Ring Brooch

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This brooch comes from a treasure unearthed in 1969 on a farm near Lingenfeld, in the Rhineland, about sixty miles north of Strasbourg. Set inside a terracotta vessel were silver objects, including a double cup and a letter-shaped jewel similar to ones in The Cloisters Collection (1983.125a, b; 1986.386), as well as gilded silver rings. The coins in the hoard date to the time of the Plague, which struck Europe with devastating ferocity in 1348. It is estimated that one third of the entire population of Europe died from the pandemic. Princes and paupers, Christians, Jews and Muslims all succumbed to the Plague. Compounding the horror, Jewish communities in the Rhineland were scapegoated and put to death by their Christian neighbors. Did this treasure, like other jewelry from this same period found in the region, belong to a Jewish citizen fleeing persecution, or was it buried for safekeeping by someone who fell victim to the Black Death?

Medieval Art and The Cloisters

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of medieval and Byzantine art is among the most comprehensive in the world. Displayed in both The Met Fifth Avenue and in the Museum's branch in northern Manhattan, The Met Cloisters, the collection encompasses the art of the Mediterranean and Europe from the fall of Rome in the fourth century to the beginning of the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century. It also includes pre-medieval European works of art created during the Bronze Age and early Iron Age.

Metropolitan Museum of Art