Serpentine Paten from the Treasury of Saint-Denis
Unknown (Roman dish; Carolingian mount) · First century BC to first century AD (dish); 850-900 (mount)
A shallow dish of dark green serpentine, no wider than a dinner plate, is inlaid with tiny golden fish, eight of them originally, of which two are missing. Around it runs a mount of gold cloisonné set with gems in raised collars, garnets, pearls and green glass, a Carolingian goldsmith's frame for a stone that was already eight hundred years old when it was mounted. The cutting of the serpentine is as fine as the best Roman hardstone work of the first centuries before and after Christ; the fish were added in antiquity, though nobody can say whether at the same time, and their supposed Christian meaning is not proven.
The mount dates from the second half of the ninth century, and the paten can be linked, through an engraving of the lost mount of the Cup of the Ptolemies, an antique agate cup now in the Bibliothèque nationale, to the gifts of Charles the Bald to the abbey of Saint-Denis. Cup and paten served together for the Mass and later for the coronation of French kings. First listed in the abbey inventory of 1505, the paten was handed to the Museum on the fifth of December 1793.
Did You Know? The little gold fish swimming in the green stone were set there by a Roman craftsman, centuries before the dish became a Christian paten.
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