as well as cut the intaglio by one and the same operation, thus accounting for the perfect internal lustre of many gems of rude unfinished work. In modern times this polish is the effect of a tedious operation, by rubbing diamond-powder with a lead point into the interior of the engraving, and therefore is only to be seen in works of the best artists, executed in imitation of the antique. For this very reason, the constant appearance of this high polish on every variety of Roman work, up to a certain period, is a most singular fact, and must have been in some manner the result of the peculiar tool employed in cutting the intaglio, for it entirely vanishes in the rude talismanic engravings of the Lower Empire, which are evidently wheel-cut, as well as in the Sassanian gems engraved by the same means. In many heads, again, the hair, when intended to be represented as short and curly, is rendered by holes drilled close together, a mode of treatment common enough in Roman heads of Hercules. In Greek gems, on the contrary, every separate curl would have been minutely finished, and the hair composing each faithfully rendered by lines cut with the diamondpoint. The same peculiarity is to be observed in busts in marble of the Roman school, in which, towards the end of the 2nd century, the hair and beard are simply represented in the same manner by holes drilled into the stone. This method of representing the hair is often found upon the later camei. Another great distinction between the Etruscan intagli and those of Archaic Greek work is the circumstance that the former represent most of the deities as winged, a manner borrowed from the Egyptians, but never found in the works of Grecian artists.

Certain portraits of Roman times occur very abundantly on gems of Augustus and of Nero more especially; heads of the Flavian family are also frequent, as well as of M. Aure

lius and L. Verus, although the modern copies of the two last. are still more plentiful. Of a later date they are very rare, with the exception of Caracalla, of whom I have seen many rude portraits, probably worn by the military, whose favour he courted by all possible means, in pursuance of the last injunctions of his father. After this date they almost altogether disappear, their place being taken by gold coins of the reigning emperor, which it had become the fashion to wear in rings. I have, however, met with a good though stiff portrait of Aurelian; and some of Probus are mentioned as known. Strange to say, no more than one is described as now existing of Constantine, in spite of his long reign, and great popularity in the following centuries; but Lippert mentions a well-executed one of his eldest son, of the same name. In Stosch's Catalogue appears this diademed head of Constantine, upon Amethyst-the sole Roman figured on a gem with such

ornament. The Mertens-Schaafhausen Collection possesses a supposed bust of Julian on Carnelian, 10 and a most interesting one (if genuine) of Mauricius, front-faced, and crowned, holding the orb, and inscribed DNMAVRITIVS.P.P.A. It is a large Calcedony, 2 × 14 inches in size, and said to have been dug up at Grafin, but the form of the letters in the legend make me suspect it to be a work of the 16th century. Under the head "Cross of Lotharius" will be found a detailed account of the signet of that Carlovingian emperor, the latest engraving on a gem of which I have been able to

10 This portrait is very uncertain; it does not wear the diadem, the invariable decoration of the imperial busts of that date. But among the portraits called "unknown," in the catalogue of the same collection, is a most interesting intaglio: the

heads of Gallienus and Salonina, facing each other, and with three wheat-ears over each. Between the busts is an altar supporting an eagle with spread wings, holding a wreath in his beak.

meet with any trace, and, indeed, one executed long after the date usually assigned for the utter extinction of the art in Europe. But still, as before remarked, portraits of even the 3rd century are of extreme rarity: the heterogeneous Herz Collection, the sole design of which was to get together the greatest possible variety of subjects, contained no portraits posterior to the times of Severus.

After the revival of the art in Italy the works of the Cinque-Cento engravers are, as might be expected, close copies of the Roman style, but they are marked by a curious exaggeration, to be observed in all the productions of that age, as their bronzes, carvings, and majolica-painting. The intagli of the very earliest artists of this date (those who first appear as flourishing under the patronage of Lorenzo dei Medici) are easy to be recognised by their extreme stiffness and thoroughly medieval character, exactly agreeing in their treatment with the contemporary portraits of the persons they represent. All that I have seen are, in fact, portraits worked out in very flat relief, and apparently with the diamond-point, in the antique manner, and on stones of considerable size. The head-dress and costume of the period is most scrupulously rendered, just as in a miniature by a painter of the Quattro-Cento. In short, nothing can be more

dissimilar to the flowing, exaggerated, and forcible style characterising the intagli of fifty years later, when endless practice and the study of the antique had freed the engraver's eye and hand from the trammels of Gothic conventionalism. These works of the second dawn of the art are excessively rare. Subjects from Roman history and from Ovid are very great favourites with this succeeding school: few intagli were however produced by them, compared with the abundance of camei, which, issuing from their ateliers, have flooded the cabinets of the world of amateurs. In the last century the taste for intagli revived, and many were executed equal to the best productions of ancient art; however, there is usually an undefinable expression of the period about them (in the treatment of the drapery more especially) which guides the experienced eye in distinguishing them from the antique. Besides this, such great artists as Natter and Pikler did not profess to be mere copiers of antiquity: they always signed their own works after they had acquired celebrity, and the latter had a peculiar style, differing widely from the antique, although of equal merit. Some, however, of the latest Roman engravers have taken the Greek school for their model; and I have seen works by Cerbara-for instance, a lion on Emerald in the Pulsky Cabinet; a head of Proserpine and a Diomede with the Palladium, camei by Girometti; surpassing, to my taste, any production of the artists of antiquity in this department.

I shall conclude with a few general observations upon the mechanical execution, the art, and the subjects, of the classes of gems treated of in the preceding chapter. A very marked distinction of Archaic Greek and Greco-Italian intaglio work is the constant use of the méplat, to use the French technical term, only to be expressed in English by a long periphrasis. It may be described as the sinking of the whole design into the gem, with all its various portions, in flat planes, differing but slightly in depth from each other, upon which the muscles of the body, the folds of the drapery, and the other accessories, were afterwards traced by the diamond-point. The impression from such an intaglio has its outline nearly as much elevated as its highest projections, yet without sacrificing any of its effectiveness; a peculiarity observable also in the coinage of the same epoch and regions. This flatness of the internal surfaces within the intaglio itself may be held as the surest mark of its genuine antiquity, being the necessary result of the instrument employed by the ancient engraver, by which, acting as a scraper, he could produce a flat surface to the bottom of the cavity he was sinking in the gem with less difficulty than a curved one. In the modern process, on the contrary, where the wheel is the sole means used, this is almost impossible, and semi-cylindrical or grooved hollows mark all the productions of this tool, even in gems intended to pass for antiques of the earliest times.

In these early gems it will be also observed that the design is invariably so arranged as to fill up the entire field of the surface, whether of the scarab or of the ring-stone. Hence the forced attitudes and violent exertions expressed by the figures of men or of beasts, which were purposely chosen by the artist in order to accommodate the flexure of the bodies to the elliptical form of the surface upon which he was engaged. But, in fact, in all antique works, one point, carefully