|
342
|
ZMILAMPIS.
|
||
|
|
|||
|
Amongst
the Marlborough Gems one of the most curious is a singular conversion
of a monster Cat's-eye, 1-1/2 inch high, into a lion's head admirably
carved out in full relief. The play of colours imparts to the grim mask
a vivid reality of life and fury, rendering it a most successful
achievement of the school, the Cinque-cento that produced it, whose
taste, ever stimulated by the love of the grotesque, revelled in
similar analogies between the subject and the material. To the same age
is due the Hope " Mexican Sun-Opal," 1 x 3/4 inch in size, richly
lustred with shades of red, green, and blue, and as appropriately
converted into a head of Phoebus.
The
Italian name is Belocchio, evidently a corruption of the Beli Oculus of
the Romans ; but the name has been transferred to the Cat's-eye on no
sufficient grounds, the Beli Oculus (Baal's-eye) having been merely
some brightly-shaded variety of the Eye-Onyx : " for in it (55) a
transparent white belt encloses a black pupil, having a golden colour
shining out from the centre, and on account of its appearance
consecrated to the supreme god of Assyria." These terms prove that
three distinct colours were necessary to compose the Beli-Oculus,
whereas the Cat's-eye presents one uniform tint, the pupil being
formed by the mere reflexion of light, and shifting about according as
the stone is turned.
The
Beli Oculus of De Boot's age still retains its ancient meaning. He
describes it as a minute Eye-Onyx of sovereign virtue for all diseases
of the eyes (on the strength of its name no doubt), being placed under
the lid, and allowed to work its way into the corner.
Pliny
distinguishes, by significant Greek epithets, several varieties of the
Eye-Onyx, as the Leucopthalmus, of a fiery red enclosing the figure of
an eye in opaque white and black (for the pupil) ; and the same stone
seems again designated as the Lycoph-thalmus (Wolf's-eye), but
presenting four distinct colours, a fiery red enclosing one the colour
of blood, in the centre of which was a black spot surrounded by a
circle of opaque white, precisely representing the same organ in the
wolf. The Trioph-thalmus, produced with the Onyx, presented the figure
of a triple human eye.
|
|||
|
|
|||