Fine Art

Zenobia Captive: How Jewellery Transformed a Warrior Queen

30 June 2026

Ruth Davis

Today, we are familiar with the popular feminist icons that figures such as Boudicca, Cleopatra or even Athena have come to embody; strong female figures waging war, conquering and governing in what history would have us believe is a male dominated world.

Some lesser-known figures have fallen through the cracks of todays common references and this may well be due to their portrayal, often at the hands of men, in our historical and artistic touch points; and often when ‘re-discovered’ leads us to wonder what they were really like as women.

20th century artists and historians were often prone to romanticise their female subjects and though Sir Edward John Poynter was the foremost proponent of classical and historical figurative painting of the latter half of the 19th century, he is no exception. His acute archaeological and historical awareness does give way to theatre of composition, costume and drama that made his work so sought after in its day. His portrayal of Zenobia, swathed in so much jewellery that it becomes indistinguishable from her chains, gives us an interesting insight into how the male gaze chose to portray this women, and in doing so attempts to ‘tame’ her into a gentle, more palatable creature.

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Who Was Queen Zenobia?

Zenobia was an immensely powerful leader in her time, the third century queen of Palmyrene (modern day Syria). Following the assassination of her husband in 267AD, she became regent for her son Vaballathus, ruling in his name between 267-272. In 270 she launched an invasion that would bring most of the Eastern Roman Empire under her rule, from modern day Egypt to Turkey. Until 272 she was a Roman subject and so in theory subordinate to Emperor Aurelian (270-275) until he launched a military campaign which provoked Zenobia to proclaim Palmyra’s independence from Rome, making her son Emperor and therefor herself Empress. Aurelian was quick to react, laying siege to her capital, and after much bloody fighting, she was captured, brought to Rome to be paraded as war booty, there to remain in exile for the remainder of her life.

It is this episode that history chooses to make her defining image, her defeat and subjugation at the hands of Rome. Overlooked is the fact that at her height, she commanded over 120,000 troops, and was a fair and educated ruler. Tolerant to religious minorities, she governed a vast multi-cultural empire while fostering an intellectual court, and cultivating a stable administration.

Dressing an Ancient Queen for a Victorian Audience

Poynter chooses to portray the queen in contemplative captivity, her vast power and wealth represented in her mass of jewels and impressive crown. During the mid to latter half of the 19^th century, the fashion for Etruscan Revival jewels was at its height and what we see here isn’t Zenobia clothed in the jewels of her own day, but in those of the painters.

Driven by the fascination with recent archaeological finds, particularly in Tuscany, jewellers began to replicate these pieces for wealthy patrons on their Grand Tour of Europe. Rome and Naples became a great centre for these works, with houses such as Castellani and Guliano making a name for themselves in this arena. Bold yellow gold pieces with granulated or wire-work detail, showing classical motifs such as scarabs, micro-mosaics and gemstones often used in antiquity such as turquoise, pearls, carved cameos and intaglios became all the rage.

Interestingly, at the start of the century Napoleon Bonaparte chose classical motifs in much of the jewellery his commissioned during the first French Empire to reinforce his right to power; using the weight of history to lend legitimacy to his right to rule. Poynter draws on these jewels to do a similar service to Zenobia; these may not be the jewels of her time, but they are the jewels which immediately denote her status to his contemporary audience.

How Poynter Uses Jewellery to Tell Zenobia's Story

Poynter leads further into the symbolism. Zenobia’s captivity is not immediately noticeable so numerous are her jewels that we lose sight of her chains, almost alluding to the notion that her captivity, her tamed spirit, is an important aspect of her appeal. Her pearls, symbols not only of her wealth but of purity, tears and mourning are wrapped around the chains about her neck, a blunt reference to the source of her sorrow.

Indeed, rather than railing against her captivity as one may expect of such a warrior queen, she seems to quietly contemplate them, softly caressing them as she looks out of the frame and contemplates her fate. And well she might, the Zenobia we see here is far from the reality of the ancient queen, defeated and contemplating a life in the court of her captor as his curiosity, but this Zenobia carries a different burden, the weight not just of her chains but of the layers of symbolism which have come to cloak her over the centuries, to the modern viewer she represents so much more than just a conquered queen.

The snakes coiled around Zenobia's arms and wrists would have been immediately recognisable to Poynter's audience, and their multiple layers of meaning would not have been lost on contemporary viewers. They were deeply romantic symbols. In 1839, Prince Albert presented Queen Victoria with an emerald, ruby and diamond engagement ring in the form of a coiled serpent, beginning one of the nineteenth century's most celebrated royal love stories.

Serpents were associated with everlasting love, but they could also symbolise wisdom, renewal and eternity. Equally, they carried older associations with temptation. By adorning Zenobia with so many serpents, Poynter may have been hinting at what he perceived as her pride or ambition. Turquoise, highly prized in Persia and a subtle reference to Zenobia's eastern origins, adds another layer of symbolism. Long believed to protect its wearer from misfortune, it ultimately offers no defence against the fate that has already overtaken her.

How History Chose to Remember Zenobia

This depiction of Zenobia seems to reveal more about nineteenth-century, often male-dominated perceptions of powerful women than it does about the historical queen herself. Far more palatable is a beautiful women, calmly contemplating her folly, carefully tamed by the male administration than a competent warrior and stateswoman. Is it Zenobia in all her beauty and jewels that Poynter and his peers find beautiful or the triumphant relief that their status-quo lives to fight another day?

Let her better be remembered as she was, a trail-blazing women, not defined by her chains, but by the richness of her achievements and let her portrait symbolise a need to celebrate this in a new century.

Department

Fine Art

Department

Jewellery

Specialist

Ruth Davis

Associate Director, Head of Jewellery | Edinburgh