technique: gold, moonstone, garnet, emerald, cornelian, baroque pearl, and banded agate
• Dimensions: Overall: 39.4 cm (15 1/2 in.)
• Collection: GR - Greek
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1928.234

A detail from the museum

The lynx heads on this necklace may reference the mythical King Lyncus of Scythia.

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. John L. Severance

Further reading listed by the museum

• “A Greek Necklace.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 15, no. 8 (October 1928): 162–165.
• "Gives Cleveland a Grecian Necklace" The Art Digest. Nov. 1, 1928.
• Amyx, Darrell A. and Barbara A. Forbes. Echoes from Olympus: Reflections of Divinity in Small-Scale Classical Art. Berkeley: University Art Museum, 1974.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.