Johann Melchior Dinglinger

In Dinglinger's portrait by Antoine Pesne, c. 1721, the entrepreneur, swathed in furs, displays his richly-mounted translucent chalcedony Dianabad (Hermitage, St Petersburg).

Johann Melchior Dinglinger (26 December 1664 –6 March 1731) was one of Europe's greatest goldsmiths, whose major works for the elector of Saxony, Augustus the Strong, survived in the Grünes Gewölbe (the "Green Vaults"), Dresden.[1] Dinglinger was the last goldsmith to work on the grand scale of Benvenuto Cellini and Wenzel Jamnitzer, fewer of whose large-scale works in precious materials have survived, however.[2] His work carries on in a Mannerist tradition into the "Age of Rococo".

  1. ^ Reopened in September 2004 in the Dresden Residenz, as the Neues Grünes Gewölbe.
  2. ^ Later masters, like Carl Fabergé, were essentially miniaturists.