would
essay his skill upon the new and refractory material, and the one in
which the result would be most serviceable to his patron. No camei of
that age are to be found that can be imagined to exhibit the
improvement mentioned by Vasari, and the supposed cameo portrait of
Paul IV., above quoted, I very much suspect belongs to a later
pontificate.
Vasari's hints, coupled with these facts, throw some light upon the origin of that rare class of intagli mounted in massy
gold rings made after the mediaeval fashion, which, both by the
intrinsic value of the stone and of the setting, evince that they were
designed for personages of the highest rank, being the greatest
rarities that the age could produce. On this very account such are the
precise objects likely to exhibit the most novel and most admired
improvements in the art. First amongst these ranks the spinel in the
Marlborough Collection engraved with a youthful head in front face,
wearing a crown of three fleur-de-lys. (See woodcut, fig. 1.) The
intaglio, in a small square stone, is deep-cut and neatly done, but the
face is quite the conventional Gothic head seen on coins, and exhibits
no individuality whatever to guide us in attributing it to any
particular personage. It is set in a massy gold ring ribbed
longitudinally, and chased with flowers in the style prevailing about
the middle of the fifteenth century, a date further indicated by the
lettering of the motto engraved around it on the beasil—tel il nest—
"there is no one like him." It is evident that both intaglio and ring
are of the same date, for, besides the Gothic fashion of the crown, the
work of the intaglio has nothing of the antique character, and, though
highly polished internally, does not appear to have been sunk by the
antique method ; this last remark, indeed, applies to the entire class
now under consideration. The portrait may be intended for some Italian
prince of the age. The only circumstance against this explanation is
that the motto is in black letter, a Tedescan barbarism unknown in
Italy, where the round Lombardic continued in use until superseded by
the original Roman about the date of 1450. The species of the gem at
first suggests to us the famous portrait of Ludovico Sforza already
noticed ; but, that being on a ruby the size of a (jiulio (i. e., an
inch in diameter), it follows necessarily almost that, like the heads
on the improved coinage of the times (imitated by Henry VII., and by
James IV. of Scotland in
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