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Sardonyx

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SARDONYX.
293
of Poissy, was stolen thence in the civil wars of the 16th century, and ultimately purchased by Rudolf II. for 12,000 ducats (6000l.), and that more for its value as a mineralogical rarity than as a work of art.*
The Marlborough Cabinet boasts of another approaching to this in dimensions, being 8 inches wide by 6 deep, and the most remarkable of all in a scientific point of view ; for it presents strata.of transparent sard, purple or rather lilac, opaque white, and a ground of opaque black—colours not united in any other example known to the world. It bears in flat relief two well-executed imperial busts, in a style marking the commencement of the Decline, attri­buted without much reason to Didius Julianus and Manlia Scantilla (but more probably representing Commodus and Marcia) : the one in the combined characters of Jupiter, Dodonœus, and Ammon ; the other, of Libera, or Ceres. One convincing reason that the prince here immortalised is not Didius, is the fact that his tenure of empire only ex­tended to sixty-five days : the execution of a cameo like this required the labour of several months. Guay was two entire years engaged upon his of Louis XV. Another large oval Sardonyx, in the same collection, with the hel-meted head of Constantine, is of remarkable beauty, though inferior in size to the asgis-covered bust of Constantius IL, the glory of the Royal Dactyliotheca, an oval of 7j ÷ Sc­inches, surrounded by an architectural border : in this stone the respective layers are of considerable thickness ; in the former they are extremely thin.
The long and luxurious reign of Constantine has left us several other works, some of Christian character, on pieces of Sardonyx of the finest quality ; and equally beautiful speci-
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