200 - A Roman Sardonyx Intaglio with an Eagle

A Roman Sardonyx Intaglio with an Eagle Augustan Period, Circa 27 B.C.-14 A.D. Diameter 3.3 cm (1 1/4 inches). Provenance: Gawain McKinley, London, prior to 1986. Galerie Nefer, Zurich, acquired from the above, 17 October 1986. Cut from a thick disc of banded sardonyx, this intaglio presents the head of an eagle in profile, its hooked beak sharply drawn and its plumage built up in fine, layered strokes. The engraver has exploited the banding of the stone so that the crown reads pale against the darker ground. A thunderbolt lies below, and the whole is enclosed within a laurel wreath with twinberries, tied with ribbons at the base. The edge is rounded and the reverse flat and polished, with small chips at its margin. These chips, together with the stone’s scale, suggest it was once held in a metal setting and mounted on a larger object rather than worn on the finger. By choosing the eagle’s head alone rather than the whole bird, the engraver turned the image into an emblem, compact and immediately recognizable. Each element belongs to the vocabulary of Roman power. The eagle was the bird of Jupiter Optimus Maximus and the bearer of his thunderbolt. Pliny the Elder records that Marius, in his second consulship, made it the sole standard of the legions (Pliny, Natural History 10.16). The thunderbolt, Jupiter’s weapon, gave the Twelfth Legion its name, Fulminata. The Laurel belonged to Apollo, Augustus’s patron god, and crowned every Roman triumph. In 27 B.C., the doorposts of Augustus’s house were publicly wreathed in laurel, an honor he recorded in his own account of his reign (Res Gestae 34). At his funeral in 14 A.D., an eagle released from the pyre was said to carry his spirit to the heavens (Cassius Dio 56.42). Together these elements place the stone within the imagery Augustus established from 27 B.C. Gold aurei struck that year show an eagle with wings spread, standing on an oak wreath with two laurel branches behind. The same moment is commemorated on the great Eagle Cameo in Vienna, a two-layer onyx 22 cm across. There Jupiter’s eagle holds the oak wreath and palm of victory, recalling the honors the Senate gave Octavian on 16 January 27 B.C., among them the name Augustus. On the Gemma Augustea, the masterpiece of the imperial cameo workshop, Jupiter’s eagle stands at the emperor’s feet. Augustus’s own seal was cut by Dioskourides (Suetonius, Augustus 50). Sardonyx itself carried Roman prestige: Pliny names Scipio Africanus as the first Roman to wear it (Pliny, Natural History 37.85), and it remained the traditional stone of the Roman signet. To an American eye, the pale head above the darker neck readily recalls the bald eagle of the Great Seal of the United States, adopted in 1782, some eighteen centuries after the present stone was cut. For related examples, see the Eagle Cameo, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Inv. no. IX A 26 (W. Seipel, A Brief Guide to the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vol. 4: Masterpieces in the Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities, Vienna, 2006, p. 174, no. 74); and the aureus of Augustus, British Museum, Inv. no. 1898,0803.4 (Roman Imperial Coinage, vol. I, no. 277). See also P. Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, Ann Arbor, 1988.