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Onyx, Nicolo

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268
ONYX.
Portland Vase is the most famous specimen ; and next to this the Neapolitan, covered with an elegant arabesque of interlaced vine-branches. These ambitious attempts are aptly termed by Martial, " audacis plebeia toreumata vitri,"—toreuma being the technical name for ornamentation in relief, especially when exe­cuted upon the surface of vases, whether in metal or in stone. Another epigram (xiv. 115) informs us that the seat of this manu­facture was Alexandria, and that the risk of breakage during the operation was very great, as might well be concluded from the fragility of the material :—
" Aspicis ingenium Nili quibus addere plura Dum cupit, ah ! quoties perdidit auctor opus."
Yet the greatest artists of the day did not disdain to exercise their taste upon so valueless a material, for the relievi on the vases above mentioned are far superior to any decorating the celebrated vases on the real Onyx. This application of the art appears to be referable to Nero's times, as may be deduced from Pliny's observation (xxxvi. 66), that a mode of working glass (arte vitri) had then been discovered which made two small cups of the kind called pterotœ, or two-handled, sell for 6000 sesterces (60Z.). So large a price could only have been com­manded by their artistic excellence, and not for any novelty in the colour or body of the material ; for the circumstance is analogous to the prices quoted repeatedly by the same author (xxx. 35), as paid for silver chasings by celebrated artists. Simi­larly Apuleius (Met. ii.), in describing the banquet given by the wealthy Byrrhena, enumerates " ampli calices varias quidem gratiœ, sed pretiositatis unius. Hic, vitrum fabre sigillatum, ibi crystallum impunctum, argentum alibi clarum afque annua ful-gurans, et succinum mire cavatum in capedes ut bibas." Here it will be observed he makes the glass vessels to be adorned with figures in relief, the crystal with such in intaglio—a distinction confirmed by all the specimens extant in either kind.
De Boot states that the species composed of black and white layers was commonly forged in his times (the 16th century), in order to be sold for a real cameo, in the following curious manner (ii. 94) :—" Take the little sea-shells used by the Italian
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