Ancient and Modern Finger-rings. 61 



It may be thought, perhaps, that a modern public would 

 not pay for a careful original design and its careful execution 

 demanding such an amount of artistic labour as would leave 

 the value of the gold and gems employed quite of secondary 

 consideration. But let our jewellers try it. Even in Cellini's 

 time a similar feeling prevailed, as illustrated in a story which 

 Cellini tells of himself. He worked as a student in the shop of 

 one Lucagnolo, a leading goldsmith of the day, but had per- 

 mission to get other work on his own account. Cellini, while 

 studying an antique statue, attracted the attention of the 

 Donna Portzia Chigi, a princess of the wealthy papal family 

 of that name. As a first mark of patronage, she engaged him 

 to make a gold jewel for her (richly wrought with other 

 devices), but in the form of a lily. Lucagnolo dissuaded him 

 from undertaking the ( 'job," assuring him that those minute and 

 delicate works did not pay; pointing, at the same time, to a 

 large, boldly-embossed, silver vase, that he was making for 

 Pope Clement — one of those dinner-vases used at the time for 

 throwing refuse from the plate during dinner — and assuring his 

 pupil that such large, plain work " paid " much better. The 

 master and pupil matje a wager on the subject, Cellini main- 

 taining that his work would prove the more profitable of the 

 two. In twelve days Benvenuto had completed his work, a 

 lily of gold, grouped with miniature fruit, and masks of Comedy 

 and Tragedy, and a number of little devices, which, when 

 submitted to Donna Portzia, gave her infinite delight (Ben- 

 venuto does not hide his light under a bushel), and she paid 

 him more than half as much again as the price agreed on. The 

 payment was made entirely in gold, as a token of extreme 

 satisfaction, and accompanied, as he tells us, by compliments 

 "degne di total signora" while Lucagnolo only received the 

 exact payment of his work in heavy silver dollars, losing his 

 wager and becoming (as Cellini tells us, with evident self- 

 gratulation) the laughing-stock of the whole goldsmithian 

 fraternity. 



In reference to a preceding remark on the modem plain gold 

 ring, and as an interesting historic example of the school of jewel- 

 making of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, I will annex a 

 representation of the marriage and betrothal rings of Martin 

 Luther. They are not so rich and florid in design as many 

 other examples I might have selected, but, as monuments of the 

 great Eeformer and his nun-wife, they have an interest of their 

 own, and sufficiently illustrate a characteristic style of jewel- 

 making which appears to have fallen into a state of collapse that 

 seems beyond the power of all restoration, even by Societies 

 of Arts, or Great International Exhibitions. 



The betrothment-ring of Luther, which belonged to a family 



