Why was red coral used to protect babies?

Because of what it was believed to be. Ovid explains coral as seaweed hardened by contact with Medusa's severed head, so it is a substance made by the deadliest gaze in myth. That makes it the obvious material to hang on an infant against the evil eye, and Romans, medieval Europeans and Renaissance Italians all did exactly that.

Is red coral a stone?

No. It is the calcium carbonate skeleton of a colonial marine animal, Corallium rubrum. Its ambiguous status was noticed in antiquity, and Ovid describes it as a plant that hardens when lifted from the water.

Why do Renaissance paintings show babies wearing coral?

Because real infants in those households wore it. Piero della Francesca's Madonna di Senigallia of about 1474 and his Brera Altarpiece both show the Christ child with a heavy red coral pendant. It carries a deliberate double meaning: an amulet against the evil eye in the present, and a prefiguring of the blood of the crucifixion. Coral branches, beads and silver-mounted teething sticks were standard nursery objects across Catholic Europe.

Is buying red coral ethical?

It is complicated. Mediterranean red coral grows a few millimetres a year, is depleted, and is managed by quota with trade restrictions on some Corallium species. Antique and inherited pieces sit outside current harvest. If you buy new, buy from a jeweller who names the species and source.

How can I tell real coral from fake?

Most cheap red coral is dyed bamboo coral, dyed sponge coral, reconstituted powder or plastic. Real coral has fine natural growth striations rather than uniform colour, is cool and dense in the hand, and will fizz under acid, though that test damages it. In practice, buy from a dealer who will name the species in writing.

Talismans · Materials

Red coral

Also called: Corallium rubrum, blood coral

A red skeleton from the seabed, put on Mediterranean infants for two thousand years.

At a glance

Species: Corallium rubrum, Mediterranean
What it is: The calcium carbonate skeleton of a colonial animal
Myth: Medusa's blood hardened in seawater
Classic use: Infant amulets and teething sticks
Seen in: Renaissance Italian paintings of the Christ child
Now: Slow-growing, quota-managed, heavily imitated

What it is

Corallium rubrum is a colonial animal that builds a hard branching skeleton of calcium carbonate, coloured red to pink by carotenoid pigments. It grows on rocky Mediterranean seabeds, slowly, at a few millimetres a year, and it lives for decades.

What divers bring up is the skeleton, which polishes to a deep red gloss and cuts well. It is not a plant, not a stone and not a gem in the mineralogical sense, and its ambiguous status was noticed in antiquity: Ovid has it as a plant that hardens when lifted from the water, and Theophrastus and Pliny both struggled with where to file it.

Medusa's blood

Ovid's Metamorphoses gives coral its origin story. Perseus, having killed Medusa, sets her severed head down on a bed of seaweed by the shore. The seaweed absorbs the power of the head, hardens, and becomes red coral, which sea-nymphs then scatter through the water.

The story is doing real amuletic work. Coral in this account is a substance made by contact with the deadliest gaze in Greek myth, the one that turns living things to stone. A material formed by petrifying stare is exactly the right thing to hang on a child against the evil eye, and the Mediterranean tradition uses it precisely that way.

Roman practice put coral on infants routinely. Pliny records it as protective for children, worn at the neck, and the practice runs unbroken from there into medieval and Renaissance Italy.

On the neck of every Renaissance baby

Fifteenth and sixteenth-century Italian painting is full of coral. The Christ child wears a coral branch or a heavy coral pendant in panel after panel, and it is not decoration: the painters are showing what actual infants in those households wore. Piero della Francesca gives the two clearest cases, the Madonna di Senigallia of about 1474 and the Brera Altarpiece, the Pala Montefeltro, where a substantial coral pendant hangs at the sleeping child's throat.

The theological paradox in those pictures is worth sitting with. An omnipotent divine child is shown wearing a pagan-derived folk amulet against the evil eye, because that is what a Marches household put on a baby. The coral is doing two jobs at once: warding envy in the present, and, in its blood-red branching form, prefiguring the blood of the crucifixion. Renaissance viewers read the branching structure as an image of the lungs and the vascular tree as readily as of a plant.

Coral teething sticks, a polished branch mounted in silver with bells, are a standard European luxury nursery object into the nineteenth century. The branch was both a charm and something to bite on, and the silver mount usually carried a whistle and bells so the nurse could be summoned. Several survive in museum collections.

The cornicello, the twisted Italian horn, is the same material continuing into the present, and a horn of real coral is still the object the tradition means when the tradition is followed.

The conservation problem

Mediterranean red coral has been fished since antiquity and is now much depleted. It grows a few millimetres a year, which means a harvested colony is not replaced in a human lifetime. Harvest is regulated by quota, minimum sizes and closed areas, and international trade in some Corallium species is restricted.

Most cheap red coral jewellery is not this animal. Dyed bamboo coral, dyed sponge coral, reconstituted coral powder and plain plastic are all sold as coral, in enormous volume, and often without deception because the labelling conventions are loose.

What this means practically: if the traditional material matters to you, buy from a jeweller who names the species and the source, expect to pay accordingly, and consider antique and inherited pieces, which are outside the current harvest entirely and are what most of the tradition was made from anyway.

How coral is used as an amulet

The Mediterranean nursery practice, and what has replaced it.

Use an unpolished branch or a polished twisted horn. The branch form is the older and is what the paintings show.
Mount it in silver for wearing, which is the standard Italian and Spanish setting.
Hang it at the throat of an infant, or pin it to the cradle, against the eye.
Keep it red. Faded, bleached or chalky coral is treated as spent in the folk tradition.
Avoid acids, perfume and ultrasonic cleaners; calcium carbonate dissolves readily and coral is soft.
For infants, follow the same rule as amber: nothing beaded goes around a baby's neck.

Coral was also given as a christening gift across Catholic Europe, and this is one of the charms where the giving convention is strongest. A coral amulet was expected to come from a godparent.

What red coral belongs with

The charms cut from it and the fears it answered.

Questions for reflection

A material made by a petrifying gaze, worn against a hostile gaze. Does that logic satisfy you?
The tradition ran on a species that grows millimetres a year. What do you do with a charm whose material is running out?
Almost all the coral in this tradition is now antique. Does an inherited charm carry more than a new one?

Frequently asked questions

: Because of what it was believed to be. Ovid explains coral as seaweed hardened by contact with Medusa's severed head, so it is a substance made by the deadliest gaze in myth. That makes it the obvious material to hang on an infant against the evil eye, and Romans, medieval Europeans and Renaissance Italians all did exactly that.
: No. It is the calcium carbonate skeleton of a colonial marine animal, Corallium rubrum. Its ambiguous status was noticed in antiquity, and Ovid describes it as a plant that hardens when lifted from the water.
: Because real infants in those households wore it. Piero della Francesca's Madonna di Senigallia of about 1474 and his Brera Altarpiece both show the Christ child with a heavy red coral pendant. It carries a deliberate double meaning: an amulet against the evil eye in the present, and a prefiguring of the blood of the crucifixion. Coral branches, beads and silver-mounted teething sticks were standard nursery objects across Catholic Europe.
: It is complicated. Mediterranean red coral grows a few millimetres a year, is depleted, and is managed by quota with trade restrictions on some Corallium species. Antique and inherited pieces sit outside current harvest. If you buy new, buy from a jeweller who names the species and source.
: Most cheap red coral is dyed bamboo coral, dyed sponge coral, reconstituted powder or plastic. Real coral has fine natural growth striations rather than uniform colour, is cool and dense in the hand, and will fizz under acid, though that test damages it. In practice, buy from a dealer who will name the species in writing.

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