Ring brooch, gold, engraved with the figures of St.George and St.Christopher, English, 1350-1400

Ring brooch, gold, engraved on the obverse with the figures of St. George and St. Christopher enclosed in shaped frames with foliated ends. The figures are reversed in relief on deep hatched grounds. The areas outside the frames are cross-hatched. The reverse is engraved with a lozenge interlacing with a quatrefoil on a hatched ground. The pin is missing.

Sterckshof Exhibition RF.2010/400
Purchased at the auction by Christie's of the collection of Ralph Bernal (1783-1854), politician and art collector, in 1855. He held a seat in the House of Commons from 1815-52. After his death the Society of Arts proposed without success that the Government should buy his entire collection for the Museum of Ornamental Art then at Marlborough House which became the future South Kensington Museum, now the Victoria and Albert Museum. 730 lots were acquired for Marlborough House (Anthony Burton, Vision & Accident, V&A Publications, 1999, p. 34).

After his father's death in 1811, Bernal inherited three large sugar estates and over 500 enslaved people in Jamaica. 'In 1835 and 1836 he was awarded compensation for slave ownership amounting to over £11,450' (Helen Davies, Ralph Bernal, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, version dated 11 March 2021).

2280-1855