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Crystallus, Rock-crystal

Crystallus, Rock-crystal Page of 453 Crystallus, Rock-crystal Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
     
     
 
180 CRYSTALLUS.
ditions of the craft from the date of the Empire. Besides making pastes of smalts, exact counterfeits of the true gems, they con­verted the commoner stones into others of the most precious kinds, by such ingenious processes as that of cutting a Garnet very thin and backing it with Crystal to pass for a Ruby ; an Amethyst hollowed out and filled with a coloured tincture imi­tated the Balais, which was also counterfeited by a thin table of the former laid upon a ruby-foil. Diamonds they forged by cutting the Beryl or the White Sapphire to the proper shape (a pyramid), and backing them with the customary tincture. To explain the latter term, it must be borne in mind that formerly the Diamond was always coloured black upon the ciblasse, with a certain composition, on the proper nature of which Cellini treats at great length in his ' Orefeceria,' as being of the utmost im­portance to the effect of the gem. In order to escape the test of the file, which no paste can endure, these early Italian forgers imitated above all the rest the Emerald and the Peridot, for, these gems being but little superior in hardness to pastes, such a means of detection could not be applied to them.
Although it has been remarked above that no antique intagli in this stone are known to exist, yet there is an epigram by Diodorus (Anth. ix. 776)—" Upon an engraved Crystal."
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
This was an image of Arsinoë " drawn " by Satureius, to which the poet ascribes all the " colouring and the elegance " of Zeuxis, strange expressions for a work in a gem. But the term BaiSaXov2 applied to it shows that he is speaking of a statuette, or
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
     
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