The Secret Language of Jewellery in Art Decoded at Goldsmiths’ Hall
An art historian returns to explore the symbolic power of jewellery across five centuries of Western painting and portraiture. A lecture that promises to transform how we read the ornament adorning the figures in the masterworks we thought we knew.
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The ornaments that catch light in a Renaissance portrait are rarely there by accident. A ruby at the throat, a pearl suspended from an ear, a chain wound across the chest and shoulders, each carries meaning, intention, a coded message legible to those who understood the language of adornment. For centuries, jewellery in art has served as a subtle instrument of power, piety, passion and place, speaking volumes about the wearer’s status, allegiance and inner world.
This November, the art historian Stella returns to Goldsmiths’ Hall to unpack this visual vocabulary with a lecture that promises to fundamentally alter how we encounter jewellery in the paintings and portraits of Western art. Drawing on her new book dedicated to this very subject, she will guide audiences through five centuries of symbolism, from the fifteenth through the eighteenth century, revealing how jewellers and painters collaborated in a conversation that spanned continents and generations.
A Return to Goldsmiths’ Hall
Stella’s appearance forms part of a continuing tradition at Goldsmiths’ Hall of bringing scholarship and craft into conversation. She previously spoke at the Goldsmiths’ Fair talks programme in 2022, where she introduced audiences to the art of decoding ornament within fine art. Her return reflects the enduring appetite for understanding jewellery not merely as objects of beauty, but as historical artifacts laden with narrative and significance.
The lecture, titled ‘The Secret Language of Jewellery in Art’, invites attendees to become fluent in a visual language that artists and makers have spoken for centuries. It is a language written in gemstones and metals, in the careful placement of pearls and the deliberate choice of colour, in the relationship between the jewel and the flesh, the ornament and the identity of the one who wears it.
An Evening of Discovery
Running from six until half past eight on Monday 2 November, the lecture will take place within the historic walls of Goldsmiths’ Hall itself, a venue that carries its own weight of significance for those who work in precious metals and stones. To be surrounded by the very architecture and traditions of goldsmiths whilst learning to read jewellery as a language seems fitting, almost ceremonial.
For anyone drawn to jewellery, to art history, or to the intricate ways that beauty and meaning intertwine, this promises to be an evening of genuine illumination. Stella’s scholarship brings rigour and warmth to her subject matter, making the complex accessible without ever diminishing its depth.
Tickets are available through the link in Goldsmiths’ Fair’s biography online.
Imagery courtesy of Goldsmiths' Fair (@goldsmithsfair).
