MEDIEVAL GEM ENGRAVING. 13
Our
third example is analogous to the last in many respects. It also is cut
in a precious material, a large and good sapphire, and is a female face
in profile, the head covered with a cloth after the fashion of the
Roman contadine (see woodcut, fig. 2). It is worked out in a
manner resembling the preceding, allowance being made for the
difference necessitated by the superior hardness of the stone, the most
difficult (after the diamond) that ever taxes the engraver's skill. The
intaglio has an extraordinary polish, but in technique equally as in
design it differs totally from the few antiques extant in this stone,
and yet more from the numerous examples in it executed after the
Renaissance. Round the beasil, in neat Lombard letters, runs the
warning, tecta lege lecta tege, a
favorite motto for mediaeval seals. On the authority of this motto the
signet has been attributed to Matthew Paris, and the head-cloth
fancied to be a Benedictine hood ; apart from all other considerations,
so valuable a ring was beyond the station of a monk like that
chronicler. The Lombard character may appear on works made in the same
year as others inscribed in the black letter, supposing the former
executed in Italy, the latter by a French or German jeweler. The
subject is undoubtedly the very one that we should expect a mediaeval
engraver to select for so valuable a stone—-the head of the Madonna.
There is an attempt to represent curls where disclosed beneath the head
cloth, the conventional drapery for such a type : blue is, moreover,
the color appropriated to the Virgin Maty. This ring, also massy and
valuable, was found in cleaning out an old well at Hereford. Thus we
have, within the circle of my own experience, three intagli on precious
stones, and bearing a certain family resemblance to each other.
Last to be described, but not the least important, is an intaglio on an occidental cornelian, not a sard. It
is a female bust in front face ; upon the head is a sort of diadem,
placed horizontally ; round the neck is a chain, supporting a small
undefined ornament. At first sight this bust reminds one of the type
upon the coins of Licinia Kudoxia in the fifth century ; but there can
be no doubt, after examination, that it is designed for a Madonna. The
work indeed is very tolerable, but the face has the usual impudent and
smirking expression that marks the female heads in the later ages of
