Pendant, Mexico, Mexica culture (pendant); Europe (mounts), Late Post-Classic, Ca. 1460-1500 (pendant), Late 16th century (mounts). Jade (green jadeite); silver mounts, 3 cm x 2 cm. Price on request © PAB / Aguiar-Branco Antiques. Courtesy Asian Art Society 

A rare jade pendant set in silver with a collet surrounding the stone, held with a silver pin. The green stone, seemingly a Late Post-Classic Mexica (Aztec) jadeite pendant, is a rectangular slab with two original holes, one later used to hold its silver mounts in place.¹

The inventory of the estate left by Dona Ana de Meneses - drafted in 1598 under the orders of her widower, Jorge d’Albuquerque Coelho (1539-1602), provides a rare view of the type and quality of objects belonging to the family of the donatário of Pernambuco.² Coelho was born in 1539 in Olinda and was the son of Duarte Coelho Pereira, the first donatary of Pernambuco.³

Alongside other precious possessions, the inventory records one of the first references to jade in Portugal. Listed with the silver tableware, the piece of jade, used to cure “pain in the flank”, is recorded as: “hūua Pedra uerde de Ysada” valued at 400 reais. According to the Spanish physicist Nicolás Monardes (1498-1588), jadeite or “the stone called de la Yjada”: “is a stone, of which the finer ones seem to be emerald-green plasma and of a milky tone, the rich-green coloured variety being the finest. They have them in different shapes, as the Indians had them in ancient times, some shaped like fishes, birds’ heads, parrot beaks, and others as round beads, all of them drilled, given that the Indians would use them as pendants to alleviate loin and stomach pain [...].” After explaining the supposed medicinal effects of jadeite, Monardes adds that the stones “are now much more difficult to find when compared with the earlier days [of the Spanish Conquest], given that only chieftains and kings used to have them, and with good reason, since they produce marvellous effects.”⁴

Considering the information given by Monardes on the reuse of such pieces, the jade recorded in Coelho's inventory would be something quite similar to the present pendant. Similar Mexica lapidary works are rarely found in other contemporary inventories. Nonetheless, we are fortunate to possess not only three Mexica pendants from the collection of grand duke Cosimo I de' Medici (1519-1574), but also their presence recorded in one of the ducal inventories, regarding his personal belongings or "Guardaroba segreta", drafted in 1553.5 These precious pieces - a dog's head carved from onyx, a hummingbird's head of green agate and a long-snouted dog of amethyst - are now in the Museo di Mineralogia, Florence.

1 On Mexica, and other Precolumbian jade, see Frederick W. Lange, Precolumbian Jade. New Geological and Cultural Interpretations, Salt Lake City, Utah University Press, 1993.

2 Direção-Geral do Livro, dos Arquivos e das Bibliotecas, Feitos Findos, Inventários post mortem, Letra A, Maço 172, Documento 20.

3 Charles R. Boxer, "Jorge d'Albuquerque Coelho: A Luso-Brazilian Hero of the Sea, 1539-1602", Luso-Brazilian Review, 6.1, 1969, pp. 3-17.

4 Nicolás Monardes, Primera y Segunda y Tercera Partes de la Historia Medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales, que sirven en Medicina [...], Sevilla, Alonso Escrivano, 1574, fols. 23-23v

5 Detlef Heikamp, Mexico and the Medici. Florence, Editrice Edam, 1972, p. 13, and p. 35.

PAB / Aguiar-Branco Antiques - T.: +351934051765 - E.: pab@pab.pt - W.: www.pab.pt