Featured CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

I visited the Walters museum once, about 15 years ago. Very impressive place!

 

Maybe. Or maybe it is a chance to display some of their other cameos- a sort of rotation. I have seen these two cameos in the Chamber of Wonders before, but they were not on display this time. The first one is depicting the Battle of the Israelites and the Amalekites and the second is Noah's Ark. Both are small- first is about 2 x 2.25 inches, and the Ark is roughly 2.5 x 4 inches. It is amazing how much detail there is.

 

It is a beautiful museum. I never am able to see all the exhibits in one day. There is so much. The museum recently completed a major renovation of the townhouse part of the museum and did a terrific job. It was once the home of the Walters family.

 

I received an email from the auction house. They were thankful for the info, and spoke with the owner. They decided to withdraw the seal from the auction, revise the description and put it in a future auction.

 

Good on them. Auction houses are not always so keen to know anything that might bring down the value of an item. Considering you wrote a whole dissertation on the topic, hope they & the seller appreciate it.

I did once get an auctioneer to reconsider a consigned cameo after pointing them to evidence that a supposedly 19th century piece was really commissioned in the later 20th. They initially protested that the consignor, 'an East coast collector', was highly respected, but had the sense & integrity to recognize what the evidence was telling them.

 

@Bronwen
I humbly beg your advice and expertise!
I just purchased these items from a local antique mall.

I'm pretty sure these are Grand Tour intaglio impressions from the 19th century.
I've been researching them all night, and I'm still not getting great information about their production. Were they all made in Italy from Italian carved intaglios?

What do you think about age? Would 1840s be accurate?
I think the one image is the Abduction of Ganymedes, but I don't know about the other...is it Juno?
l appreciate any information you might have on these items!

 

Probably the most famous maker of these was James Tassie, a Scot who set up business in London in the second half of the 18th century. His nephew William took it over after his uncle's death & kept it going a while longer into the 19th. He managed to get access to a great many gem collections & was allowed to take impressions, from which molds were made for mass producing impressions in a variety of materials, with prices set accordingly.

After Catherine the Great ordered a complete set in colored glass, and a cabinet custom built to house them, his business really took off, collecting them became a huge fad, so of course others wanted in on the market. A couple of other major names are Paoletti & Liberotti. Nathaniel Marchant both engraved gems & made impressions in England; Francesco Carnesecchi cut cameos & made impressions in Rome. It was not uncommon for gem engravers to do some dealing as well as making their own work. The only part of your origin question I can answer definitively is about whether all of these impressions were made in Italy: no; just as likely to be English.

There are some clues about yours in the colors of the paper collars & the bits of paper still adhering to the backs. If you followed the link above for Liberotti, you will see that the black collar & green paper backing quite likely indicate the Ganymede was taken from one of their products. You can even see him on the first 'page' of the set in the Met's library:





You can also see your Ganymede here. Think 'unpublished' Tassies are ones that didn't make it into Raspe's catalogue.

http://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/record/FD5AF00A-0F27-468F-A5B1-0D85374E7805

Based on the gold collar, blue background paper & yellowish tinge to the plaster, your second impression could be from a Paoletti set, although Carnesecchi's were also wrapped in gold, mounted on blue & yellowish. Probably a popular combination. Tassie's impressions have gold collars; however I am not aware of his ever having sold them in this type of boxed set.



I'm afraid I do not know who this lady is. I'm disinclined to think Juno, more like a priestess. I can't make out what she is holding in either hand nor what type of tree it is. The clues are there, I just can't read them. @PepperAnna !!

 

OMG, @Bronwen! You are such a wealth of knowledge! Thank you so much for all this great info. I would love to hear what @PepperAnna thinks as well.
I did read up on James Tassie, but I couldn't identify if my pieces came from his production, or not.
Now I see that they are both Italian!
The photo from the Met has the very same green color backing that seems to indicate that my Ganymede came from a similar set from Liberotti!

I found the priestess here:


https://www.artlistings.com/Fine-Ar...-plaster-intaglio-casts-mounted-in-nine-trays


The blue coloration on the back of my priestess looks just like the backing under these pieces shown above.
The info about this set doesn't include the maker, so that is still in question.

Thank you so much for taking the time to look at my intaglio impressions!
I'm excited about them, and I will mount them in a shadow box so I can admire them on the wall.

 

Despite the lousy photos, think this is going to do better than estimated.

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/...aign=auction-alert&utm_content=lot-image-link

 

I would certainly hope so!

 

I took a look at the auction, and I think the auction house was a tad low on its estimate.

 

I'd be interested if I didn't already have one.



I might also be interested if it were signed, but does not appear to be. Nonetheless, should do better that stated estimate. The mount looks like good quality too.

 

@stracci --I am working on this, checking through the Beazley Gems database. This impression is part of the Lippert collection (#449). Philipp Daniel Lippert published the first edition of his Dactyliotheca Universalis signorum exemplis nitidis redditae in Leipzig in 1755-1762. It comprised three 'volumes' in book form, each containing twenty drawers of one thousand gem casts per volume, chosen from the prominent collections of the day in Europe. It was accompanied by a summary catalogue. The description is in Latin " Sacra, vt edunt, Marti." I tried to use Google translate, but it didn't work.

It is also the Tommaso Cades collection, for which I unfortunately cannot find a corresponding scanned catalog. This collection was made specifically for the German Institute in Rome. According to the information, this particular impression was from an ancient gem.

It is not represented in the Amastini, William Tassie, or Paoletti collections. I am still working my way through the James Tassie collection. I will report back if I find more information on the plaster impression.

 

Oh wow, @PepperAnna !
Thank you so much for all your information! It was so good of you to research this!
I hope we can eventually know who the mystery lady is.
I just visited that website, and I found it to be quite intimidating! Honestly, I'm having trouble figuring out how to use it. But I will keep looking!

 

It was unwieldy before, think just because it was old & to some extent cobbled together. They've given the main pages a new look, but it's still laborious to get around. It took me a fair bit of time to get any good at using it, & I still don't have Pepper's patience in looking through pictures to find things when using words fails.

 

Yes, I first tried key words like ball, orb, tree, etc. with no luck. Now I am looking image by image and then trying to cross reference the item number to the catalog manuscript. I was bummed that I couldn't find a viewable catalog for the Cades collection anywhere.

 

You are very welcome. I am hoping I can find you a better answer than just the Latin info. Just need a bit more time. I also found the site difficult to use and still have some problems when checking the manuscripts. But it is the most complete site I have found.

 

I was trying priestess, offering, sacrifice. Think I'll go try 'altar.'

Nope. Lots of results & my eyes started to cross looking at them, but couldn't spot her.

 

IM Translator gave me this: Sacra, as they eat, Marti. Think Marti is Mars.



So maybe A food offering to Mars?

 

I think you are right, @Bronwen and @PepperAnna
I took a close-up and you can see flames coming from the cylindrical thing, I guess a kind of brazier? I still don't know what the orb in her hand is. A loaf of bread?


Here is an image I found that shows a sacrifice.
A similar round shaped item is going into the fire.