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8 NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
irresistibly
obtrudes itself that such a group, though actually existing in the
royal ring, was nothing more than a cameo-engraving, but passed off by
the jocose Greek, sporting with their simplicity, upon the Roman
envoys, utter novices then in art, as an unparalleled miracle of Nature.
To
give a few examples of similar deceptions in later times. The Shrine of
St. Elizabeth (Marburgh), made in 1250, had for its chief glory,
amongst the innumerable precious stones embellishing its surface, a
large Cameo set above the statuette of the Virgin. It was a fine
Sardonyx of three layers, representing the heads of Castor and Pollux,
and was through the whole extent of the Middle Ages regarded as an
inestimable production of Katnre, and for which a former
Elector of Mayence once offered in exchange, but without success, the
whole village of Anemci-neburgh. Even Camillo, the contemporary of
Lorenzo dei Medici, is still so far under the influence of Gothic
notions as to admit the possibility of the existence of similar
lusus Naturae. " In the second manner, stones seem as if engraved by
the hand of Nature, when a portion of one stone adheres to the surface
of another stone : or again, when some parts out. of the same stone are
deficient, through which addition or diminution a certain figure is
produced, as is done by art in the case of Camei (in
chamainis). And so, after this manner, it is possible for there to be
stones engraved by Nature as well as engraved by Art " (III. p. 174.)
Again, that Camei were popularly regarded in Gothic times as the work
of sportive Nature is almost demonstrable from the way in which
Agricola notices one then shown in the Church of the Three Kings,
Cologne. He terms it an Onyx, more than a palm wide, in which
the white veins mark out the heads of two youths, with a serpent in
black, running from the one forehead to the
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