Greek Gems and Fingerrings

The book is available to order from: https://reichert-verlag.de/schlagworte/altaegyptischer_stil_schlagwort/9783954902439_ancient_engraved_gems_in_the_national_museum_in_krakow-detail

This book is a catalogue raisonée of a rich collection of ancient engraved gems housed in the National Museum in Krakow. It offers a thorough insight into ancient glyptic art through the considerable range of almost 780 so far unpublished objects – cameos, intaglios, scarabs and finger rings of various styles, workmanship and cultural circles: Egyptian, Near Eastern, Minoan, Greek, Etruscan, Italic, Roman, Sassanian and early Christian, dated from the second millennium BC to the seventh century AD.

Many pieces in this cabinet are notable not only for their top quality in terms of craftsmanship and design, but also for the materials used and engravings involving complex iconography illustrating religious beliefs, political allegiances, needs and desires that ancient people wished to be fulfill, fears, dangers and terrors from which they sought protection and even their daily occupations. The collection provides with a fascinating gallery of portrait studies presenting Hellenistic rulers and their queens, Roman emperors and members of their families as well as some private individuals. Some specimens are exceptional and unparalleled like the onyx cameo portraying Drusus Maior, likely executed by the hand of Eutyches, son of famous Dioscurides (cover) or a tiny but remarkably cut emerald cameo with a laureate portrait bust of Livia Drusilla as goddess Venus. Some objects have been preserved in their original settings (gold, silver, bronze, iron rings), which contributes to the study of ancient gems’ chronology and indicate their users, while others have been later re-set into eighteenth- and nineteenth-century collectors’ rings and sometimes more elaborated mounts. There are also pieces discoloured due to contact with considerable heat, which may suggest them to have been burnt with other personal objects on the funeral pyres and later deposited in burials. Noteworthy is the number of Greek and Latin inscriptions appearing on intaglios and cameos forming this cabinet. They span from owners’ names to the subtle messages communicated between lovers and invocations to the God.

Each gem is thoroughly analysed, described and exhaustively commented as to the device it bears, chronology and possible workshop attribution. A vast number of parallel objects is referenced too. This combined with provenance study presented in the first part of the book enabled to establish where a number of intaglios and cameos were manufactured, including almost 140 objects most likely to origin from the most important Roman workshop located in Aquileia. It ought to be singled out that many gems in this volume once constituted a part of distinguished collections formed by such personalities as Tobias von Biehler, Alessandro Gregorio Capponi, Auguste le Carpentier, Alessandro Castellani, Comte de Caylus, Count Nikolai Nikitich Demidoff, Baron Albert de Hirsch, Jean François Leturcq, Sibylle Mertens-Schaaffhausen, Dr. George Frederick Nott, Benedetto Pistrucci, James-Alexandre de Pourtalès (Comte de Pourtalès-Gorgier), Paul von Praun, Andrey Kirillovich Razumovsky, Jacques Meffre Rouzan, Philipp von Stosch, Antonio Maria Zanetti and many more. They seemed lost for more than 130 years, but now have been brought back and are accessible to everyone. Consequently, the volume presents three intriguing stories of collectors whose donations contributed to the Krakow assemblage. They not only provide the reader with a sort of background for the objects discussed further, but also illustrate nineteenth- and early twentieth-century collecting practices and the art market for engraved gemstones, contributing to our knowledge of the history of scholarship and collecting. In summary, this book is intended to be useful not only for scholars interested in gems, but also those who study the history of the art market and collecting as well as all the enthusiasts of Classical art and archaeology.

This study is a much expanded and updated version of my PhD dissertation (Gothenburg 2005) which concerned the late Etrusco-Italic glyptic production, especially the so-called
a globolo and related scarab gems. The new comprehensive study traces and examines the production and use(s) of engraved gems and seal stones in Central and Southern Italy from the early circulation of imported works, the establishment of immigrant (East Greek) engravers in Etruria and the South, and the development of local workshops in the second half of the sixth century BCE, down to the end of the Etruscan, Italic and South Italian production and the establishment of Roman Republican production centres. The holistic study includes an extensive survey of find contexts and other available archaeological data plus new typological and iconographical analyses. The appended list of items in the surviving corpus of gems in public, corporate and private collections updates and adds about 55% new material to earlier Gesamtkatalogen, notably those of Zazoff (1968), Martini (1971), Krauskopf (1995) and Giovanelli (2015).

