Brooch, gold, silver, pearls, coral, oak, plastic and paint, designed and made by Truike Verdegaal, Netherlands, 2003

A brooch of mixed materials bringing together a woman's head from a Renaissance portrait and a polished branch of coral. An underlying sheet of oak unites the two aspects. To the left it is cut as a rectangle and painted with a white head against a black background; to the right it is painted grey-green with some of the white undercoat visible around the lower edge, its jagged outline following the line of the coral. The coral is attached by five loops of gold wire, and seven pearls are also mounted on the painted wood, held by gold pins. The woman's head has delicately rouged cheeks, but the details of her features, headdress and collar are created by the shadows of etched decoration to the clear panel of plastic she is set behind. The woman is further adorned with three pieces of coral and an oxidised silver chain secured to the plastic panel by two pins with gilded heads of different sizes. On the reverse of the brooch a metal backplate, the same profile but smaller than the wood, holds the pin and a loop for its use as a pendant. Its dark grey surface has a pattern of diagonal lines of dots made by piercing the dark surface to reveal the lighter metal beneath.

The Louise Klapisch Collection, given by Suzanne Selvi

Truike Verdegaal assembles collage-like jewels from a wide variety of materials. This brooch, from her ‘Portraits’ series, was inspired by the sixteenth-century painting ‘Three Princesses of Saxony’ by Lucas Cranach the Elder (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna).

In taking portraits as her starting point she explores ‘the effect of jewellery that looks back at you’ and plays with the transition from a two dimensional canvas to a three dimensional jewel. In the brooch the separation yet overlapping of the outline of the princess’s head and the etched details on the Perspex emphasise this three-dimensionality.

Truike Verdegaal has explained that although the title ‘Sibylle’ comes from the sister on the left of Cranach’s portrait, her image is of the middle sister Emilia. The third sister Sidonia is hinted at in the lines of the coral and wood to the right.

This brooch is one of forty-five pieces of jewellery given to the V&A from the collection of the late Louise Klapisch.

M.54-2014