Ginés Donaire I Jaén, (EFE).- An Iberian diadem, which experts describe as an exceptional piece, is being put up for sale by a private collector in Madrid after a long journey without knowing its fate.
After its location, a group of archaeologists from Jaén is mobilizing to urge the Junta de Andalucía to bid for the acquisition of this piece, which would become part of the collection of the Museo Ibero de Jaén.
The value of this piece lies in the fact that it is one of the only two Iberian diadems (or Iberas) known to date. The other, that of Jávea (Alicante), is on display at the National Archaeological Museum.
However, from the Association of Friends of the Iberians of Jaén (province to which its origin is attributed) the Junta de Andalucía is urged to acquire this exceptional piece of goldsmithing so that it becomes part of the Ibero Museum of Jaén.
It is a diadem made of gold and articulated in three subunits, with a little more than thirty centimeters in length. It has been missing until 2018, when part of it was published by M. Almagro-Gorbea and A. Perea in a book about the Cervera Collection.
Iberian headband unknown to researchers
Professor Arturo Ruiz, for many years director of the University Institute for Research in Iberian Archeology at the University of Jaén, explains to EFE that the diadem was made with bands of processions of symbolic and schematic doves or landscapes of palm trees.
“It is made with the technique of granules and filigree linked to the influence of Greek goldsmithing on an Iberian substrate with a strong Phoenician or oriental cultural survival and with a date from the end of the s. IV or early s. III ane”, says Ruiz.
But the Madrid diadem has not only surfaced from the bottom of a private collection, unknown to researchers, but has also made it possible to document the place of its origin and the history of its silent wandering through the 20th century and so far in the 21st. .
As Arturo Ruiz explains, his discovery must have been made at a time in the first decades of the 20th century and became part of the collection of Félix García de Olaya, of La Rioja origin, who came to Jaén at the age of 13.
Félix García de Olaya was also a correspondent of the Royal Academy of History since 1890, under the patronage of the academic Joaquín Costa, dying in 1922, a date that acts as the final limit to determine when the gold diadem was found, since it belonged to to your collection.
Oblivion in private collections
In any case, it is known that the collection already existed in 1878 because on this date, according to the Lope de Sosa magazine in 1928, the collector donated half an arroba of Roman imperial coins for the casting of two bells in the cathedral of Jaén, which It is justified by the fact that he possessed ancient coins “in an extraordinary quantity”.
After a long silence, a descendant of Félix García de Olaya, a great-nephew named Ángel de la Riva Resines, who apparently later resided in Benalmádena (Málaga), decided to sell the collection of antiquities or part of it and selected a diadem, of his absolute property, which he cites as “a Greco-Phoenician necklace or pectoral”.
Of the piece, which is identified with the misnamed Madrid diadem, it is indicated on the invoice that it was sold for seven hundred thousand pesetas and it is said that “it is made of gold, whose approximate age is six hundred years before Jesus Christ” and It is added in the sales contract that said necklace was found in Montizón, near Aldeahermosa and Castellar, in the province of Jaén.
Arturo Ruiz believes that there is enough data to support the origin of this jewel, which he does not hesitate to define as the Montizón diadem.
“The jewel, typical of an Iberian queen, which in the Montizón area should be none other than the queen of Cástulo, arrived at a new collection in Madrid where it lost its reference until 2022, in which its owners have decided to sell it. ”, says Ruiz, who is also president of the Association of Friends of the Iberians of Jaén.
Iberian gold, something exceptional
“It is very important not to allow this diadem, found in these lands and recognized as a unique jewel for its great aesthetic and technical quality due to the symbolic charge of its images, to be diluted again in the mists and oblivion of other private collections” , emphasizes Professor Ruiz.
In his opinion, “the purchase of the Montizón diadem offers a unique opportunity to have an exceptional piece for the Museo Ibero de Jaén within the framework of Andalusian heritage.
In addition, he maintains that his purchase would contribute to increasing the value and interest of the permanent collection of this museum (unique in the world of this art) “not only for restoring to the province of Jaén an Iberian jewel that emerged from the bowels of its lands, but because the diadem will surely become another pole of attraction for travelers who want to learn about the great culture of the Iberians from Jaén”.
Gold jewelry in the culture of the Iberians is very exceptional, also giving the case that pieces such as the extraordinary earrings of Santiago de la Espada, with the representation of the goddess and the dove, were lost in the fifties in the Valencia Institute of Don Juan, without its current whereabouts being known. Similarly, the earrings from Granada ended up in the British Museum.
“Until now, it has been possible to recover the memory of a unique Iberian piece that had even lost the name of its place of origin, now its physical recovery must be faced to deliver it to its original legitimate owners: the people of Jaén”, concludes Arturo Ruiz. EFE.