Roman Engraved Gems in the National Archaeological Museum in Lisbon (original) (raw)
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ROMAN GEMS IN THE NATIONAL SOARES DOS REIS MUSEUM IN OPORTO
The 34 intaglios and cameos discussed in this paper are part of a collection of 136 gems (both Roman and Modern) we studied in 2002, with permission of the former Museum director, Mónica Baldaque, and the curator Fátima Macedo. Some of those gems are set in rings (no. 10-Roman iron ring; no. 22-medieval gold ring; no. 31-modern gold ring; also 3 ceramic cameos depicting the Portuguese Queen Maria I-modern silver rings: inv. nos 74 CMP; 75 CMP and 174 MNSR) and 2 others in snuff boxes (1 ivory cameo and 1 Wedgwood cameo-inv. nos 37 MNSR and 31 MNSR, respectively). Besides them, the museum also holds a collection of 800 plaster seals. Among the types of these Roman gems, some deserve special attention: Marsyas (no. 6)-the only gem in the Portuguese Gem Corpus bearing this theme, as well as those of Athena Promachos (no. 7), Isis-Selene bust (no. 9), Socrates (no. 11), Diogenes (no. 14), eagle fighting a serpent (no. 17), shrimp and murex (no. 19), mouse (23) and confronted doves (no. 25). This last one, with its associated inscription, perhaps symbolizes the union of a couple by the bonds of matrimony. However, how did the scarab bearing a Centaur (no. 28) reach Portugal?
Catalogue of Engraved Gems, Greek, Etruscan and Roman. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Preface; History of the Collection; Abbreviations; General Introduction; The uses of Gems; The choice of designs on gems; The technique of gem engraving; The materials used for ancient gems; Appreciation and collecting of gems; Gem engravers and their signatures; Forgeries; Catalogue; I. Greek; II. Etruscan and Italic; III. Roman intaglios, first century b.c. to fourth cantury a.d.; IV. Hellenistic and Roman Cameos and Works in the round, second century b.c. to fourth century a.d.; Concordance of the numbers in the 1920 and the 1956 editions of the catalogue; General index; Index of inscriptions.
2018
Gems in Ancient Rome: Pliny's Vision
Scripta Classica Israelica, 2019
Greco-Roman culture classified a great variety of gems. Authors such as Theophrastus, Plutarch and Pliny the Elder dealt with the subject. To now which gems were most highly valued in ancient Rome, it is essential to consult book 37 of Pliny the Elder. Book 37 of Pliny’s Natural History is one of the few accounts on precious stones, gems and amber that collects information from various sources of antiquity, which in many cases have survived only thanks to Pliny’s transcription. He catalogued the most prestigious gems, and discussed their origin, their exploitation techniques, their properties and their etymology. This corpus collects a total of 240 different variants of gems, of which, in 93 cases, its place of origin is known. In order to know to what extent the words of Pliny reflect the reality of the Roman market, we have analyzed as examples ten catalogs of modern collections of gems from various places and compared them with Pliny’s comments. This analysis confirms the fact that the urban Roman elites valued precious stones extracted from the territories beyond the Roman Empire, especially those of the East. The ten catalogues contain more than 4000 different gems and glasses. It compares the information in Pliny’s book on gems with ten current catalogs of various museums, adding more than 4000 analyzed copies. Both of these sources similar results and therefore confirms the interest of the Romans for these productions.
Gołyźniak P. Ancient Engraved Gems in the National Museum in Krakow. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag 2017., 2017
The book is available to order from: https://reichert-verlag.de/schlagworte/altaegyptischer\_stil\_schlagwort/9783954902439\_ancient\_engraved\_gems\_in\_the\_national\_museum\_in\_krakow-detail This book is a catalogue raisonée of a rich collection of ancient engraved gems housed in the National Museum in Krakow. It offers a thorough insight into ancient glyptic art through the considerable range of almost 780 so far unpublished objects – cameos, intaglios, scarabs and finger rings of various styles, workmanship and cultural circles: Egyptian, Near Eastern, Minoan, Greek, Etruscan, Italic, Roman, Sassanian and early Christian, dated from the second millennium BC to the seventh century AD. Many pieces in this cabinet are notable not only for their top quality in terms of craftsmanship and design, but also for the materials used and engravings involving complex iconography illustrating religious beliefs, political allegiances, needs and desires that ancient people wished to be fulfill, fears, dangers and terrors from which they sought protection and even their daily occupations. The collection provides with a fascinating gallery of portrait studies presenting Hellenistic rulers and their queens, Roman emperors and members of their families as well as some private individuals. Some specimens are exceptional and unparalleled like the onyx cameo portraying Drusus Maior, likely executed by the hand of Eutyches, son of famous Dioscurides (cover) or a tiny but remarkably cut emerald cameo with a laureate portrait bust of Livia Drusilla as goddess Venus. Some objects have been preserved in their original settings (gold, silver, bronze, iron rings), which contributes to the study of ancient gems’ chronology and indicate their users, while others have been later re-set into eighteenth- and nineteenth-century collectors’ rings and sometimes more elaborated mounts. There are also pieces discoloured due to contact with considerable heat, which may suggest them to have been burnt with other personal objects on the funeral pyres and later deposited in burials. Noteworthy is the number of Greek and Latin inscriptions appearing on intaglios and cameos forming this cabinet. They span from owners’ names to the subtle messages communicated between lovers and invocations to the God. Each gem is thoroughly analysed, described and exhaustively commented as to the device it bears, chronology and possible workshop attribution. A vast number of parallel objects is referenced too. This combined with provenance study presented in the first part of the book enabled to establish where a number of intaglios and cameos were manufactured, including almost 140 objects most likely to origin from the most important Roman workshop located in Aquileia. It ought to be singled out that many gems in this volume once constituted a part of distinguished collections formed by such personalities as Tobias von Biehler, Alessandro Gregorio Capponi, Auguste le Carpentier, Alessandro Castellani, Comte de Caylus, Count Nikolai Nikitich Demidoff, Baron Albert de Hirsch, Jean François Leturcq, Sibylle Mertens-Schaaffhausen, Dr. George Frederick Nott, Benedetto Pistrucci, James-Alexandre de Pourtalès (Comte de Pourtalès-Gorgier), Paul von Praun, Andrey Kirillovich Razumovsky, Jacques Meffre Rouzan, Philipp von Stosch, Antonio Maria Zanetti and many more. They seemed lost for more than 130 years, but now have been brought back and are accessible to everyone. Consequently, the volume presents three intriguing stories of collectors whose donations contributed to the Krakow assemblage. They not only provide the reader with a sort of background for the objects discussed further, but also illustrate nineteenth- and early twentieth-century collecting practices and the art market for engraved gemstones, contributing to our knowledge of the history of scholarship and collecting. In summary, this book is intended to be useful not only for scholars interested in gems, but also those who study the history of the art market and collecting as well as all the enthusiasts of Classical art and archaeology.
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