Ring with Clasped Hands and Sapphire

Fourteenth Century
Although difficult to see in this photograph, the jeweler who created this ring added clasped hands and symbols of the sun and moon. The ring thus represents fidelity, embellished with a precious gem.
Cleveland Museum of Art

Connection to Website Themes

Spousal Power Dyanmics: This object, with its precious stone, indicates a significant amount of wealth. The people who gave and received this ring did so as part of a complex ritual of gift giving that connected financial resources to courtship and authority in the marriage.

Community Social Norms: Sapphires top the list of precious gems in medieval lapidaries so this ring very likely originally belonged to a member of the elite.

Church and State: The connection between the ‘fede’ symbol of marital fidelity and a precious gem indicates the high value accorded to marriage. Both the church and state, as the dominant institutional presence in medieval society, helped to define and enforce the social meaning and value of marriage.

What is Love: Referencing heavenly objects, in this case the sun and moon, connect the marrige astrologically destined events. This symbology lifts the object out of the discourse of purely economic conspicuous consumption and into the discourse of romantic love.