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SHELL-CAMEO WORK.
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(and
they are not unfrequent) testify to the feeling with which similar
glyptic works wore regarded in the ages when the night of credulous
barbarism was fast spreading over the Roman world.
The original "Camahut" was metamorphosed in mediœval mouths into the ugly Teutonic Gammahuia, and so accepted as a translation of " Speckstein " into the soft Italian Cameo (already
used by Cellini, with whom, however, it signifies the stone, Onyx, not
the style of engraving) ; and lastly into the fantastic French Camayieu, the
form under which the word first appeared in English. But, very early,
"Cameo" came to signify the work itself, not the material, for De Boot
(who may be said to belong to the CinqueÂcento period, for he wrote in
1600) notes that the Italians termed the Onyx, when engraved with
figures in relief, " Cameo " or " Camahuia," as if the latter were a
different substance.
SHELL-CAMEO WORK.
The antique productions of this branch of the Glyptic art will be found treated of under their peculiar and precious material the Sardonyx; but
this appears the most fitting place to notice an ingenious application
of the same art giving value to another material in itself the very
synonym for worthlessness. This is the working in shell-cameo ; the
invention, it would seem, of the acute Italians at the very dann of the
Eevival (1450), when the insuperable difficulty of procuring the
Sardonyx to subserve their first attempts at imitating the ancients in
cameo-engraving obliged them to look about for other substances
affording the same capabilities in the way of contrasted colours for
the exhibition of the relief. This vehicle for their skill they
discovered in the larger shells of their own seas, presenting
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