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Sard Agate

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SARDONYX.
201
In this well-known stono there is a cameo belonging to the Genevosio collection, of Turin, which represents the Mediccan Venus ; it is as large as the stones generally worn in rings, and the artist had the clever­ness to cut it on the reverse side ; thus, on the white crystalline ground of the agate, he has admirably raised the form of the goddess of Love, in sard, which from its colour has a veiy beautiful effect.
LXXXIX.
SARDONYX.
The ancients called this stone sarda-onyx. In this beautiful quartz are found, mixed in strata, the sub­stances of the sard properly so called, and of some, or many kinds of agate ; that is to say, of the chalcedony, jasper, carnelian, and such like ; from this arises an enormous variety of colours, which, being mostly arranged in zones or regular lines, allow the artist to make the finest and most valued carnei in sard­onyx.
One of these stones, even without being cut, may be worth as much as two thousand lire, a price to which neither the sard or sard-agate ever reaches ; it differs from this last by the multiplicity of strata, or, when it has but two, by the opacity of the upper one.
The most remarkable cameo now existing in sardonyx is in the Vienna cabinet ; it is attributed to Dioscoride.
Sard Page of 243 Sardonyx
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