Featured Cameo experts, What do I have here? Large Mythological Cameo

you're trying too hard to get someone here to say your find , is rare.....

concentrate instead on the info that you 'are' getting..........

it's a lovely old cameo...

 

Size & weight do not, of course, equate with quality, but I'd be pretty chuffed if this one came into my hands, for the quality of the carving and the desirable subject matter.

One thing that is unusual about this piece is that the bezel has to rise & fall with the contours of the section of shell. We see this all the time with helmet shell cameos, but the bezels of most conch pieces can stay level, just as with hardstone, due to the thickness. To my mind the weight is a bit of a negative, making it not so suited to be worn as jewellery. It would do well on a wall in a shadowbox. You would need quite a stately bosom to carry this one off.

This scene of The Dipping of Achilles is a similar size to your piece. You can tell by how much of my hand it covers:



I have wondered whether some 19th century engravers of hardstone discovered conch shell as a medium in which to exercise their skill & perhaps execute a preliminary version of a subject intended for stone.

What sort of reaction have you received from museums/auction houses you have contacted?

 

This is what the Beazley Archive calls an "unpublished Tassie":

https://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/record/2ABFEF42-23F0-46EC-86DD-2175EDFBCDAD



I've never been precisely sure what they mean by that term. The same search turned up a second one that is the Brown intaglio, which was picked up in Raspe's catalogue of James Tassie's wares, so certainly is published. This version, with Cyane trying to halt the proceedings, does not seem to have been picked up by cameo cutters. It is among the impressions ascribed to William Tassie, who took over the firm.

 

I could not find it among the Poniatowski gems catalogued by Oxford's Beazley Archive. Now I'm going to be nagged by where Liberotti found it. It is not in the Paoletti impressions either.

 

@spartcom5 Does this turn into anything legible when seen in person?



I don't think the museums/auction houses will be able to identify the cutter of the cameo, but they may recognize the maker of the mount.

 

Im still awaiting further replies from the auction houses. That mark is just a DR initials scratched rather crudely into the frame... could be a maker or just who owned it perhaps?

 

How was this determined? It is common, maybe more the rule than the exception, that bezel mounts for cameos are not composed of the same metal in all their parts.

 

It's also the vertical lines after the letters. Unusual for initials.

 

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/198338



https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/243611

 

There were two versions of this theme among the Poniatowski gems, both with the false signature Apollonides.