In this study, a gem with an Aphrodite image on it, obtained from the Philadelphia (Gökçeseki) Excavation in the Isaurian Region will be evaluated in terms of its valuable stone as well as the cultic and iconographical features of the figure. As known, the depictions on the gemme are carved, not on the surface placed on the bezel setting, but to its exterior part. Under the similar finds the Gökçeseki example appears to be the single one with the carving at the surface. Along with this example, it is seen that in addition to the known cameo and intaglio techniques used in ancient times, a third technique, which is the 'rever-se intaglio' technique was applied. In relation to the small size of the material, skillful work was carried out in the Roman Empire period, especially during the Iu-lius-Cladius period. Especially retrospective trends to the Classical and Hellenistic Periods began in large scale and on small objects. In relation to this fact, the Aphrodite will be traced also iconografically which leads us to a variation of the Anadyomene type of Aphrodite. As a result, the ring will be examined in terms of both its cultic and iconogrphical aspects and in the aspect of the transfer of a well-known type to a small-sized material with a new technique.

International Scholarly Conference XXII BOSPORAN READINGS Cimmerian Bosporus and the World of Barbarians in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. New discoveries, new projects Simferopol-Kerch-2021 Научно-исследовательский центр истории и археологии Крыма Крымского федерального университета им В.И. Вернадского Институт археологии Крыма Российской Академии Наук Центр археологических исследований Благотворительного Фонда «Деметра» Международная научная конференция XXII БОСПОРСКИЕ ЧТЕНИЯ Боспор Киммерийский и варварский мир в период античности и средневековья. Новые открытия, новые проекты Симферополь-Керчь-2021 ББК 63.3(0)32 УДК 94(3)(477.7)(063) Б85 Рекомендовано к изданию Научно-техническим советом Крымского федерального университета им В.И. Вернадского Протокол № 3 от 16.04.2021 г. XXII Боспорские чтения. Боспор Киммерийский и варварский мир в период античности и средневековья. Новые открытия, новые проекты / Материалы международной научной конференции / Ред.-сост. В.Н. Зинько, Е.А. Зинько.-Симферополь-Керчь, 2021.-480 с.

Il seguente contributo ha come oggetto un anello d'oro d'epoca tolemaica conservato presso il Museo Kanellopoulos di Atene e recante l'immagine eseguita ad intaglio di una figura fem-minile. L'identificazione è resa difficile sia dal carattere idealizzato del volto, raffigurato in profilo, che dalla presenza di attributi ricorrenti nei ritratti di regine tolemaiche, quali la mi-tra o la cosiddetta «acconciatura di Iside» consistente in una serie di ricci. Quest'ultimo ele-mento è tipico nelle raffigurazioni della dea e serviva da modello anche nell'effige delle regine della dinastia ellenistica già a partire dal tardo III e agli inizi del II sec. a.C. L'autrice si sof-ferma pertanto sulle varie forme di tale tipo di acconciatura attestate in alcuni ritratti di regine tolemaiche di certa identificazione e sulla loro cronologia. Sulla base di queste riflessioni viene proposta la datazione dell'effige raffigurata sull'anello agli inizi del II sec. a.C. e, di conseguenza, l'identificazione della persona in essa ritratta con la regina Cleopatra I. Infine vengono proposte alcune ipotesi in merito al contesto, ormai perduto, in cui tale anel-lo potrebbe essere stato trovato. L'autrice sottolinea in tal senso come l'effige del monarca fos-se all'epoca abitualmente impiegata da funzionari di alto rango vicini alla casa regnante e come pertanto tale anello avrebbe potuto far parte del corredo funerario di un alto membro dell'amministrazione tolemaica. Mairi Gkikaki Ptolemaic Finger Ring in the Kanellopoulos Museum, Athens The present paper concerns the bronze finger ring bearing the image of a woman in intaglio, exhibited in the Kanellopoulos Museum in Athens. Particular aspects such as the identity of the woman, style and chronology and possibly original finding context and usage form the scope of the discussion.

The paper is devoted to the problem of systematization of antique rings and inserts with images, discovered during archaeological works on the territory of the Bosporan kingdom. On the example of a series of products of glyptics, the author demonstrated a technique for describing and interpreting mythological subjects. The relevance of the topic is due to the absence of generalized works on the rings of the region including the objects of major cities and rural districts.

The National Museum in Krakow preserves a part of an outstanding collection of engraved gems assembled by Constantine Schmidt-Ciążyński (1818-1889). Formerly it comprised 2517 specimens, among which 301 objects were set in various types of rings. Within this part, there are three very interesting Greek gold engraved finger rings. Dated on different periods, from 5th to the second half of the 2nd century BC, they are the examples of magnificent ancient craftsmanship. The first ring bears emblem of two dolphins, the second one, a woman by the incense-burner - thymiaterion and the last one portrait of a philosopher (or rather the sculptor Phidias?) with an inscription. The aim of the paper is to interpret the devices engraved upon them as well as discuss and ascertain dating, provenance and functions of the objects. Another purpose is to discuss connections with other works of ancient art and craftsmanship, especially engraved gems and coins.

