Juweel met korenaren en bloemen c. 1800 - 1810

Carl Friedrich Bärthel rendered this jewel with wheat ears and flowers in muted tones, capturing a delicate arrangement. These carefully rendered symbols speak volumes through the ages. The wheat, a universal emblem of fertility and harvest, traces back to ancient agricultural societies where it represented sustenance and life's cyclical nature. We see echoes of this in Egyptian depictions of the goddess Isis holding wheat, a promise of renewal, and in classical Roman art where Ceres, the goddess of agriculture, is adorned with it. The flowers, with their transient beauty, symbolize the fleeting nature of life, a memento mori. This motif appears time and again, reminding us of our mortality, from vanitas paintings to Victorian mourning jewelry. The combination of wheat and flowers invokes a poignant tension, reflecting our subconscious awareness of life's abundance intertwined with its fragility, a perennial dance of creation and decay.