Provenance Information

Sale, Classical Numismatic Group, Lancaster, Penn., September 18, 2001, lot 1462; sold to private collection, California, September 18, 2001. Possibly Franz Fueg (1921–2019), Switzerland [see note 1]. Private collection, Eastern Europe [see note 2] [sale, Classical Numismatic Group, Lancaster, Penn., January 16, 2002, lot 2296 (unsold)]. Sale, Freeman and Sear, Los Angeles, California, about 2003; sold to the Rust Collection, California, about 2003s [see note 3]; sale, Classical Numismatic Group, New York, January 10, 2023, lot 946; sold to the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn., 2023

Note 1: Published in Fueg (2007), which includes some coins from his collection, it is uncertain whether this coin was one owned by him.

Note 2: Email from CNG to the Gallery, January 17, 2023, copy in accession file

Note 3: Email from CNG to the Gallery, January 17, 2023, copy in accession file

Exhibition Information

N/A

Publication Information

N/A

Section of the AAMD Guidelines relied upon for the exception to 1970

N/D

Explain why the object fits the exception set forth above

N/A

Provenance Information

Collection of Benjamin Zucker, New York (by 1985–2014); Taylor Thomson, Los Angeles and Toronto, Canada [purchased through Les Enluminures Ltd.] (2014–2016); given by Taylor Thomson to The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2016).

Exhibition Information

Exhibited in Cycles of Life: Rings from the Benjamin Zucker Family Collection, the exhibition of the Zucker Collection held at Les Enluminures Ltd., New York, October 30, 2014–December 6, 2014.

It was subsequently shown in the exhibition entitled, Treasures and Talismans: Rings from the Griffin Collection on view at The Met Cloisters, May 1 2015–October 18, 2015.

Publication Information

Sandra Hindman with Beatriz Chadour-Sampson, Riene Hadjadj, Jack Odgen and Diana Scraisbrick, Cycles of Life: Rings from the Benjamin Zucker Collection (London: Paul Holberton Publishing, 2014), cat. 8, pp. 70-73; Diana Scarisbrick, Rings: Jewelry of Love, Power, and Loyalty (London: Thames and Hudson, 2007), p. 61, no. 77.

Section of the AAMD Guidelines relied upon for the exception to 1970

Cumulative facts and circumstances

Explain why the object fits the exception set forth above

This work has provenance confirmed to 1985, when it was placed on deposit, but not displayed, at the Walters Art Museum from 1985 to 2014. This work has been exhibited and published twice. This ring is especially significant for its status as the only early Byzantine marriage ring in the collection and for its linkage of the Roman and Byzantine cultures of late antiquity, when Christianity emerged as the dominant religion of the ruling classes.