Serpent (Ouroboros)
The serpent biting its own tail - the ouroboros - is one of the few Baroque memento mori symbols to survive the passage into the Victorian age: an image of eternity that was reinterpreted in the nineteenth century from admonition into a gesture of hope.
Written by Dr. Helene Vasall
The ouroboros - the serpent biting its own tail - is the longest-lived of the memento mori symbols. While the skull disappears with the age of sensibility and the hourglass survives only in a delicate form, the serpent achieves a complete change of meaning: from a Baroque memento mori element to a Victorian symbol of love and mourning. This adaptability has iconographic reasons - and royal ones.
Origins
The ouroboros first appears in the Western pictorial tradition in the late antique alchemy of Alexandria, with Egyptian precedents. In the papyrus Chrysopoeia of Cleopatra (third century) the serpent appears as a circular symbol with the inscription hen to pan - "one is all". The alchemical meaning is clear: beginning and end are joined to one another, the cycle of matter is closed.
By way of late antique Hermeticism and the medieval alchemical treatises (Pseudo-Geber, Roger Bacon) the motif reaches the imagery of the early modern period. In the Renaissance it is reinterpreted in Christian terms - as a symbol of the eternity of God and of the resurrection. In this form it enters memento mori iconography in the seventeenth century.
In Baroque mourning jewellery
In the memento mori tradition of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries the serpent appears in two functions:
- As a circular frame for other symbols. A serpent biting its own tail encircles a skull, an hourglass or an inscription - eternity encompassing finitude.
- As a pendant or ring in its own right. A gold serpent coils around the finger or hangs as a small relief on a chain. The head bites the tail; the body sometimes carries an inscription (Aeternitas, Eternity, Toujours).
Unlike the skull, the serpent is not dominant in Baroque jewellery. It is an accompanying symbol; the principal image remains the skull or the hourglass.
The Victorian turn
In 1840 that changes. Prince Albert gives Queen Victoria an engagement ring in the form of a serpent with emerald eyes - a serpent ring on the Parisian model, which had come into fashion among the English and French aristocracy from the 1830s onwards. Here the serpent is read as a symbol of eternal love: a circle that never ends.
With Victoria and Albert the motif becomes explosively popular in Victorian jewellery. Within a few years there appear:
- Serpent rings in countless variations - plain gold serpents, gem-set pieces, multiple coils
- Serpent bracelets as coiled gold bands, with a head holding a larger stone (often turquoise, ruby or garnet)
- Necklaces with a serpent clasp - the head bites the tail, the serpent lying around the neck
- Mourning serpents in black enamel with small diamond eyes - the mourning variant, from the 1850s onwards
The mourning serpent takes over part of the historical memento mori meaning, but presents itself more gently - the idea of an eternal bond dominates over the admonition about mortality. In mourning jewellery the serpent now means: "even in death we remain bound to one another".
Composition
The Victorian mourning serpent follows a few typical compositional patterns:
The closed ring. The serpent coils all the way around the finger; the head bites the tail. Emerald or turquoise eyes, occasionally a small diamond in the head. A black enamel variant in explicit mourning pieces.
Serpent with gemstone. The serpent's head holds a larger stone - in mourning jewellery often onyx or garnet, in half-mourning also amethyst.
Double serpent. Two intertwined serpents each holding the other's tail - rare, but especially precious.
Serpent with inscription. The serpent's body carries a small inscription - usually Aeternitas, Toujours, Forever, occasionally a date of death or initials.
The late Victorian phase
From the 1880s onwards the strict mourning serpent gives way to a more decorative variant. The serpent becomes a fashion symbol - Jugendstil, Art Nouveau and later Art Deco all work with the motif. The mourning connotation recedes; the aesthetic form remains. This shift runs parallel to the general loosening of the court mourning order around 1900.
In the workshops of Lalique, the circle around Mucha and later Cartier, the serpent becomes a principal form of Belle Époque fashion jewellery - but it is then no longer mourning jewellery.
Today
In modern memorial jewellery the serpent plays no part as a principal motif. In fashion jewellery it is active through Bulgari's Serpenti line and comparable collections, though usually without iconographic reflection. In esoteric and subcultural contexts (tarot, tattooing, collectors interested in alchemy) the ouroboros is alive - as a symbol of eternity, often without any connection to the mourning tradition.
Anyone who inherits a Victorian serpent jewel should check two points: whether it is a mourning piece (black enamel, small diamond eyes, possibly an inscription) or a love token (bright gold mount, coloured stones). Both types are worth collecting, but belong in different art-historical categories.
