Carved Gems from Ancient Rome, now in Vienna

Ancient Rome
Augustus drawn in Chariot by Tritons
27 BC
sardonyx cameo
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Ancient Rome
Gemma Augustea
(Augustus enthroned, Tiberius at left descending from chariot)
AD 9-12
onyx cameo
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Ancient Rome
Caligula with Roma
AD 38-41
sardonyx cameo
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Ancient Rome
Imperial Eagle
AD 54
sardonyx cameo
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

The Eagle

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

– Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1851)

Ancient Rome
Figure of Victory driving a Chariot
ca. 25 BC - AD 25
onyx cameo
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Ancient Rome
Centaur
1st century AD
onyx cameo
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Ancient Rome
Two-sided Gem with the Dioscuri
3rd century BC
jacinth intaglio
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Ancient Rome
Actaeon attacked by his Dogs
ca. 50-25 BC
sard intaglio
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Ancient Rome
Hercules with Cupid
ca. 50-25 BC
carnelian intaglio
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Ancient Rome
Harpocrates (God of Silence)
2nd-1st century BC
emerald cameo
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Ancient Rome
Venus with Dead Adonis
ca. 50-25 BC
sardonyx cameo
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Ancient Rome
Masked Comic Actor
1st century AD
onyx cameo
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Ancient Rome
Serpent-Legged Giant
ca, 50-25 BC
carnelian intaglio
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Ancient Rome
Fleeing Woman
1st century BC
onyx cameo
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Portraits of the Ancients as Gems (Vienna)

Hellenistic Greek Culture in Egypt
Portraits of Ptolemy II Philadelphus
and his sister-wife Arsinoe II
ca. 278-269 BC
onyx cameo with gold mount
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Ancient Rome
Portrait of a Woman
1st century BC
onyx cameo with enameled-gold mount,
set with diamonds and rubies
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Ancient Rome
Bust of a Youth
ca. 60-50 BC
carnelian intaglio mounted in gold finger-ring
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Ancient Rome
Portrait of a Married Couple
AD 230
sardonyx cameo with gold mount
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Artist working in Italy
Busts of Four Roman Emperors
ca. 1550-1600
agate cameo with enameled-gold mount
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Artist working in Italy
Portrait of Agrippina as Ceres
16th century
onyx cameo with gold mount
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Artist working in France
Bust of a Roman Emperor
ca. 1575-80
onyx cameo with enameled-gold mount
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Artist working in Italy
Portrait of Nero
ca. 1600
chalcedony cameo with enameled-gold mount
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Artist working in Italy
Bust of a Roman Emperor
ca. 1600
agate cameo with silver-gilt mount
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Artist working in Prague
Bust of Alexander the Great
ca. 1600-1620
moss-agate cameo with gold mount
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Niccolò Morelli
Bust of Alexander the Great
ca. 1800-1830
jasper cameo with gold mount
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Artist
Bust of Antinoüs
ca. 1690-1710
carnelian intaglio with gold mount
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Giuseppe Girometti
Bust of Antinoüs
before 1851
onyx cameo with gold mount
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Artist
Portrait of Livia as Ceres
ca. 1700-1750
aquamarine intaglio with silver mount
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

"Certainly the weather was variable.  It was green in the garden; grey the next.  Here came the sun – an illimitable rapture of joy, embracing every flower, every leaf.  Then in compassion it withdrew, covering its face, as if it forebore to look on human suffering.  There was a fecklessness, a lack of symmetry and order in the clouds, as they thinned and thickened.  Was it their own law, or no law, they obeyed?  Some were wisps of white hair merely.  One, high up, very distant, had hardened to golden alabaster; was made of immortal marble.  Beyond that was blue, pure blue, black blue; blue that had never filtered down; that had escaped registration.  It never fell as sun, shadow, or rain upon the world, but disregarded the little coloured ball of earth entirely.  No flower felt it; no field; no garden." 

– Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts (1941)

Roman Divinities in Vienna

Rome
Jupiter
1st-2nd century AD
bronze relief-appliqué
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Head of Medusa
1st century AD
sardonyx cameo
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Head of Medusa
1st-2nd century AD
glass cameo
(16th-century Italian mount)
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Hermes
ca. AD 150
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Hercules
1st-2nd century AD
bronze
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Apollo
2nd century AD
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Serapis and Isis
2nd century BC
onyx
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Satyr
1st century AD
amethyst cameo
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

from The Strayed Reveller 

They see the ferry
On the broad, clay-laden
Lone Chorasmian stream – thereon,
With snort and strain,
Two horses, strongly swimming, tow
The ferry-boat, with woven ropes
To either bow
Firm harnessed by the mane, a chief
With shout and shaken spear
Stands at the prow and guides them, but astern
The cowering merchants in long robes
Sit pale beside their wealth
Of silk-bales and of balsam-drops,
Of gold and ivory,
Of turquoise-earth and amethyst,
Jasper and chalcedony,
And milk-barred onyx-stones.

– Matthew Arnold (1849)

Rome
Hygeia
1st-2nd century AD
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Ares
1st-2nd century AD
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Sol
2nd-3rd century AD
bloodstone intaglio
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Psyche
ca. 50-25 BC
sard intaglio
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Diana
2nd century AD
sardonyx cameo
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Mask of Zeus Ammon
2nd century AD
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Roman Portraits in Vienna

Rome
Drusus Major
ca. AD 20
glass cameo
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Demetrius of Phalerum
ca. 100 BC - AD 100
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Livia Drusilla with bust of Augustus
ca. AD 14-29
sardonyx cameo
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

"For before the historian can try to make valid use of a visual source, however undemanding, however simple, he has to know what he is looking at, whether it is authentic, when and for what purpose it was made, even whether it was considered to be beautiful.  He also has to have some awareness of the circumstances, conventions and constraints that always govern what can be represented in art at any given time and of the technical means that are available to the figurative artist for expressing his vision."

– Francis Haskell, History and its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Past (Yale University Press, 1993)

Rome
Augustus
1st century AD
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Socrates
ca. 50-25 BC
carnelian intaglio
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Aristotle
1st-2nd century AD
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Claudius
ca. AD 41-54
chalcedony cameo
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Julia the Elder
ca. 2 BC
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Caracalla
ca. AD 211-217
aquamarine intaglio
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Commodus
ca. AD 180-192
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Antinoüs
ca. AD 135-137
bronze coin from Stratonikeia-Hadrianopolis
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Hadrian
ca. AD 117
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Gemma Claudia
(Claudius, Agrippina the Younger, Germanicus, Agrippina the Elder)
AD 49
onyx cameo
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rome
Julia Mamaea
ca. AD 222-235
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna