Thursday, January 4, 2018

Basilisk Signet Ring


Renaissance gold ring, 15th to 16th century. And what sort of person do you suppose used a basilisk for his or her signet, hmmm? Perhaps this will one day appear as an illustration in my projected book on the history of poison. From Timeline Auctions.
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1 comment:

G. Verloren said...

"And what sort of person do you suppose used a basilisk for his or her signet, hmmm?"

Looking closely at the image, and using an imaging program to invert the colors to give the impression of what the symbol would have looked like pressed into wax, I seem to draw the conclusion that this ring does not merely depict a basilisk - it depicts the decapitation of a basilisk with a sword, sending a spray and flecks of blood flying.

You can easily invert the colors yourself in order to compare and judge. Assuming you are using a machine that runs Windows: 1) open the image in Microsoft Paint, 2) left click on "Select" and choose "Select All" from the drop down menu, and 3) right click on the selected image and choose "Invert Color" from the drop down menu.

Certainly a signet ring that depicts the slaying of a basilisk would be far likelier than one using the basilisk by itself to represent the ring's owner or family. But there are also elements of the image itself that one struggles to explain otherwise.

January 4, 2018 at 9:16 PM

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