This brooch, a superb and well-preserved example of fourteenth-century jewelry, comes from a hoard found in 1969 in the Rhenish village of Lingenfeld.
Because the hoard contained coins issued in Speyer between 1347 and 1349, it may have been buried by a member of the local Jewish community fleeing persecution in the wake of an outbreak of the plague, for which the Jews were blamed.
Purchase, The Cloisters Collection, by exchange, 2006.