Diamonds certainly were the Renaissance woman’s best friend. Unlike us modern women, upon which jewels are relegated to the ears, neck, wrist, and fingers–how banal!–wealthy women of the 15th and 16th centuries were positively dripping in them. Pearls, sewed into hair pieces, cascaded down braids. Garnets and opals cinched waists in the form of corsets. Necklaces of rubies, amethysts, sapphires, emeralds were worn layer upon layer. Anything that could be bejeweled was. 

Nowhere was this more so the case than in Florence, under the reign of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. During the Renaissance, jewelry design reached a level of expression comparable to that of the figurative arts (the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the Hellenistic period), with there being no discernable divide between the two art forms.