By the time of the Romans, whose jewelry styles were based on neighboring Greek and Etruscan forms, the various pieces were primarily prized for the massive load of gems they carried. The art of the setting was considered relatively unimportant. When Byzantine jewelry finally evolved, its style was based on those of Greece and Rome but was far richer and more dazzling in color and design because of influences from the east. Tastes in jewelry design by the Middle Ages were governed largely by the ostentation of the display. Enormous and massive creations featuring girdles and large brooches of gems and metal-work were very popular. Later, during the Renaissance, there came along with social, religious, and political changes a revolution in diamond jewelry design. Great artists, such as the Italian sculptor Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571), the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), and the Florentine sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455), turned their attention to the design and production of jewelry. Their designs helped so much to enhance the beauty and popularity of gemstones and pearls that, by the late seventeenth century, the craft passed into the hands of the gem cutters and mounters. At the beginning of the eighteenth century there was a sudden surge of interest in highly intricate ornaments of over-enthusiastic design. Reaction was swift and tastes turned back again toward the early classic forms of jewelry. At this time design your own wedding ring , too, there was a great increase in the production of inexpensive jewelry pieces for the new, expanding, more affluent middle class.