One might naturally suppose that the gems of the early Christians would abound in representations of scriptural events and incidents of the life of Christ. Such was not the case; these subjects were abundantly produced by the Byzantines about the fifth century A. D. This can be accounted for from the fact that most of these subject-gems were engraved to decorate the sacred vessels and paraphernalia of the church altars in Byzantium.

With Constantine we find the Byzantine epoch in its maturity. With the simplicity of the early Christians we have remarked that everything like representation of the Godhead was eliminated or rather forbidden.

It was the Byzantines who created for the gem market token cameos and intaglios on which were incised effigies of the Holy Family, and incidents in every phase in that series of events that never has been equalled in historic interest in the records of time: the birth, life, trial, sufferings, death, and resurrection of the Son of God.

Elaborate details characterized the cameos picturing the triumphs of that Christian emperor and the portraiture of his mother Helena.

SOMMERVILLE COLLECTION.

BYZANTINE CHRIST.

The annunciation, the visitation, the birth in the manger, the adoration of the wise men and the magi, the bearing of the cross, the crucifixion, etc.

With the Byzantine epoch we meet with the Emperor Constantine as we turn from the first period of decadence, in fact, almost demise, of the art of the incisori.

The justice, energy, and enterprise of Constantine showered benefits on all industrious men in the Eastern Roman world. Skilled workmen, spared from the absorbing conflicts of war, anew devoted themselves in peace to their mechanical avocations.

Prosperity ruled and was assured to the people. Foremost among these artisans were the gem-engravers; the demand for their glyptic productions, and the amount produced, was phenomenal.

The dignity of Constantine’s successful empire was sustained by a retinue of courtiers; luxury characterized all the imperial decorations of his palace.

His willing subjects supplied his demands and gratified his refined tastes by zealously executing his liberal commands in all branches of art, and especially in the art of gem-engraving, which contributed largely to the court adornment.

Recognizing the near relationship between gems and coins, we here see that Constantine, shortly after he had established his empire in Byzantium, removed the pagan emblems from the coins of the empire, and issued others on which he caused to be impressed the legend illustrating and recording the peculiar incident of his conversion; to this was added a phoenix, emblematic of the renovation of his empire, together with the monogram of Christ, and the Angel of Victory, which in his vision had directed his course at the time of his conversion to Christianity and triumph over the pagan enemy.

At the time of his baptism at Nicomedia he clad himself in a white robe, and from that time he never resumed the imperial purple.

This incident was also engraved, and formed the subject of a design on a later coin.

The engravers employed by Constantine were incisori of the highest rank of that period; none others were in favor. They executed portraits of his family, of his wife Fausta, of his sons, and of himself—in combat, in bust, on horseback, in imperial power; always laureated, and principally on cameos, very few intaglios being cut at this time.

Several important examples have survived the rack and ruin of time, and may be seen in the BibliothÈque Nationale at Paris, the British Museum at London, the Royal and Imperial Collections of Vienna and St. Petersburg, and in my collection.

These unique gems, those commissioned by Constantine, however, form a small proportion of the glyptic harvest from the Byzantine period. With Constantine commences the series of scriptural cameos, which continue during several years in Byzantia.

The great number of cameos preserved from this epoch bearing scriptural subjects, which were ordered and engraved for reliquaries and every description of vessels, and for the adornment of altar book-bindings, for church and cathedral ceremonies, far exceeds in quantity those imperial portraits, and to an appreciator of distinctive specialties in a representative art collection they are more interesting.

After a few heads of Christ attributed to the Sassanians, we meet in the reign of Constantine the first gem portraits of our Saviour. These sacred portraits, even at times rudely rendered, have often more divinity in them than many similar subjects of a later period.

The distinctive, most characteristic, Byzantine gems are the large series of scriptural cameos, designed in relief for the ornamentation of the sacred vessels and other paraphernalia on the altars of the churches at the Byzantine capital.