Gonzaga Cameo | |
---|---|
Height | 15.7 cm |
Width | 11.8 cm |
Created | possibly 3rd century BC |
Present location | Saint Petersburg, Russia |
The Gonzaga Cameo is a Hellenistic engraved gem; a cameo of the capita jugata variety cut out from the three layers of an Indian sardonyx, dating from perhaps the 3rd century BC. [1] It was a centrepiece of the Gonzaga collection of antiquities, first described in a 1542 inventory of Isabella d'Este's collection as representing Augustus and Livia. [2] The figures were later identified as Alexander the Great and Olympias, Germanicus and Agrippina the Elder, Nero and Agrippina the Younger, and many other famous couples of antiquity. [1] The male figure on the cameo is clad in the attributes of Alexander, including a laurel-wreathed helmet, and wears a gorgoneion . His other aegis represents a bearded head, probably that of Zeus Ammon. [3] The man's laurel wreath is crowned by a snake which suggests the uraeus. The contrasting male and female profiles were in all probability intended to suggest Zeus and Hera. [4] The brown necklace is a later addition masking that the cameo was, at some point, broken in half.
Young Peter Paul Rubens, then in the employ of the Mantuan Duke, admired the Gonzaga cameo as the finest in existence. [2] During the War of the Mantuan Succession, it was carried off by the imperial troops to Vienna and was preserved in the Prague Castle treasury through the Thirty Years' War. [5] At the end of the conflict, the Swedes marched into Prague and looted the imperial treasury.
Several years later the cameo resurfaced in the collection of Queen Christina of Sweden. There is little record of its subsequent history. It is assumed that the Queen took it with her to Italy, bequeathing it to her favourite, Cardinal Decio Azzolini. It was subsequently acquired, with the rest of Christina's art collection, by Livio Odescalchi, Duke of Bracciano and nephew of Innocent XI. [6]
In 1794, the cameo was part of Pius VI's collection in Vatican. The invading French took it with them to Paris where it entered the collection of Napoleon and Empress Joséphine. After Napoleon's downfall, Alexander I of Russia paid a visit to the Château de Malmaison and offered Joséphine every assistance in his power. As a sign of gratitude she presented the cameo to the Tsar. [7]
Since then, the so-called Malmaison cameo has been kept in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. In Vienna, there is a rival Hellenistic cameo, of lesser quality, [8] [9] which the Habsburgs also described as the "Gonzaga cameo", probably on assumption that it had not been stolen by the Swedes in 1648. This results in considerable confusion between the two.
Set against the dark layer, their majestic white profiles, hers soft and feminine, his decisive and virile, are the embodiment of the authority that will bring prosperity to their subjects.
Diana Scarisbrick [7]
The cameo shows the profiles of a man and a woman which conceivably possess family likeness. This capita jugata type of portrait, showing two superimposed profiles, is known from the coins issued by Ptolemy II Philadelphus in Hellenistic Egypt. Such portraits show Ptolemy with his sister and wife, Arsinoe II. Ptolemy was the first Hellenistic ruler to marry his sister; and it was at his court that the image of the twin deities, theoi adelphoi, gained currency. To shore up the identification, it has been argued that the woman's head on the cameo is covered with a sort of bridal veil.
J. J. Pollitt of Yale University believes that it is the Vienna cameo that represents Ptolemy and Arsinoe. [3] As for the Saint Petersburg cameo, Pollitt argues that the sharply defined quality of the "neoclassical" workmanship indicates a later date than is commonly recognized. [3] He identifies the figures as Tiberius and Livia represented "in very generalized form so that they would simultaneously evoke the imagery of a Ptolemaic cameo and, through it, the imagery of Alexander". [3]
The Ptolemaic dynasty, also known as the Lagid dynasty, was a Macedonian Greek royal house which ruled the Ptolemaic Kingdom in Ancient Egypt during the Hellenistic period. Reigning for 275 years, the Ptolemaic was the longest and last dynasty of ancient Egypt from 305 until its incorporation into the Roman Republic in 30 BC.
Arsinoë II was a Ptolemaic queen and co-regent of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of ancient Egypt. She was given the Egyptian title "King of Upper and Lower Egypt", making her pharaoh as well.
Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator was Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt from 51 to 30 BC, and its last active ruler. A member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, she was a descendant of its founder Ptolemy I Soter, a Macedonian Greek general and companion of Alexander the Great. After the death of Cleopatra, Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire, marking the end of the last Hellenistic-period state in the Mediterranean and of the age that had lasted since the reign of Alexander. Her first language was Koine Greek, and she was the only known Ptolemaic ruler to learn the Egyptian language.