Two quite rare findings for Tauric Chersonesos were found in mixed soil filling the estate of the 10th–13th centuries in the block 9. It is a fragment of the ring of the Ptolemaic type with the portrait of Berenice II and the coin of Kerkinitida of the third quarter of the 5th century BC. Chronologically and semantically unrelated objects were found in the same layer as a result of the economic activities of the monastery at the end of the 19th century.

Jeffrey SPIER -Jack OGDEN, Rings of the Ancient World. Egyptian, Near Eastern, Greek, and Roman Rings from the Slava Yevdayev Collection. Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag 2015, 150 S. mit 74, überwiegend farbigen Abb. Die miniaturhafte Form, das reiche Form-und Farbenspiel und die vielfältigen Bildthemen machten geschnittene Steine und gravierte Ringe bereits seit der Renaissance bei Sammlern zu Objekten großer Beliebtheit. Auch für die im Katalog präsentierte Sammlung Yevdayev, die antike Ringe mit gravierten Ringplatten und geschnittenen Steinen vereint, waren diese Eigenschaften ein Antrieb. Eine noch größere Motivation stellte jedoch die dezidierte Verbindung von künstlerischer Gestaltung und der Möglichkeit dar, über die Objekte selbst einen Zugang zur antiken Geschichte zu erhalten (so explizit Vorwort S. 7f.).

The article is devoted to the attribution of a golden finger ring with the image of a beardless nude youth with a diadem on his head and two wreaths – each in every hand, lowered down, on the bezel. The finger ring was found in 2018 in a room made of mud bricks (sanctuary
no. 835) under the stone foundation of a temple in Phanagoria. Both the shape of the ring and the style of the image on its bezel leave no doubt about the dating of the ring to the Late Archaic period, most likely around the turn of the 6th–5th centuries BC. The subject, presented on the ring’s bezel, is extremely rare and has practically no parallels in glyptics – in the items dated to the period under consideration, wreaths were most often depicted in the hands of Eros. Nevertheless, the parallels in the black-figure vase painting give reason to associate the image
of a naked, beardless young man in a diadem, with wreaths in lowered hands with motives of a pederastic circle or those associated with a symposium, rather than sports. in such an interpretation of a Greek piece of jewelry there is, in fact, nothing surprising, except that new facets of the life of the Greek population of the Late Archaic Phanagoria are revealed to us (in the event that the first version of interpretation is correct).

The paper is devoted to the analysis of a group of scaraboids executed in the so-called Greco-Persian style and representing images of a crested eagle-headed griffin in profile with the outstretched front paws, one of which is lifted. Of total number of 18 pieces six are coming from the known archaeological context, including three from the North Pontic area (Pantikapaion, Gaimanova Mogila, Kurdzhips Barrow-mound), one from necropolis of Taranto in South Italy. Two items were found in the later, 1st c. AD context: one in Pompeii and another in the princely necropolis of Tillya-tepe in Northern Afghanistan.  The rest scaraboids except for two pieces allegedly found on Lesbos and in Peloponnese are lacking provenance. Considering the geographical distribution of these scaraboids, one can’t ignore the finds of bullae with their imprints in the temple archive in Carthage and in Selinunte in Sicily. Thus, the area of distribution of the scaraboids under discussion is impressive: from the South of Italy and North Africa (?) to the Aegean basin, Northern Black Sea region and, finally, Northern Afghanistan to the east, with the vast majority of the finds coming from the North Pontic area, both from the aristocratic necropolis of the capital of the Bosporus and the Scythian and Maiotian princely burials.
The find from Taranto comes from the early 3rd c. BC burial, those from the North Pontic area – from the burials, dating from the first quarter of the 4th c. BC onwards but not later than to the last quarter of the century. However there are ground to suggest that the earliest examples of scaraboids with the motif discussed were carved as early as in the second half of the 5th c. BC.
Analysis of the genesis of the motif, as well as the related motifs, showing griffins attacking stags or horses, give ground to suggest that it has nothing to do with the so-called Greco-Persian style. There is also no evidence that the images of eagle-headed crested griffins with a raised front paw enjoyed a great popularity in Asia Minor during the Achaemenid rule. The motif was developed in Greek art in course of the 5th c. BC, initially in a relatively narrow region of the Aegean and the Propontis, and then became widespread from Italy and North Africa in the west to the Black Sea (at least) to the east, and was especially in demand in the contact zones of Greek and barbarian (Thracian, Scythian) cultures.
There is every reason to believe that scaraboids discussed could have been manufactured by the gem-cutters in Italy, in Attica, on the islands of the Aegean Sea, and in the Cimmerian Bosporus. To some extent, this explains their wide distribution. Therefore, there is no ground to designate all or part of them as items of "Greco-Persian style". Despite the fact that we analized a small group of intaglios, there is every reason to put under question the homogeneity of this style and to support the proposal put forward by J. Gates to reject the "Greco-Persian" paradigm, or at least to undertake a critical review of the available material, more than two-thirds of which on the average is represented by the objects without provenance.

