Irina A. Sterligova^a,#

^aThe State Institute of Art Studies, Moscow, Russia

^#E-mail: irinasterligova@mail.ru

Keywords: gold jewellery, research methodology, style, purpose, Rus, Western Europe.

The article presents an examination of the gold jewellery of the 1822 Old Ryazan hoard against the background of the high-status jewellery of the Western European rulers from the 11th–13th centuries. Golden barmas (collar necklaces), identified in the 19th century as princely regalia, are fundamentally different from less valuable, extensively produced jewellery. The style, technology and typology of such items of jewellery developed according to their own rules, and therefore barmas cannot be regarded as an example of a regional evolution of a jewellery school in Ryazan that, though oriented on Western European models, was working within Byzantine traditions. This view contradicts the overall European system of cultural regularities of that period: the emergence of new technological and artistic techniques was primarily associated with the work of visiting craftsmen. Western European analogies make it possible to suggest that there was a craftsman from the German lands working in Ryazan at the turn of the 12th–13th centuries who created an assemblage of filigree votive gifts for the icon of the Theotokos.

DOI: 10.31857/S0869606322020167