44 - A GEORGIAN CARNELIAN INTAGLIO RING

A GEORGIAN CARNELIAN INTAGLIO RING Set with a large oval carnelian intaglio depicting Constantine and Helena holding the True Cross, within a saw-tooth bezel rim, on split shoulders. Tests as silver-copper alloy Unmarked Size/dimensions: ring size W (US 11 1/2) Gross weight: 16.54g The intaglio remains crisp and well defined and is secure in the bezel, with natural variations of tone inherent to the carnelian and minor wear consistent with age. The reverse of the bezel and the shank show heavy green verdigris in places, with a somewhat scratched surface and dark tarnish. The band is intact and not misshapen, and the ring is offered in good, stable condition. According to tradition, the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, discovered the True Cross in Jerusalem during her pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the 320s. Constantine and Helena standing either side of the Cross became one of the defining images of Christian art, particularly in the Byzantine and Orthodox world. Rome itself claimed a share of the legend: the basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme was built around relics of the Cross traditionally said to have been brought back by Helena, which made the subject a natural memento for visitors to the city. Workshops in Rome and Naples supplied intaglio rings at every price level. Fine pieces were set in gold, but many souvenir rings were mounted in low-grade silver or gilt base metal. A carnelian intaglio of a Christian subject, in a low-silver mount, would sit comfortably among those souvenirs. An English provincial origin is also possible. From the later seventeenth century until the coming of the railways in the 1840s, a period of travel on the Continent was regarded as the essential completion of a gentleman's education. Young British aristocrats, accompanied by tutors and servants, journeyed through France and across the Alps to Italy, where Rome, Florence, Naples and Venice offered direct experience of the classical world they had studied at school. Many returned with paintings, sculpture and antiquities, and with a lasting conviction that the art of Greece and Rome represented the highest standard of taste. Engraved gems held a special place in this culture. Small, portable and often genuinely ancient, intaglios and cameos let a traveller own a work of classical art and display their learning, whether set in a ring or arranged in cabinets. Demand far exceeded the supply of originals, and workshops met it with reproductions: James Tassie in London produced casts in glass paste and sulphur of more than fifteen thousand gems, and the Paoletti family in Rome sold impressions in plaster and sulphur, mounted in trays and book-shaped boxes, to visitors to the city. Collections of these impressions became study aids and souvenirs of the Tour in their own right. Rome was also the centre of Christendom, and the same workshops and visitors that served the taste for classical antiquity also produced and bought devotional jewels. The technique of micromosaic, in which minute tesserae of coloured glass are set to create pictures of extraordinary detail, was perfected in Rome in the late eighteenth century, and its subjects ranged from classical ruins to sacred imagery. In the nineteenth century, as rail travel opened Italy to a far wider public, the Tour gave way to tourism, but intaglio rings, gem impressions and micromosaic jewels remained among the most popular reminders of a visit to The Eternal City.