revival,
and belong to the school of the quattrocentisti. By the very beginning
of that age the Italians already sought after engraved gems as works of
art, as appears from Cyriac of Ancona's letter respecting the coins and
gems collected by the Venetian admiral, Bertuccio Delfin, the first
possessor of that famous amethyst, the Pallas of Eutyches. His words
describing the latter prove that the merit of a fine intaglio was
perfectly appreciated before the year 1450.
A
silver seal, " of fourteenth-century work," found on the site of the
Priory of St. Mary Magdalene at Monkton Farleigh, Wilts, displays a
female head in nearly front face (intaglio), covered by a veil drawn
closely under the chin. (Wilts Mag. vol. ii., 38.9). The legend is capvt marie MAGDALENE
in the Roman letter that first began to supersede the round Lombardic.
But the design of this intaglio is too fine and full of the classical
taste to be referred to the early Revival. Its motive may be even from
a work of the Augustan age, the portrait of some imperial lady in the
costume of a votaress of Isis. It is almost identical in design with
the terminal figure in the Townley Gallery, mis-named the Venus
Architis.
Mr.
Albert Way has favored me with an impression of a seal, containing an
intaglio, perhaps the most indubitable example of a media?val engraving
of all yet mentioned. It is a female bust, with a band around the head,
and another under the chin : the hair is tied in a large bunch at the
back of the head, a fashion peculiar to the early part of the
fourteenth century. In front is a spray with flowers, a Gothic lily in
its conventional form. The execution of the intaglio, highly polished
inside, though far from rude, differs entirely from the antique. The
subject, I have no doubt, is " Santa Maria del fiore," and engraved by
an early Florentine ; perhaps a specimen of the skill of Peruzzi, that
'" singolare intagliatore di pietre ;" an artist capable of such a
performance in that age would well merit such a repuÂtation (see
woodcut, fig. 3).
The
engraved stones set in mediaeval metal works, even in the most
important pieces remaining, such as the shrine at Cologne, and that of
St. Elizabeth at Marburg, are all of Roman date and of trifling
artistic value—probably because they were extracted out of Roman
jewelry then in existence belonging to the latest times of the empire.
The finer works of Greek art, ancient even to the Romans themselves,
had,
