Summary: Publisher Summary 1 While cameo and intaglio portraits, other forms of deluxe jewelry, medals, and miniatures featuring famous personalities have been surveyed, a historian and curator of jewelry and engraved gems, notes that their settings have surprisingly not attracted as much attention. Covering periods from 16th to early 17th centuries Renaissance Europe to the Napoleonic to World War I eras, Scarisbrick describes the pieces and names their designers in historical and personal contexts. A chapter is devoted to the portrait diamond from the Medici dynasty to the fall of the Romanovs. The volume features some 300 color illustrations and a bibliography. Annotation 漏2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)   Publisher Summary 2 A richly illustrated and fascinating book of jewels and gems that will appeal to anyone interested in the history of jewelry, portraiture, and European culture.   Publisher Summary 3 From the Renaissance to the end of the Belle Epoque, cameo, intaglio, and miniature portraits, prized as representations of eminent people or treasured as images of the beloved, have been enriched by jeweled frames in order to wear them or display them as precious objects. Rulers from the Medici to the Romanovs commissioned portrait jewels. Dynasties represented here include the Valois and Bourbon in France; Bavarian, Habsburg, and Hanoverian in Germany, Central Europe, and Spain; Tudor, Stuart, and Hanoverian in Britain; and the House of Orange-Nassau in the Netherlands. Men and women famous in politics, religion, history, literature, and the arts, including Queen Elizabeth I, Louis XIV, Catherine the Great, Voltaire and Madame du Ch芒telet, Popes Clement XII and Pius VII, and Lord Byron are featured in this exquisite miniature gallery. The author draws upon her knowledge of jewelry, painting, history, and literature to set the portrait jewels in the context of people's lives, and shows how they were worn and what they meant to donors and recipients鈥攖okens of allegiance to a ruler, of commitment between lovers, of affection within families.