IN Beau Brummel’s time not to know all about gem-engraving, the intaglio and the cameo, was thought to be devoid of one of the most important cultural attributes of every eighteenth-century gentleman. Those were the picturesque days of post-riders and sealing-wax, days that scarcely anticipated the letter-writing necessities of our own time, when we can scarcely stop to put on the stamp and one lick of the flap has taken the place of the perfumed elegance of yesterday’s wafer, leisurely impressed with some exquisite seal.

It was only natural then that the seal should be a factor in the diversions of polite society while possessing a utility not yet exterminated by demands on man’s time. Not only did every gentleman have a seal ring, but often he had several, and sometimes many for different occasions. Frequently these seals or sigilii, as the Latins called them, were engraved with devices directly upon metal. However, the far more popular method was that which is one of our chief heritages from antiquity—engraving on gems or on semi-precious stones by means of the intaglio process. Intaglio, derived from the Italian intagliere (to cut into), means incised engraving, as opposed to the cameo process, or engraving in relief. Cameo-engraving is a later art, as generally practised, and cannot compare with that of intaglio-engraving, with which it has nothing in common but its subject and the material on which it is cut. An intaglio is the product of a reverse and much more difficult process than that by which the cameo is evolved. An impression from a well-cut intaglio leaves a very fine design in relief, and it is marvelous to behold the results obtained by the infinite pains of gem-engravers. In our own day the masters of the art can be counted on the fingers of one hand, so greatly has the demand for work of the sort diminished. Indeed, there is almost no call for it in America. Probably this is due to the fact that so few people really either understand the importance of the subject, the history of glyptic art, or realize the beauty of the fine works of the sort.

It should be borne in mind that although engraved gems, unlike Greek painted vases, are chiefly valuable as handmaids to history in preserving to us contemporary portraits of their times, they still make known to us, as Collingnon says, a whole phase of Greek thought that was developed in the Macedonian epoch.

The Greeks never greatly favored the Egyptian scarab beetle-form for engraved gems and later introduced the oval, which is known as the scaraboid form, especially popular from 600 B.C. to 500 B.C., in the Archaic Period. With primitive engraved gems and scarabs (2500 B.C. to 900 B.C.) as well as with later ones, the archÆologist has to move cautiously, since imitations were manufactured at a very early time. The researches in Crete by Arthur Evans brought to light great numbers of engraved seals and stones that are unquestionably of remote antiquity, and, by the form of their engraved characters, indicate the existence of a system of writing of a far earlier date than had been assigned to calligraphy on Greek soil. The most interesting examples of this class were found in the Palace of Minos at Cnossos, and were used for sealing documents in the Cretan script, while others were used in sealing storage vessels. That there is nothing new under the sun seems again to have been demonstrated in the discovery at MycenÆ of a massive engraved signet portraying three ladies in modern-looking divided skirts, a subject quite as up-to-date as the beflounced corseted, frilled, and bonneted ladies that the Cretan frescos disclosed a few years ago, to the bewilderment of the Parisian dressmakers.

However, the intaglii which typically mark the early MycenÆan period are the Island Stones (900 B.C. to 600 B.C.), a name given to a lenticular stone of steatite, rock crystal, carnelian, or chalcedony, such stones being chiefly found in the Greek islands and in the Mediterranean region, where MycenÆan remains are to be found. The decorative devices employed were nearly always animals, such as the lion, deer, bull, goat, singly or quasi-heraldically arranged in pairs, facing in or facing out. Their artistic merit was often of a high order, though this excellence was somewhat over-balanced by the figures being arranged to occupy the entire area of a gem’s surface. As Dr. Walters of the British Museum observed, “this horror vacui, or dread of leaving a vacant space, was characteristic of Greek artists at all periods.”

