VCU news

By Sian Wilkerson

Jewels have long signified wealth and status. But in the works of Miguel de Cervantes, including his renowned “Don Quixote,” the celebrated Spanish author portrays them as symbols with myriad meanings.

In her new book, “Cervantes y las Joyas” (“Cervantes and Jewels”), Virginia Commonwealth University author Mar Martínez-Góngora (Davis) explores the 16th- and 17th-century writer’s use of jewels and gems. To investigate their elevated symbolic and iconographic power, Davis draws from a multidisciplinary methodology that analyzes literature, history and language.

“Cervantes used jewels to reveal the values, qualities and flaws of both historical and fictional figures – men and women from diverse backgrounds, whose ethical conduct reflects the complexity of their characters,” said Martínez-Góngora, Ph.D., a professor in the School of World Studies in VCU’s College of Humanities and Sciences. “More extensively and meaningfully than other writers of his time, Cervantes explores the multiplicity and variety of meanings associated with the image of the jewel.”

Martínez-Góngora shared some of her insights with VCU News.

First, set the scene for us about Cervantes’ time and its understanding of jewels.

Cervantes reflects the fascination with gems in Early Modern Europe, which was fueled by the arrival of precious stones and metals in markets, the establishment of new trade routes that facilitated their circulation among the wealthy and powerful, and the stylistic renewal in design and improvement in craftsmanship.

This growing interest led artists like Benvenuto Cellini to write the first technical manual dedicated to jewelry, positioning the craft alongside the noble arts of painting and sculpture. In Spain, the rich imagery of jewels not only enhanced the figurative language of the Baroque but also contributed to a collective illusion of wealth and prosperity during periods of political decline and economic crisis.

And were such types of decline or crisis part of the context for Cervantes’ work?

The allure of jewels’ brilliance is partly rooted in the need to circumvent a growing distrust in the ability of gold coins to signify the high value attributed to their material substance. The instability of the monetary system – marked by the minting of new coins with silver and copper alloys, the rise of financial documents made of paper, the price revolution and the inflation that led to repeated royal bankruptcies – generated widespread anxiety. Despite this, the population continued to admire jewels as objects of admiration and consumption.

Cervantes understood the symbolic and literal significance of jewels, using them to address a nostalgia for the transparency of signs and the desire to rediscover their link to the real referent that existed in feudal society.

Turning to his work, what is notable in the big picture about Cervantes’ use of jewels?

For a broader audience, he capitalizes on the emotional and affective associations connected to the rarity, high market value, conspicuous consumption and elevated human cost associated with the extraction of precious metals and stones. This underscores the aesthetic and moral dimensions of the object, through the use of jewelry by female exemplary characters, to subtly critique the colonial exploitation and territorial expansion linked to the Habsburg imperial agenda.

To the learned reader, Cervantes also makes intelligible the symbolic value assigned to the image of the jewel. He draws on knowledge of metals, gems and stones disseminated through scientific works and lapidaries by Greco-Roman and Medieval scholars (such as Pliny the Elder, Albertus Magnus and Isidore of Seville) and more contemporary authors (like Cesare Ripa, Camillo Leonardi and Gaspar de Morales).

Are there some more specific themes that emerge?

Cervantes replaces the covetous desire for the acquisition and possession of jewels, often associated with colonial conquest, with a focus on the pleasurable aesthetic experience that arises from their contemplation, as conveyed through artistic and literary representations of these materials.

Additionally, his use of jewels and other luxury ornaments made from precious metals and gems highlights the impact of strict sumptuary laws imposed by the Crown. They were intended to preserve social hierarchies through restrictions on the use of luxury materials and thus prevent the dissolution of visible markers of class distinction.

And he challenged those norms, right?

Cervantes’ work exhibits his transgressive spirit, responding to the rigidity of the legislation through the ornamental excess that characterizes his depictions of Muslim women. In doing so, he contests the prohibition from wearing traditional jewels and luxurious fabrics that was imposed on Moorish women.

The austerity and absence of precious adornments in his representations of historical queens also reflect Cervantes’ desire to symbolically subvert the very social order that the legislation sought to maintain.