If we are at first inclined to wonder at the number of Cinquecento jewels that have survived, we can more readily understand that they represent the merest fraction of what formerly existed, when we take into consideration all the risks of destruction such fragile and precious objects have undergone--objects by their nature the very first to disappear. Monetary pressure caused by war, the division of property, and many other events were fraught with danger to objects in the precious metals. Change of taste, almost as rapid as that in dress, which has caused the last fashion but one to be the least of all desired, necessitated the repeated refashioning of jewellery. Notwithstanding their perfection, the exquisite productions of the sixteenth century were unable to resist the fatal influence of fashion, and were largely broken up towards the termination of the seventeenth century, when brilliant enamels and artistically wrought gold were less in request, and the precious metals became entirely subservient to the stones, for which they acted simply as settings. On the other hand, their small size, which has rendered them easy to conceal, accounts for the preservation of some examples, while mere chance, or perhaps an historical association, oft-times solely traditional, has saved others from destruction. The finest productions of the artificers of antiquity transcend in abstract beauty of design everything, perhaps, that has since been produced. Those of the mediæval craftsmen possess a charm and beauty impossible to deny, and a peculiar _naïveté_ and ingenuousness of their own, to be looked for in vain elsewhere. It must be acknowledged, however, that the jewels of the Renaissance, the receptacle of every variety of adornment by way of precious stones, pearls, and enamels that the goldsmith could devise in order to enrich them, are in their own manner incomparable. It may be that some err so far on the side of over-elaboration that they lose the balance and dignity of harmonious design, but the majority possess qualities rarely found in combination save at this remarkable period--a richness of form, boldness of conception, and extraordinary refinement of technique. There is no species of technical work, whether it was a case of hammering, chasing, or casting, or, above all, enamelling, that was not then brought to perfection. But the splendours of the Renaissance must not blind us to the efforts of the preceding age; for thorough though the change was from the style of Gothic art, the jewellers of the Renaissance were deeply indebted to the mediæval traditions which they had by their side to aid them in developing their artistic conceptions.