![]() ![]() Shell, an alternative material, is easier to carve, with only two strata to explore it has not enjoyed the same prestige as hardstone.Ĭameos have long been used to complement jewelry. In the best hands, these hardstones seem almost to combine the effects of painting and sculpture and have always been coveted both as fanciful curiosities and as miraculous unions of art and nature. Softer stones such as chalcedony and harder ones such as jasper can all be carved in relief, but inevitably evoke less fascination than cameos carved from polychromatic hardstones. Gradually, depending on the complexity of the stone itself, more bands of color were engaged in the design, sometimes even prompting the inclusion of hints of landscape.Ĭameo makers have historically used a wide range of stones. This was often achieved by playing a pale layer against a dark ground, achieving a strong contrast. Cameos were, and still are, especially prized when the artist manipulated the strata of the stone in relation to the design, exploring the stone’s depths to enhance its visual impact. are miniature sculptures, not engravings.” The three-dimensionality of cameos, which are usually quite tiny, is attained through intensely concentrated work at close range. to decorate a surface with furrows,” Victorian critic John Ruskin states, and “cameos. The art was sporadically revived, but without ever recapturing the authority or the mystique of Neoclassical creations. A diminution of artists’ creative impulse and technical prowess, as well as counterfeiting and repetition of ancient designs, contributed to the decline in interest. From the Second Empire to the end of the nineteenth century, cameos increasingly rich in painterly atmospheric effect competed with works of greater size for attention at the Salon in Paris.īut this rebirth was followed by a crash. The nineteenth-century French school briefly rivaled the Neoclassical creative center of Rome in the quality of its output, greatly motivated by official encouragement. The heart of the Museum’s collection consists of Neoclassical pieces that bear witness to the heroic, concentrated revival of ancient art that took place in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. ![]() Neoclassicism, whose elegant simplifications were perfectly expressed in cameos, reigned supreme during this period. The glyptic arts have known various ups and downs, reaching a veritable apex during the mid-nineteenth century. In the nineteenth century, new methods, including the intervention of photography, allowed greater verisimilitude and accuracy of line. When magnifying glasses were introduced into the art is unclear today they would be virtually indispensable. At all times the stones must have been gripped fixedly to prevent their shattering. The actual cutting was accomplished not with the point of the drill itself but by using the drill to rub powders into the stone. The pieces were worked by manipulating various drills (in antiquity made of relatively soft metal, eventually replaced by iron) against them. And because they mine much the same repertory of images as scenes in other media, it is sometimes possible to reconstruct the compositions of cameos based on fragments.Īncient methods of hardstone engraving were based on principles still in play today. ![]() They manifest such consistency and conviction in the shaping of their stately rhythms that all later classical revivals would try, with varying success, to emulate their authoritative designs. Whereas the relief in intaglios is cut into the stone by the drill, in the cameo process the drill cuts away the stone to raise the composition in relief.Īncient cameos are often hard to date accurately owing to the reuse of many compositions, particularly Hellenistic ones. About the fifth century B.C., the Greeks introduced stones engraved in projected relief-the antecedents of cameos. Inscriptions and signatures on intaglios are, therefore, carved in mirror image. The motifs on intaglios are not always immediately discernible because their forms recede from the eye, but when impressions are taken from them, they become sharper and more legible. Until roughly the fifth century B.C., gems were carved only in sunken relief, or intaglios (from the Italian verb intagliare, to carve into or to engrave). The practice seems to have been rooted in the ancient Mesopotamian stones that were carved for use as identifying seals. The Hellenistic Greeks were the first to excel at carving small hardstones with figures in relief, often in the images of deities or other talismanic signifiers. ![]()
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