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Sardonyx

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SARDONYX.
305
less high so as to display the three zones to the greatest per­fection ; making them all, by cutting down the surface and the base to the due thickness, as nearly equal as possible. It was, says Pliny, a great defect if the white zone spread unevenly, and did not keep itself together in a perfect band. When intagli are found on a Sardonyx, they are always sunk but slightly, or rather sketched upon the surface, so as to be invisible at a trifling distance.
It was for camei that this material was reserved ; the various shades, taken advantage of with singular dexterity by the artist, enabled him to add the charm of colour to the relief. This may be considered a symptom of declining taste, certain it is that such works all belong to Imperial times. The most remarkable example of this skilful adaptation of the design to the material is a quadriga in the French Collection, where each of the four horses is worked out in a perfectly distinct colour. . The Marl­borough Antonia too, admirable as a work of art, exhibits a most judicious employment of two shades, black and brown, and of a milky white, in the hair, background, and the flesh.
The largest slab of Sardonyx known is that of the Carpegna Cameo (in the Vatican), 16 inches long by 12 deep. The sub­ject, the " Triumph of Bacchus and Ceres," in a car drawn by Centaurs, is executed with great spirit in a stone of five layers ; the respective parts of the design being kept in very flat relief, for the sake of contrast, owing to the thinness of these layers.
Next in size, 13 χ 11 inches, but, far above it in fame, comes " Le Grand Camée de France," representing the triumph of Germanicus, where the hero is received by Tiberius and Livia, and the Apotheosis of Augustus occupies the upper portion of the composition. This was brought from Constantinople by Baldwin IL, the last Frankish emperor, and pawned to St. Louis, together with other relics (of vast sanctity but no in­trinsic value), for an enormous sum :3 being then interpreted as " the Triumph of Joseph in Egypt." This stone also has five strata.
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