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Ch. 2: Adamas, Diamond

Ch. 2: Adamas, Diamond Page of 377 Ch. 2: Adamas, Diamond Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
98 NATURAL HISTORY OF PBECIOUS ST0NES, &c.
plumes between the letters C. P. very neatly cut upon a large yellow Diamond, a table 1/2 χ 7/8 inch in dimen­sions, quaintly fashioned into a heater-shaped seven-sided shield. This very interesting historical relic I had the opportunity of myself carefully examining in the summer of 1861. Raspe quotes (p. 590) a Head of Posidonius from the Bedford Cabinet, which he ascribes to the Cav. Costanzi (who flourished at Rome in the beginning of the last century) ; " who distinguished himself by many en­gravings upon the Diamond (particularly a Leda, and a Head of Antinous), almost all of which are now (1790) in the Cabinet of the King of Portugal." Mariette also cites a Head of Nero by the same master, done for the Prior Vaini of Florence; and Easpe again, catalogues another head of the same Cassar, also in Diamond, then in the possession of the notorious Count Brühl. Β. Hertz, in his Catalogue of the Hope Precious Stones, describes two engraved Diamonds : one the bust of the Emperor Leopold I. on a large table Diamond, well exe­cuted, and the intaglio highly polished within ; the other the Head of a Philosopher, but a very inferior work com­pared with the first. From Hertz's profession (of a Dia­mond-merchant) his opinion may be relied on as to the nature of the stones in question. A competent judge has also assured me that the Mayer Collection includes another portrait of Leopold on a true Diamond, a large table. This probably is the very one Easpe mentions as seen by himself in the year 1772 in the hands of a M. Israel, of Cassel. The gems of the Prior Vaini added by Gian Gastone, the last of the Medici, to the Cabinet of the Galleria, included several heads by Costanzi, who appears to have wasted his time and real talent upon these truly " difficiles nugœ," both in Diamond and in Ruby. They, together with all those elaborate specimens of old Italian
Ch. 2: Adamas, Diamond Page of 377 Ch. 2: Adamas, Diamond
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