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Vitrum Annulare, Pastes

Vitrum Annulare, Pastes Page of 384 Vitrum Annulare, Pastes Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
330                 NATURAL HISTORY OF GEMS.
variegated as they are with bright colours capriciously arranged, they show like Agates of a novel and superior species to any from the laboratory of Nature. Translucent blue traversed with opaque white stripes or patches, and green similarly diversified with red, were patterns in great demand amongst the ancients, to judge from the plentiful-ness of such pieces. But their imitation of the Lapis-lazuli was the most successful of all ; and their reproductions of in-tagli in this material are the most difficult to distinguish from the real stone, such is their homogeneousness of substance and purity of colour. In such is to be seen the finest paste cameo known (Townley Pastes, British Museum), a three-quarter figure of Bonus Eventus (so inscribed) holding a cornucopia, already noticed (Sapphirus). The slab is about 8 inches square, and the figure, which is in half relief, has been carefully gone over with the tool after the manner of a cameo in stone.* Caylus (ii. pi. 81) has engraved an admirable Medusa, 4 ÷ 3i inches in size, in a paste similarly finished off with the diamond-point; and also a head of Victory set in a massy bronze ring, which he describes as a perfect imitation of an Onyx of three layers. Such counterfeits, so completed, plentifully occur, and often are most deceptive, so exactly does their surface imitate the effect of age upon that of the Agate or the Sardonyx. Yet more puzzling must they have been when recent, for Martial alludes to the difficulty of finding a real Sardonyx
* This is much the largest paste known to me; but it is far sur­passed in this respect by another in the Vatican, 'The Triumph of Bacchus,' which, according to Buonarruoti's fac-simile, is 16 inches long by 10 deep. Unless, indeed, he is describing the Carpegna cameo under a mistaken notion as to its nature, for his drawing tallies with that Sardonyx in dimensions and subject. Such vast pastes must have been made for panels to coffrets in metal (the acerra for instance) like the crystal plaques of the Cinque-cento.
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