ENGRAVED GEMS
In Beau Brummel’s time not to know all about gem-engraving, the intaglio
and the cameo, was thought to be devoid of one of the most important
cultural attributes of every eighteenth-century gentleman. Those were
the picturesque days of post-riders and sealing-wax, days that scarcely
anticipated the letter-writing necessities of our own time, when we can
scarcely stop to put on the stamp and one lick of the flap has taken the
place of the perfumed elegance of yesterday’s wafer, leisurely impressed
with some exquisite seal.
It was only natural then that the seal should be a factor in the
diversions of polite society while possessing a utility not yet
exterminated by demands on man’s time. Not only did every gentleman have
a seal ring, but often he had several, and sometimes many for different
occasions. Frequently these seals or _sigilii_, as the Latins called
them, were engraved with devices directly upon metal. However, the far
more popular method was that which is one of our chief heritages from
antiquity--engraving on gems or on semi-precious stones by means of the
intaglio process. _Intaglio_, derived from the Italian _intagliere_ (to
cut into), means _incised_ engraving, as opposed to the _cameo_ process,
or engraving _in relief_. Cameo-engraving is a later art, as generally
practised, and cannot compare with that of intaglio-engraving, with
which it has nothing in common but its subject and the material on which
it is cut. An intaglio is the product of a reverse and much more
difficult process than that by which the cameo is evolved. An impression
from a well-cut intaglio leaves a very fine design in relief, and it is
marvelous to behold the results obtained by the infinite pains of
gem-engravers. In our own day the masters of the art can be counted on
the fingers of one hand, so greatly has the demand for work of the sort
diminished. Indeed, there is almost no call for it in America. Probably
this is due to the fact that so few people really either understand the
importance of the subject, the history of glyptic art, or realize the
beauty of the fine works of the sort.
It should be borne in mind that although engraved gems, unlike Greek
painted vases, are chiefly valuable as handmaids to history in
preserving to us contemporary portraits of their times, they still make
known to us, as Collingnon says, a whole phase of Greek thought that was
developed in the Macedonian epoch.
The Greeks never greatly favored the Egyptian scarab beetle-form for
engraved gems and later introduced the oval, which is known as the
scaraboid form, especially popular from 600 B.C. to 500 B.C., in the
Archaic Period. With primitive engraved gems and scarabs (2500 B.C. to
900 B.C.) as well as with later ones, the archæologist has to move
cautiously, since imitations were manufactured at a very early time. The
researches in Crete by Arthur Evans brought to light great numbers of
engraved seals and stones that are unquestionably of remote antiquity,
and, by the form of their engraved characters, indicate the existence of
a system of writing of a far earlier date than had been assigned to
calligraphy on Greek soil. The most interesting examples of this class
were found in the Palace of Minos at Cnossos, and were used for sealing
documents in the Cretan script, while others were used in sealing
storage vessels. That there is nothing new under the sun seems again to
have been demonstrated in the discovery at Mycenæ of a massive engraved
signet portraying three ladies in modern-looking divided skirts, a
subject quite as up-to-date as the beflounced corseted, frilled, and
bonneted ladies that the Cretan frescos disclosed a few years ago, to
the bewilderment of the Parisian dressmakers.
However, the intaglii which typically mark the early Mycenæan period are
the Island Stones (900 B.C. to 600 B.C.), a name given to a lenticular
stone of steatite, rock crystal, carnelian, or chalcedony, such stones
being chiefly found in the Greek islands and in the Mediterranean
region, where Mycenæan remains are to be found. The decorative devices
employed were nearly always animals, such as the lion, deer, bull, goat,
singly or quasi-heraldically arranged in pairs, facing in or facing out.
Their artistic merit was often of a high order, though this excellence
was somewhat over-balanced by the figures being arranged to occupy the
entire area of a gem’s surface. As Dr. Walters of the British Museum
observed, “this _horror vacui_, or dread of leaving a vacant space, was
characteristic of Greek artists at all periods.”