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Ptolemy I Soter was a Macedonian Greek general, historian and successor of Alexander the Great who went on to found the Ptolemaic Kingdom centered on Egypt and led by the Ptolemaic dynasty from 305 BC – 30 BC. Ptolemy was basileus and pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt from 305/304 BC to his death, during which time Egypt became a thriving bastion of Hellenistic civilization and Alexandria a great seat of Greek culture.
Ptolemy II Philadelphus was the pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt from 284 to 246 BC. He was the son of Ptolemy I, the Macedonian Greek general of Alexander the Great who founded the Ptolemaic Kingdom after the death of Alexander, and Queen Berenice I, originally from Macedon in northern Greece.
Ptolemy IV Philopator was the fourth pharaoh of Ptolemaic Egypt from 221 to 204 BC.
Berenice II Euergetis was queen regnant of Cyrenaica from 258 to 246 BCE and co-regent queen of Ptolemaic Egypt from 246 to 222 BCE as the wife of Ptolemy III.
The State Hermitage Museum is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It was founded in 1764 when Empress Catherine the Great acquired a collection of paintings from the Berlin merchant Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky. The museum celebrates the anniversary of its founding each year on 7 December, Saint Catherine's Day. It has been open to the public since 1852. The Art Newspaper ranked the museum 10th in their list of the most visited art museums, with 2,812,913 visitors in 2022.
Cameo is a method of carving an object such as an engraved gem, item of jewellery or vessel. It nearly always features a raised (positive) relief image; contrast with intaglio, which has a negative image. Originally, and still in discussing historical work, cameo only referred to works where the relief image was of a contrasting colour to the background; this was achieved by carefully carving a piece of material with a flat plane where two contrasting colours met, removing all the first colour except for the image to leave a contrasting background.
Arsinoë IV was the fourth of six children and the youngest daughter of Ptolemy XII Auletes. Queen and co-ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt with her brother Ptolemy XIII from 48 BC – 47 BC, she was one of the last members of the Ptolemaic dynasty of ancient Egypt. Arsinoë IV was also the half sister of Cleopatra VII. For her role in conducting the siege of Alexandria against her sister Cleopatra, Arsinoë was taken as a prisoner of war to Rome by the Roman triumvir Julius Caesar following the defeat of Ptolemy XIII in the Battle of the Nile. Arsinoë was then exiled to the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus in Roman Anatolia, but she was executed there by orders of triumvir Mark Antony in 41 BC at the behest of his lover Cleopatra VII.
Hellenistic art is the art of the Hellenistic period generally taken to begin with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and end with the conquest of the Greek world by the Romans, a process well underway by 146 BC, when the Greek mainland was taken, and essentially ending in 30 BC with the conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt following the Battle of Actium. A number of the best-known works of Greek sculpture belong to this period, including Laocoön and His Sons, Venus de Milo, and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. It follows the period of Classical Greek art, while the succeeding Greco-Roman art was very largely a continuation of Hellenistic trends.
The Ptolemaic Kingdom or Ptolemaic Empire was an Ancient Greek state based in Egypt during the Hellenistic period. It was founded in 305 BC by the Macedonian general Ptolemy I Soter, a companion of Alexander the Great, and ruled by the Ptolemaic dynasty until the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC. Reigning for nearly three centuries, the Ptolemies were the longest and final dynasty of ancient Egypt heralding a distinctly new era for religious syncretism and the blending of a new Greco-Egyptian culture.
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An engraved gem, frequently referred to as an intaglio, is a small and usually semi-precious gemstone that has been carved, in the Western tradition normally with images or inscriptions only on one face. The engraving of gemstones was a major luxury art form in the Ancient world, and an important one in some later periods.
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Self-portrait in a circle of friends in Mantua, also referred to as Self-Portrait in the Circle of Mantuan Friends or, for short, as Mantuan Friendship Picture is an oil painting on canvas by the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens, produced between 1602 and 1606 when the artist worked in Mantua as a court painter of the Gonzagas. It is in the collection of the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne. It is the oldest known self-portrait by Rubens. It falls in a particular genre of portraits which was popular in the 16th and 17th century, the so-called friendship portrait which depicts an informal gathering of friends or companions. It is more specifically a portrait of a circle of Stoic friends or companions.
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