Inside Fima #3 - Ancient coral jewels • NowArc

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Home | The ArCult | Inside Fima #3 – Ancient coral jewels

Published on July 21, 2021

INSIDE FIMA: news, ideas and insights to start exploring the world of the Italian Federation of Art Dealers and the gallery owners who are part of it.

For centuries, coral was considered a vegetable, this is what the Greeks thought, shared by the Latin historian Pliny the Elder who in his Naturalis Historia defined it as a plant.

In the 1600th century it was nicknamed "red gold" because it was considered a mineral; until in 1723 the Neapolitan alchemist Filippo Finella demonstrated in his studies that coral was an animal, a hypothesis later confirmed in XNUMX by the Marseille doctor Petssonel, who discovered that it was a colony of animals of the "corallium" genus, a small octopus which lives attached to the rock in warm and relatively deep seas.

Coral has always been associated with a particular symbolism: meanwhile, due to its red color it has always been linked to the color of blood, symbolism of life itself, so much so that in the paintings of the 400th and 500th centuries it was used very frequently in the iconography of Madonna and Child both as a symbol of Christ's future passion and of his double human and divine nature. Let us remember, just to mention one of the great Renaissance masterpieces, the Brera Altarpiece by Piero della Francesca in which the baby Jesus wears a coral necklace ending with a branch of the same material.

Coral was also linked to the theme of birth: it was customary, especially in southern Italy, to give the nurse who was breastfeeding the newborn a long necklace with large spheres of degraded coral; they are those rare necklaces called "nurse necklaces" that are highly sought after on the market today.

In Italy the tradition of coral is centenary: in the 600th century and in the following century the typical bush earrings with the parure necklace were considered indispensable for a bridal trousseau and in the 500th century the same severe sumptuary laws, that is, those which regulated the royalties of luxury, have never limited the popular and much loved use of coral.

The most prized qualities were those that arrived from Sardinia, Trapani, Sciacca and Torre del Greco. We know that Trapani coral was already appreciated in the 12th century, when the Arab traveler Idrisi extolled its quality and exceptional nature. The coral workers of Trapani created objects of very high technical expertise: not only jewels but frames, nativity scenes, paper glory and reliquaries, precious objects often made of gold and silver and richly decorated in coral.

In 1789 King Ferdinand IV promulgated the Coral Code which regulated fishing and the following year the Royal Coral Company was established in Torre del Greco with the aim of enhancing and regulating the work of coral workers.

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