The Transitional Period proper, from 500 B.C. to 450 B.C., produced very fine gems with genre subjects. These were probably influenced somewhat by the freedom acquired by the Greek vase-painters, whose art reached its perfection in that era. From thence onward no subject seems to have daunted the gem-engraver who reproduced the most intricate details and reduced to miniature marvelously well the beauties of those groups of colossal statuary that particularly inspired him, subjects from paintings or his own devices, or figures, heads and portraits of his contemporaries, men, women and children—portraits which must have been possessed of the virtue of likenesses to an extraordinary degree, else they would not for centuries have continued in such favor. As Renton says, “we are forcefully reminded of the extreme durability of engraved gems when we reflect that some at the present time contained in our museums and collections have been buried in tombs or in the earth; others have been thrown upon the shore, washed by the sea or exposed to fire, pillage, and other dangers, but still appearing with the engraving in some instances as clear, sharp, and defined as it was the day they left the artist’s hands.” It is this careful and peculiar finish to the work that distinguishes the truly antique gems from the spurious.

We have little reliable data concerning the artists in glyptic art from the primitive period represented by the Samian Theodorus, who made the famous ring for Polycrates, to the period of the art’s perfection, 450 B.C. to around 400 B.C. To the latter period belongs, by right of his excellence, Pyrgoteles, who engraved the seals of Alexander.

The least doubtful names, perhaps, are those of Agathopous, Apollonides, Aspasios, Athenion, Boethos, Dexamenos, Dioskourides, Epitynchanos, Herakleides, Herophilos, Hyllos, Mykon, Nikandrus, Onesus, Pamphilos, Protarchos, Solon, and Teukrus, tedious to catalogue perhaps, still a small number out of proportion to the vast quantity of intaglii that have been recovered from the past. We are sure of Dioskourides under Augustus, but even in antiquity names were forged upon gems at a later date or by an alien hand, such forgeries being especially common from the time of the Renaissance on. Indeed, it became quite as much the fashion to mutilate antique gems by adding bogus signatures as it did later to imitate the glyptic art of the ancients and attempt to pawn off forgeries and fabrications on the enthusiastic but indiscriminating. Of this the reader will find further mention in the chapter on Fraudulent Art, which follows. In ancient times intaglii were also imitated in glass and much affected by the poorer classes, so early had the idea of cheap imitation jewelry taken root.

However, such work was obviously false, while there have been some very clever imitations engraved on very fine gems. The famous Poniatowski Collection was the greatest of the gigantic frauds of the sort perpetrated. In the happier days of the First Empire the patronage of the Empress Josephine had brought appreciation of the glyptic art to a pinnacle, whence it fell from mere discouragement by the exposition of the Poniatowski Collection fraud in a London market. These gems might best be described as regular pictures in stone and portraits of all the celebrated men of antiquity, each blandly “authenticated” with his proper name and the artist’s signature! No wonder collectors and amateurs turned, frightened, to scan their own collections. If such traffic was fostered by dealers of their time, what recourse had they outside careful and arduous scholarship? Still, minute rudimentary knowledge of gem-engraving and its chronological phases should at once have set them at ease. The amateur of to-day knows that a signed gem is an exception to the rule and rests secure in the knowledge.

Although the various periods of Greek glyptic art have been indicated, it may be helpful to repeat them here in tabulated form, following mainly Walter’s scheme of classification.

Greek gems of the latest period are rare in comparison with those of periods preceding and following.

That Greek influence reached Etruria has been shown by full evidence in many ways, and we have large numbers of engraved gems from Etruscan tombs of the fifth and fourth centuries, these intaglii having for their subjects most commonly incidents from legends of the Greek heroes. It is well to note that deities are rarely portrayed on Etruscan gems, whose form was usually that of the scarab. The fourth century finds their workmanship greatly deteriorating.

The Romans were very fond of engraved gems and practised the glyptic art from early times. When Constantine the Great removed the seat of the Roman Empire to Constantinople in 329 A.D. this art, like the other arts, followed him thither, of course; but for over a thousand years succeeding the intaglii produced seldom attained great excellence and the taste for engraved gems followed other esthetic tendencies into the obscure retirement of the dark ages. In fact, the glyptic art almost became extinct, but with the expulsion of the Greeks from Constantinople by Mahomet in 1453 A.D. it found itself again on Italian soil, thereafter to grow strong and flourish from the root it had taken.

