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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
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