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BERYLLUS.
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53
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sold for the European market, the inferior samples when thus painted being deemed good enough for the native jewellers' work.
Antique
engravings in Beryl are almost as rare as in the true Emerald ; * but
with this difference, that intagli in the former stone, as far as my
experience goes, belong to an earlier period of the art, being for the
most part fine work of the "perfect" Greek school, whereas intagli in
the Emerald are invariably in the later Roman style, dating from
Hadrian's time and his immediate successors. To quote a few of the
finest, where too the material is hardly to be distinguished from the
pale Sapphire. The earliest is the Taras (or Icadius) on the dolphin,
in the (former) Praum Collection, the design of which is placed by
Winckelmann in the first class of Etruscan work ; a head of Proserpine
in the purest Sicilian Greek style, and a hippocampus (Marlborough
Gems) ; and amongst the best specimens of Roman date, the young
Hercules, inscribed ÃÍÁÉ02, the patron-god, and favourite prœnomen of
the Scipios (Blacas), with a most elegant design of Cupid borne over
the waves by a dolphin (Craeherode). The grandest intaglio extant of
the Roman period is also upon an Aquamarine of the extraordinary
magnitude of 2-1/2 x 2-1/2 inches ; the bust of Julia Titi, signed by
the artist
nearly
a thousand years it formed the knosp of a golden reliquary celebrated
as " l'escrain de Charlemagne," presented by Charlemagne to the Abbey
of St. Denys, in which it was set with the convex back uppermost, being
regarded as an invaluable Emerald. The rarity of such Beryl intagli,
when of unquestionable antiquity, is readily
*
This stone has been the vehicle for carrying down to us the fame of one
of the only five gem-engravers noticed by ancient writers now extant.
Addœcis (the court poet of Polemo, who was made King of Pontus by
Antony), lias immortalized a work of " Tryphou's " in Beryl, the Nymph
Galène, in a very graceful epigram. (Anth. ix. 544.)
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