Featured CAMEOS: Show & Tell or Ask & Answer

I think it might have been... I hate to even utter the phrase... "fake news."

As they say, "photos or it never happened."

 

CRAZZZYYY!!! What a find, Jivvy

 

It wouldn't surprise me, but.... probably not. Said dudes would have just gotten a tattoo and been done with it.

 

Think they still have dudettes in some parts, such as them thar, but dudine is new to me.

Shhh! Don't encourage her.

 

Any ideas which saint this would be? There looks to be a pipe organ in the background.

 

Ste Cecile? (Patron of musicians)

 

Definitely!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Cecilia

 

Yay! At least I got one correct id
Bravo for finding the pic

 

Calling all speakers/readers of French (yes, I see you there, my lovely @kyratango )...

Can you be so kind as to tell me if the following paragraphs are describing pieces that are: 1) about the Biblical character Moses (I think this is what it is) or 2) done by an artist called Moise (which is what I'd prefer, but I don't think it is)?

If they're about Moses, I don't care and that's all I need to know. If they were done by an artist called Moise, can you tell me what it says?

Google translate is most confused.

 

Wikipedia is my faithful servant.

 

@kyratango et al, nevermind and thank you -- I found the book in English. Appears to be about Moses.

Rats.

 

You guys are doing just fine without me, carry on. I'm off to the turtle show.

OK not just yet. Right & Right. St. Cecilia, patron saint of music, & an especially beautiful one. The organ is her traditional instrument, but she is sometimes shown with others.



And the 1st cameo is of Moses, not by Moses/Moise, facing front, after the sculpture of Michelangelo (which was affected by a mistranslation in the Bible that led people to understand that Moses had horns, when it should have been something more like 'radiance').



The next one is described as Moses holding a staff entwined with a serpent, speaking with (the personification of) Peace, who holds an olive branch. It is signed with one of the variants used by Valerio Belli, as he is usually called now. ( @Jivvy the Pan you like in the auction catalogue is by Belli or someone who did similar work on rock crystal.) I will have to be on the lookout to see if I have anything like this in my cameo photo collection. May have, but probably not correctly labeled.

Sometimes Raspe, who compiled the catalogue of Tassie's impressions, which is where the snippet Jivvy is asking about comes from, couldn't resist editorializing about a piece, & he does that here, complaining about the practice of Renaissance gem engravers of mixing religious (sacred) images with secular ones, in a way that only confused others, rather than making the idea clear. Says Belli is particularly guilty of this, although he says the cameo is 'pretty enough'.

The catalogue is written in English & French, in side by side columns. Those old style lower case 'S's play havoc with OCR.

 

I am not even going back to see how I missed that.

 

Oxford, CARC, Beazley Archive. It's not the easiest thing to use, could stand to be rebuilt, but you'll have fun. I sometimes open 2 windows: one with the index; one with the images. It is easy to go back & forth between the images & explanatory text, but not between images/text & index.

 

Ha, too late
Of course, bust OF Moses, engraved BY Valerio Belli

 

Always good to have one's opinion seconded by an expert.

Jivvy & I (mostly Jivvy) have been researching the cameo cutters whose names we have identified, without further subjecting the rest of you to it. You might be amused by this anecdote about Reverchon. And suspect you'll understand it more completely than I do. Think it means that, in author's opinion, my 2 Reverchon's should be very valuable. He over estimated.

 

Thank you! I hadn't seen St. Cecilia pictured with an organ before, I didn't realize that it was her instrument of choice.

 

WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS?

 

Or this?

 

Well, at least it suggests cameos are making a comeback. Semiprecious stones look real; pearls, can't tell. Undoubtedly a heck of an expensive 'creation'.

Yours looks like it may be someone's home made wall mounted jewelllery rack? The cameo just there in its role as a brooch, to show what the fluff is for?