Vatican Museums

The necklace was hypothetically reconstructed by the archaeologist Giovanni Pinza in the first years of the twentieth century, and is unique in terms of the value and rarity of its constitutive elements and as evidence of the spirit and taste of the age. It is a double bow chain cord, the ends of which are decorated with a pair of filigree lion heads. The chain is made up of several hundred small rings, cut, soldered, curved and threaded individually, a long and complex task.
Each pendant is made up of four mobile parts: a large hollow ring, a broad setting with an amber stone inserted into it, a bi-conical element and a tip with four leonine protomes. The decoration of the three settings is particularly refined: they are entirely covered with granulation, outlining a meandering motif along the sides, whereas a herringbone design decorates the inward-curving front margin.
The pairing of gold and amber is typical of the Orientalising phase in southern Etruria and ancient Latium, but it is also evident in the extraordinary discoveries made in Verucchio, in the province of Rimini.