Identification
Useful for dating:
- A slender, almost linear serpent relief without sculptural swelling → Baroque, 1650–1750
- A serpent with clearly modelled scales and small eyes of emerald or turquoise → early Victorian, 1840–1870
- A fully modelled serpent with elaborately engraved scales, often with a larger stone in the head → high Victorian and Belle Époque, 1870–1910
- A stylised, almost geometric serpent with enamel accents → Jugendstil and Art Deco, 1900–1935
Black enamel on a serpent mount is almost always an unambiguous mourning marker; light-coloured enamel or a plain gold mount points to love or engagement jewellery.
Questions about this entry
- Is the ouroboros a Christian symbol?
Not originally. It comes from late antique alchemy and Hermeticism. In the European Middle Ages it was at first regarded with suspicion (as pagan); from the Renaissance onwards it was reinterpreted in Christian terms - as a symbol of the eternity of God and of the resurrection. It is in this form that it enters the mourning jewellery of the early modern period.
- Which jewellery forms use the motif?
Above all serpent rings and serpent bracelets - the serpent coils around the finger or the wrist, its head biting its tail or holding a small gemstone. Also mourning necklaces with a serpent clasp and pendants with an ouroboros relief. In 1840 Queen Victoria received a serpent engagement ring from Albert, which became an important signal of trend for Victorian jewellery fashion.
- Why did the motif survive into the Victorian age?
Unlike the drastic skull, the serpent could be reinterpreted - from memento mori admonition into a sentimental gesture of eternity. In Victorian mourning jewellery it becomes a gesture of hope and constancy; the old admonition about mortality recedes and the idea of an eternal bond comes forward.
- Is the symbol still alive today?
Barely as a principal motif in memorial jewellery, but very much alive in subcultures (esotericism, tattooing). In modern fashion jewellery the serpent appears regularly as an aesthetic form (at Bulgari with the Serpenti line, for instance), though usually without the ouroboros aspect. As a pure symbol of eternity it is still alive - as a symbol of mourning it has faded.
Further reading
- The Symbolism of Mourning Imagery in Western Art - Albert Boime (2008)
- Memento Mori: The Dead Among Us - Paul Koudounaris (2015)
- Death Becomes Her - A Century of Mourning Attire - Jessica Regan (2014)
- Christliche Ikonografie - Lexikon - Engelbert Kirschbaum (Hg.) (1972)
Related entries
- Core conceptsMemento mori
Memento mori is the Christian-Stoic exhortation to be mindful of one's own death - and at the same time the iconographic soil from which European mourning jewellery of the 17th century grew.
- Core conceptsMourning Jewellery
Mourning jewellery is body adornment that signals a death, binds the memory of a deceased person, or does both at once - since the 17th century a jewellery type in its own right, with a material language of its own.
- Core conceptsWidow's Jewellery
Widow's jewellery is the graduated mourning jewellery worn by widows in the 19th century according to a strictly codified plan of court mourning - from deep matte black to half-mourning lilac, each phase with its own materials and its own formal language.
- Core conceptsSentimental Jewellery
Sentimental jewellery is the jewellery of the age of sensibility between 1760 and 1840 - pieces in which love, friendship and grief share the same imagery, and in which hair, miniature painting and personal inscriptions first become the load-bearing form.
- Symbols & motifsSkull (the Memento Mori Death's Head)
The skull is the sharpest and oldest memento mori symbol - a direct iconographic reminder of mortality and transience that became the dominant jewellery form in the Baroque and, after a long bourgeois interval, is present again today in modern memorial and fashion symbolism.
- Symbols & motifsHourglass
The hourglass is one of the oldest and most potent memento mori symbols - sand run through as an image of the passing of a lifetime, often given wings (*tempus fugit*, "time flies") and a standard cipher on mourning jewellery from the Baroque into the early nineteenth century.
- Jewellery formsMourning Ring (Memorial Ring)
A mourning ring - also called a memorial ring - is a finger ring that carries the memory of a deceased person, usually in the form of an inscription, an image, a lock of hair or a fingerprint.
- PeriodsThe Victorian Era (1837–1901)
The Victorian era is the heyday of mourning jewellery - a period of more than sixty years in which court mourning codes, industrial mass production, new materials (jet, vulcanite, Berlin iron) and Queen Victoria's personal widowhood combined to produce a system of public and private mourning visibility without precedent in European history.
- PeriodsThe Georgian Era (1714–1837)
The Georgian era spans the reigns of the four kings George I to George IV and of William IV in Britain. In mourning jewellery it is the epoch in which sentimental jewellery was invented - sepia hair painting, the lover's eye, the miniature portrait on ivory, and the posy ring in transition to the memento mori ring.