The Transitional Period proper, from 500 B.C. to 450 B.C., produced very
fine gems with genre subjects. These were probably influenced somewhat
by the freedom acquired by the Greek vase-painters, whose art reached
its perfection in that era. From thence onward no subject seems to have
daunted the gem-engraver who reproduced the most intricate details and
reduced to miniature marvelously well the beauties of those groups of
colossal statuary that particularly inspired him, subjects from
paintings or his own devices, or figures, heads and portraits of his
contemporaries, men, women and children--portraits which must have been
possessed of the virtue of likenesses to an extraordinary degree, else
they would not for centuries have continued in such favor. As Renton
says, “we are forcefully reminded of the extreme durability of engraved
gems when we reflect that some at the present time contained in our
museums and collections have been buried in tombs or in the earth;
others have been thrown upon the shore, washed by the sea or exposed to
fire, pillage, and other dangers, but still appearing with the engraving
in some instances as clear, sharp, and defined as it was the day they
left the artist’s hands.” It is this careful and peculiar finish to the
work that distinguishes the truly antique gems from the spurious.
We have little reliable data concerning the artists in glyptic art from
the primitive period represented by the Samian Theodorus, who made the
famous ring for Polycrates, to the period of the art’s perfection, 450
B.C. to around 400 B.C. To the latter period belongs, by right of his
excellence, Pyrgoteles, who engraved the seals of Alexander.
The least doubtful names, perhaps, are those of Agathopous, Apollonides,
Aspasios, Athēniōn, Boēthos, Dexamenos, Dioskouridēs, Epitynchanos,
Hērakleides, Hērophilos, Hyllos, Mykon, Nikandrus, Onēsus, Pamphilos,
Prōtarchos, Solōn, and Teukrus, tedious to catalogue perhaps, still a
small number out of proportion to the vast quantity of intaglii that
have been recovered from the past. We are sure of Dioskourides under
Augustus, but even in antiquity names were forged upon gems at a later
date or by an alien hand, such forgeries being especially common from
the time of the Renaissance on. Indeed, it became quite as much the
fashion to mutilate antique gems by adding bogus signatures as it did
later to imitate the glyptic art of the ancients and attempt to pawn off
forgeries and fabrications on the enthusiastic but indiscriminating. Of
this the reader will find further mention in the chapter on Fraudulent
Art, which follows. In ancient times intaglii were also imitated in
glass and much affected by the poorer classes, so early had the idea of
cheap imitation jewelry taken root.
However, such work was obviously false, while there have been some very
clever imitations engraved on very fine gems. The famous Poniatowski
Collection was the greatest of the gigantic frauds of the sort
perpetrated. In the happier days of the First Empire the patronage of
the Empress Josephine had brought appreciation of the glyptic art to a
pinnacle, whence it fell from mere discouragement by the exposition of
the Poniatowski Collection fraud in a London market. These gems might
best be described as regular pictures in stone and portraits of all the
celebrated men of antiquity, each blandly “authenticated” with his
proper name and the artist’s signature! No wonder collectors and
amateurs turned, frightened, to scan their own collections. If such
traffic was fostered by dealers of their time, what recourse had they
outside careful and arduous scholarship? Still, minute rudimentary
knowledge of gem-engraving and its chronological phases should at once
have set them at ease. The amateur of to-day knows that a signed gem is
an exception to the rule and rests secure in the knowledge.
Although the various periods of Greek glyptic art have been indicated,
it may be helpful to repeat them here in tabulated form, following
mainly Walter’s scheme of classification.
I Prehistoric Period--2500 to 900 B.C. Primitive seal stones,
imported cylinders.
II Early Period--900 to 600 B.C. Island gems. Mycenæan era.
III Archaic Period--600 to 500 B.C. Scaraboids supersede scarabs.
IV Transitional Period--500 to 450 B.C. Finely engraved gems and
prevalence of genre subjects.
V Culminating Period--450 to 400 B.C. Perfection in engraved gems.
Greek gems of the latest period are rare in comparison with those of
periods preceding and following.
That Greek influence reached Etruria has been shown by full evidence in
many ways, and we have large numbers of engraved gems from Etruscan
tombs of the fifth and fourth centuries, these intaglii having for their
subjects most commonly incidents from legends of the Greek heroes. It is
well to note that deities are rarely portrayed on Etruscan gems, whose
form was usually that of the scarab. The fourth century finds their
workmanship greatly deteriorating.
The Romans were very fond of engraved gems and practised the glyptic art
from early times. When Constantine the Great removed the seat of the
Roman Empire to Constantinople in 329 A.D. this art, like the other
arts, followed him thither, of course; but for over a thousand years
succeeding the intaglii produced seldom attained great excellence and
the taste for engraved gems followed other esthetic tendencies into the
obscure retirement of the dark ages. In fact, the glyptic art almost
became extinct, but with the expulsion of the Greeks from Constantinople
by Mahomet in 1453 A.D. it found itself again on Italian soil,
thereafter to grow strong and flourish from the root it had taken.