En sa qualité de fabricant d'images, l'artiste antique peut être amené à intégrer, au sein de sa composition, une représentation de « statue-objet ». Ce motif est à dissocier du personnage, surtout si la posture de ce dernier reproduit ou s'inspire de canons et autres types sculpturaux ; à la « statue-objet » inanimée s'oppose le protagoniste « vivant ». Notre thèse propose d'étudier la présence de la statue-objet au sein du matériel glyptique. Notre réflexion s'adosse à un

ABSTRACT: Several sources suggest that when the German classical archaeologist Adolf Furtwängler (1853-1907) left his position at the Berlin Museums in 1894 to become professor of archaeology and numismatics in Munich, he brought with him an impressive network of archaeologists, museum curators, collectors and dealers, and soon turned his new home town into an important caravanserai of the international trade in antiquities. He was also appointed director of four important collections in the city: the Glyptothek, the Antiquarium/vase collection, the cast collection, and the numismatic collection. Himself a serious collector and specialist on ancient sculpture and engraved gems, Furtwängler made these contacts his powerbase, offering expert advice to major museums, private collectors and dealers around the world in return for information, building one of the largest private archaeological archives in existence, with extensive photo documentation. No important ancient artworks were discovered, came on the market or changed hands without Furtwängler’s knowledge. The extensive professional network that he managed to create is comparable to those of Philipp von Stosch (1691-1757) before him and John Beazley (1885-1970) after. This short paper discusses the culture of professional and amateur collecting in the wake of Furtwängler’s scholarly activities in Munich and includes notable Munich collectors and agents like Paul Arndt (1865-1937) and James Loeb (1867-1933), but also Adolf Frucht (1852-1914), Carl Jacobsen (1842-1914), Edward Perry Warren (1860-1928), John Marshall (1876-1958), Michel Tyszkiewicz (1828-1897) and others.

The student of ancient art often faces a divided methodology, in which the study of subject matter dwells on symbolism and meaning but ignores the materiality of its objects, while the study of material facture and artistic technique dwells on physical properties but brackets questions of meaning.  Such lack of integration is understandable, but can cause problems when we assume that these separate domains map onto the conceptions of art held by ancient craftsmen and viewers themselves.  For in the gap between our approaches resides an entire dimension of ancient image-making, one that our bifurcated methods have conditioned us to miss:  the communicative potential of material and technique.  The time thus seems ripe for a session devoted to this central yet overlooked aspect of ancient artistic production.  To throw it into the sharpest possible relief, we propose a session of six case studies.  Each is devoted to a single important genre or medium; and each raises a different question about the intersection of facture and meaning within that medium.

Our first two papers focus on the symbolic associations accorded materials themselves:  Alessandra Giumlia-Mair’s “The Symbolic Significance of Metals and Alloys” documents how Greek and Roman metallurgists creating composite statues selected alloys not only for their working properties (as we might expect), but also for their symbolic associations; while Alexis Castor’s “Gilding the Lily” shows how changes in the cultural significance of both gold and animals during the Persian and Hellenistic periods shaped their intersection in jewelry.  The other three focus on the significance of technique:  Kenneth Lapatin’s “Intaglio to Cameo” details how the rarity of appropriate material for cameos, combined with the more exacting techniques of carving they required, affected their iconography and status vis-à-vis intaglios; Stephanie Pearson’s “From the (Back)ground Up” examines how the distinctive Gandharan method of relief carving led its sculptors to favor certain compositions and subject matter; and Peter Schultz’s “The Politics of Erasing Facture” demonstrates how erasing toolmarks and other traces of facture from stone sculpture could itself carry a political message.

Taken as a group, then, our papers cover five of the most important genres of artistic production in antiquity, and illustrate the manifold ways in which ancient craftsmen and viewers — both Greek and Roman, Persian and Gandharan — accorded meaning to material facture itself.

This was originally an article manuscript that is now being transformed into a book project. Although focus is on four key figures, Philipp von Stosch, Pierre-Jean Mariette, Anton Francesco Gori, and Johann Joachim Winckelmann, it is really a comprehensive history of eighteenth-century scholarship, collecting and popular reception, including the very interesting cultural phenomenon of the dactyliothecae (major gem cast producers such as Christian Dehn, Philipp Daniel Lippert, James Tassie, the Paolettis and others). The initial project phase was generously funded by the Fondazione Famiglia Rausing (Rome).