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Margarita, Pearl

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232
MARGARITA.
discoloured : such an ornament in most cases sufficing for her dowry.
The greatest magnitude is attained by pearls of a very irregular shape, aptly termed by the French " Perles baroques." These malformations were ingeniously utilised by the fanciful taste of the Cinque-cento, and, by the addition of the required members in gold enamelled, converted into sea-monsters for pen­dant ornaments. In the Devonshire Cabinet there is a superb example, a monster-pearl of the finest water, but singularly dis­torted, and now serving for the body of a very graceful mer­maid ; valued at 2000/. Yet more curious is the Londesborough unicorn, composed of two baroques, and mounted by France and Victory embraced. The Romans of the Decline distinguished the perfect, spherical, unio from the perle baroque, always terming the latter margaritum. The Persians make twelve classes of the pearl (Lulu) according to its shape ; and as many according to its colour.
The Asiatic conquests of Pompey first turned the taste of the Romans after pearls and precious stones (xxxvii. 6). In his tri­umphal procession were borne 33 crowns made out of pearls, a temple of the Muses with a dial on the top, and a figure of the victor himself, formed out of the same precious materials. This last piece of extravagance excites beyond all reasonable bounds the wrath of the Stoic Pliny, who devotes several lines, chary as he is of space, to the objurgation of such luxury ; and inter­prets the ostentatious exhibition of Pompey's head in this manner as a presage of Divine anger, foreshowing that here­after the same head severed from the body was to be held up as a public spectacle. In this example, adds he, Caligula might find an excuse for wearing slippers made of pearls, or Nero, who formed out of them sceptres for the characters on the stage, and couches for his amours.
Thus it appears that on their first introduction at Rome, Pearls had been employed as materials for art. Not that they engraved in relief or intaglio upon so small and precious a body : the figures above described must have been formed of small pearls strung on wire, or white horsehair, and thus fastened upon a model in a kind of mosaic, just as the Lamb of the Golden Fleece, or the brooches of seed-pearl, are now constructed.
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