Featured Help me understand what this is and who is depicted.

I shot off a note without really looking closely, so retracted my hasty impression. Have revised it now.

Still working on OP's question, but not getting any farther with it. The standing figure appears to be gesturing?



Pouring something into the outstretched hand of the seated figure?

 

That was what I thought, when I saw the lion hoodie, but the image was on a site telling indeed the patron story.

 

The seated figure seems to be holding a (shallow) bowl

 

The thing I never quite get used to is that crudely engraved gems like this one are later than the highly accomplished ones of the Hellenistic and early Roman periods; maybe 4th century C.E., not 1st century B.C.E. to 1st century C.E. The art really fell off.

 

A patera, perhaps. Good observation. It would normally be Hebe or Ganymede serving Zeus, but it really does look like Hermes to me. Probably should say Jupiter & Mercury, since the gem is likely to be Roman.

 

Same image here https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Athena_Herakles_Staatliche_Antikensammlungen_2648.jpg where they say that it's indeed Hercules.
You can also see the club next to him.

This is the site that added the Hercules image to the Cecrops story https://www.greeka.com/attica/athens/myths/athens-name-giving/

 

Interesting about Poseidon's salty spring water. In the version I know he gave them the horse.

 

Figure on the right looks masculine, seated figure is holding a staff, and the bird does look like an eagle, so it does indeed look like Zeus and Ganymede

but the standing figure also seems to be holding something in the left hand (looks like a downward pointing sword to me) And is that thing with the cross in the background? Or is it part of what the figure is holding?

 

I think what looks like a cross is a stylization of the intertwined ribbons of the herald's staff/caduceus & the downward pointing thing is his cloak draping off his arm.

 

Friends, this is very interesting!!!
But could this really be a Roman stone?? From that period?
There are so many interesting details in my stone!! I didn't even know that

 

It really could be that old. Lots were made; they have always been valued; they are durable. So they survive down the centuries.

As to age, even museums get fooled into thinking - in large part by wishful thinking - that modern (Renaissance & later) copies are genuinely antique. However, the crudeness of yours is actually encouraging for its authenticity. Forgers prefer to make pieces that can be mistaken for some long hidden masterpiece. Better still, one with a signature. These frauds get revealed if microscopic examination shows the work was done using tools/techniques not available at the time of the alleged making, or if the provenance can be traced back to the true source. Modern or antique, the stones used are equally old, so no help there.

You may have to sign up for academia.edu in order to see this, although not at the premium level, so for free:

https://www.academia.edu/79487180/The_Getty_Gnaios?email_work_card=view-paper

It is an account of how the Getty came to recognize one such fraud in their own collection.

 

At the risk of hijacking this thread, just had to share this. In looking over Kenneth Lapatin's paper on the Getty Gnaios once more, was suddenly struck by one of the illustrations, another piece signed by Gnaios, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/248206



Something suddenly clicked for me. I have always assumed a cameo in my collection, signed by Luigi Michelini, was the portrait of a real woman, but have also always assumed she was from his own time. What do you think?

 

I don't think I've seen that hair style anywhere else, and though not exact it's close enough. Do we know where this piece was before the Met acquired it in 1910? Otherwise...Michelini saw an image elsewhere based on this stone, or they're both based off another common source?

 

The Lapatin paper details known provenance. I doubt Michelini would have had the opportunity to see the private collections, but Tassie got access to an immense amount of material over the years & his impressions, as well as those of others, were widely available.

Just checked. Tassie 3362.

Edit. It may also be the case that the impression Michelini saw was not sharp enough to pick up the very slender staff/scepter she has over her shoulder so he left it out. Something like that seems to have happened with the James Ronca cameo that the V&A had identified as Psyche. I have observed that impressions of Luigi Pichler's Iris rarely completely pick up the caduceus he placed in the field below her that serves to ID her. Ronca clearly worked from such a faulty impression so that, even if he knew it was 'the Rainbow', others did not.

 

I have reviewed many intaglios of the Roman period and I will say that there is some charm in the intaglios of this period due to the naive carving and rough lines.
Roman Abstractionism))

 

I had a thought along those lines too, that gem engraving developed - some would say devolved - something like the development of painting in the West, from highly realistic, to impressionism, to abstraction.

 

Have been trying to noodle out what is going on in this scene. The auction house description was that it is an axe man standing over a severed head, something that way. Huh? First off, I see a woman. Anyone else have a clue what is going on here?



A true classicist probably recognizes it - the heroine of a Greek tragedy recovering the head of her father or a brother? - but to me it looks like she has a camp stool & a flyswatter.

 

I will try or ask someone to take high-quality photos of the intaglio. Maybe I can make a print too.
It's good that we contacted you here, I'll save at least one intaglio. We had a lot of them, we got them from a relative. But they were all sold(((how sad!! There were different images and crayfish or crabs, bulls, I think, different girls and other different ones(

 

A crisp impression can in many cases really make the details legible.

Would have loved to see them. Alas.

 

Here are some photos that we found.
This is just part