From 1400 to 1650, a movement called Humanism took over intellectual and social thought. Individual mortal experience became more important than the thoughts of afterlife, and the distinction between this world and the next became vaguer. “Beauty was believed to afford at least some glimpse of a transcendental existence. This goes far to explain the humanist cult of beauty and makes plain that humanism was, above everything else, fundamentally an aesthetic movement. Human experience, man himself, tended to become the practical measure of all things. The ideal life was no longer a monastic escape from society, but a full participation in rich and varied human relationships” (Kreis, 2000.)

Jewelry encompasses this rebirth of science, social relations, and pure beauty and, so, it should not be surprising that, not only would many masters be fascinated with painting jewelry for multiple purposes, but become goldsmiths themselves. George Eliot once said: “these gems have life in them: their colors speak, say what words fail of,” and it seems quite true; there seems to be no limit to what one can learn from the history and portrayal of jewelry.