Just as the ecclesiastics converted Greek painted vases to altar use and
sculptured sarcophagi into containers of holy water, they now turned
their attention to engraved gems and rescued these baubles from the
reproach of being mere vanities by clothing their subjects with
Christian legends. Probably to this fact we owe the preservation of some
of our finest examples. It was a difficult task to rechristen the gems
and endow them with a sacred character quite out of keeping with their
conception. However, the early church was ingenious and gave to Jupiter
with his eagle the significance of St. John the Evangelist, while
Melpomene did very well for Salome with John the Baptist’s head.
However, gem-engravers arose to help truth out with veritable subjects,
and the church became a powerful patron of the art of gem-engraving.
Prelates and princes hastened to have their fancies carried out in
intaglii, until the cinquecento produced a host of clever engravers
capable of catering to any taste or to any fad or fancy. About this time
the forms of intaglii were greatly enlarged.
Lorenzo de’ Medici and his successors were munificent patrons of the
gem-engraver, and not only formed splendid collections of intaglii but
encouraged engravers in Florence, and by the middle of the fifteenth
century a graceful classic style had been revived. Giovanni, surnamed
Della Corniole, was one of the most excellent artists of the time, and
in his everlastingly entertaining “Memoirs” Benvenuto Cellini speaks of
Micheletto, who was “very clever at engraving carnelians, an old man and
of great celebrity.” This was the engraver whom Vasari calls by the
affectionate diminutive “Michelino,” but Cellini himself later calls him
“Michele.”
The gem-engravers of the sixteenth century were prolific, and their work
appealed immensely to the French taste. Francis I was a liberal patron
of the glyptic art and had at his court the renowned gem-engraver,
Matteo del Nassaro of Verona. Probably the first French gem-engraver of
note was Julien de Fontenay, sometimes known as Coldore, who executed
an intaglio portrait of Henry IV, and was later invited to England by
Queen Elizabeth. Subsequently a taste for the art developed in England,
although the culmination of encouragement was not reached until the
middle of the eighteenth century, when collecting engraved gems became a
mania with many and good examples brought huge prices. Up to the
beginning of the nineteenth century the influence of classic designs
obtained. King George III was a liberal patron of gem-engravers, and to
the foresight of the Duke of Devonshire and Marlborough the world owes
the preservation of some of the finest examples extant of intaglii of
any time.
The works of such classicists as Marchant, who studied in Rome many
years, and of his successor, Burch, a Royal Academician, extending over
a period of years from 1750 to 1815 or thereabouts, are well worth
while, and would reveal an excellence of execution unsurpassed. Then
followed such men as Weigall, Bragg, Grew, and in our own day the
Rentons, who engraved intaglii for members of the royal family.
Since the heraldic style has followed the classic, interest in the art
of intaglio-engraving has waned tremendously and can be brought back
only by the revival of that classic spirit which, after all, underlies
everything that is best the world over, in art or in literature.
The substances employed by the gem-engravers are amethyst, hyacinth,
agate, carnelian, chalcedony, crystal, and other precious gems. In our
own day almost every stone is employed. The lapidary must not be
confused with the gem-engraver. The first prepares the stone to receive
the work of the second, just as the wood-sawyer prepares the material
for the carpenter, or the man at the quarry the block for the sculptor.
Pliny described at some length the process of gem-engraving in his day.
As to the ancient mode of engraving gems, in which the drill wheel and
diamond point were used, the use of the wheel is especially noticeable
in the lenticular Island gems; it was a small bronze disk set on a shaft
of metal worked like the drill with a bow and tube of emery powder; its
purpose was for cutting lines to connect the points made by the drill,
or else for broad, sunken surfaces. The diamond point, on the other
hand, was used like a pencil, with the hand alone; it resembles the
modern glass-cutting diamond and was employed for giving an artistic
finish to the design, which could of course be best done with the free
hand. The use of this tool required great technical skill, the results
of which may clearly be seen on some gems of the best period.
In passing it is interesting to note the devices to which makers of
fraudulent “antique” intaglii have been known to resort. As an instance,
that misty dullness of the stone which only age is supposed to give is
produced in Italy by forcing the smaller engraved gems down the
unwilling gullets of defenceless turkeys, whereupon the action of the
gastric juice and the gritty substances in the gizzard outdo the devices
of Time himself, as the funeral of the unhappy bird reveals to the
dissecting and dishonest fabricator.