The jewels of the seventeenth century, as has been observed, are comparatively rare in public collections. Unlike those of the Cinquecento, which find a more appropriate place in the museum or collector's cabinet, they are admirably adapted for personal use at the present day; but until the change of taste of the last few years in favour of old work, these attractive objects, owing to their being set with precious stones of intrinsic value, suffered cruelly at the hands of modern jewellers in the destructive process of resetting. Partly for this reason it is less easy than it was with the jewellery of the century previous to notify extant examples of all species of ornaments. Their main features, already described, lie in a preference for precious stones, and for a style of ornament which, at first formal, evolves into naturalistic flower designs in painted enamel. Widespread luxury accompanied the large importation of precious stones. Ladies made each new fête a pretext for greater extravagance and greater efforts to outshine their neighbours; and the ornament in which they seem above all to have delighted for the best display of their wealth of jewellery was the aigrette. This ornament, of which some mention has been made (p. 281), generally took the form of a bouquet of flowers on movable stalks, composed of clusters of precious stones in enamelled gold, accompanied sometimes by a jewelled knot, and was fixed in the hair on all occasions of ceremony. A large number of these bouquets are mentioned in the inventory of the French crown jewels of 1618. In default of actual examples we must rely on the designs which the jewellers of the day published for them, and also on contemporary portraits, which further illustrate a passing mode for plaiting strings of pearls through the hair. [Illustration: _PLATE XLII_ SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY ENAMELLED PENDANTS] Of earrings, on the other hand, a considerable number of examples have survived. French and English portraits show at first only a large pear-shaped pearl in each ear. In the second half of the century more elaborate earrings came into use. Spain, where these ornaments have always been popular, produced at the time a number of portraits exhibiting earrings of open-work set with coloured stones. They are in the form of a rosette or bow-shaped ornament hung with movable pendants. The engravings of Rivard (1646), Lefebure (1647), and Gilles Légaré (1663) include designs for earrings; those of the last-named being such voluminous jewels, hung with triple _briolettes_, _pendeloques_, or pearls, that they might easily be mistaken for neck pendants. The majority of earrings of this period, now existing, are of Spanish, Portuguese, or Italian origin. The general type of earring then in use is well shown in Rembrandt's portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels (about 1652), in the Louvre, where it takes the form of an elaborate pendant terminating with a big pearl drop.