Just as the ecclesiastics converted Greek painted vases to altar use and sculptured sarcophagi into containers of holy water, they now turned their attention to engraved gems and rescued these baubles from the reproach of being mere vanities by clothing their subjects with Christian legends. Probably to this fact we owe the preservation of some of our finest examples. It was a difficult task to rechristen the gems and endow them with a sacred character quite out of keeping with their conception. However, the early church was ingenious and gave to Jupiter with his eagle the significance of St. John the Evangelist, while Melpomene did very well for Salome with John the Baptist’s head. However, gem-engravers arose to help truth out with veritable subjects, and the church became a powerful patron of the art of gem-engraving. Prelates and princes hastened to have their fancies carried out in intaglii, until the cinquecento produced a host of clever engravers capable of catering to any taste or to any fad or fancy. About this time the forms of intaglii were greatly enlarged.

Lorenzo de’ Medici and his successors were munificent patrons of the gem-engraver, and not only formed splendid collections of intaglii but encouraged engravers in Florence, and by the middle of the fifteenth century a graceful classic style had been revived. Giovanni, surnamed Della Corniole, was one of the most excellent artists of the time, and in his everlastingly entertaining “Memoirs” Benvenuto Cellini speaks of Micheletto, who was “very clever at engraving carnelians, an old man and of great celebrity.” This was the engraver whom Vasari calls by the affectionate diminutive “Michelino,” but Cellini himself later calls him “Michele.”

The gem-engravers of the sixteenth century were prolific, and their work appealed immensely to the French taste. Francis I was a liberal patron of the glyptic art and had at his court the renowned gem-engraver, Matteo del Nassaro of Verona. Probably the first French gem-engraver of note was Julien de Fontenay, sometimes known as Coldore, who executed an intaglio portrait of Henry IV, and was later invited to England by Queen Elizabeth. Subsequently a taste for the art developed in England, although the culmination of encouragement was not reached until the middle of the eighteenth century, when collecting engraved gems became a mania with many and good examples brought huge prices. Up to the beginning of the nineteenth century the influence of classic designs obtained. King George III was a liberal patron of gem-engravers, and to the foresight of the Duke of Devonshire and Marlborough the world owes the preservation of some of the finest examples extant of intaglii of any time.

The works of such classicists as Marchant, who studied in Rome many years, and of his successor, Burch, a Royal Academician, extending over a period of years from 1750 to 1815 or thereabouts, are well worth while, and would reveal an excellence of execution unsurpassed. Then followed such men as Weigall, Bragg, Grew, and in our own day the Rentons, who engraved intaglii for members of the royal family.

Since the heraldic style has followed the classic, interest in the art of intaglio-engraving has waned tremendously and can be brought back only by the revival of that classic spirit which, after all, underlies everything that is best the world over, in art or in literature.

The substances employed by the gem-engravers are amethyst, hyacinth, agate, carnelian, chalcedony, crystal, and other precious gems. In our own day almost every stone is employed. The lapidary must not be confused with the gem-engraver. The first prepares the stone to receive the work of the second, just as the wood-sawyer prepares the material for the carpenter, or the man at the quarry the block for the sculptor. Pliny described at some length the process of gem-engraving in his day. As to the ancient mode of engraving gems, in which the drill wheel and diamond point were used, the use of the wheel is especially noticeable in the lenticular Island gems; it was a small bronze disk set on a shaft of metal worked like the drill with a bow and tube of emery powder; its purpose was for cutting lines to connect the points made by the drill, or else for broad, sunken surfaces. The diamond point, on the other hand, was used like a pencil, with the hand alone; it resembles the modern glass-cutting diamond and was employed for giving an artistic finish to the design, which could of course be best done with the free hand. The use of this tool required great technical skill, the results of which may clearly be seen on some gems of the best period.

In passing it is interesting to note the devices to which makers of fraudulent “antique” intaglii have been known to resort. As an instance, that misty dullness of the stone which only age is supposed to give is produced in Italy by forcing the smaller engraved gems down the unwilling gullets of defenceless turkeys, whereupon the action of the gastric juice and the gritty substances in the gizzard outdo the devices of Time himself, as the funeral of the unhappy bird reveals to the dissecting and dishonest fabricator.