[Illustration: A fifteenth-century jeweller. From _Ortus Sanitatis_ (Strasburg, about 1497).] CHAPTER XXI SIXTEENTH-CENTURY JEWELLERY (GENERAL) ITALY, SIXTEENTH CENTURY Great ostentation and external splendour were the chief features of the Renaissance. So, if the jewellery of this time appears to us more magnificent than that of any other, this superiority is but an indirect result of the intermediate causes which find a place in all that is included under the term Renaissance. In enumerating certain characteristics that distinguish sixteenth-century jewellery from that of other epochs, the enormous quantity used may first of all be noted. A general increase in wealth had taken place, but in the comparative rarity of opportunity for investments, it was still customary to keep gold and precious stones secreted,[122] or, as was more generally done, make them into ornaments of small compass and easily convertible into hard cash. [122] This tendency is as common as ever in the East, particularly among high-class natives of India, on account of the prevailing belief that the only safe way to invest money is to purchase precious stones and similar articles of intrinsic or sterling value. (See _Nineteenth Century_, LVIII, p. 290, 1905, "The origin of money from ornament.") Coupling this with the magnificent style of living during the Renaissance, we need feel less surprise at the extraordinary abundance of jewellery which we read of in contemporary chronicles, and find represented in the utmost variety on the portraits of the period. Men of solid reputation and serious disposition seem, equally with women, to have fallen victims to the reigning passion for jewellery.