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| Cameo Charles V (the Wise) France 1370s sardonyx Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
"Look around the world: Contemplate the whole and every part of it: You will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain. All these various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy which ravishes into admiration all men who have ever contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human contrivance; of human design, thought, wisdom, and intelligence. Since, therefore, the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble; and that the Author of Nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man, though possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of the work which he has executed. By this argument a posteriori, and by this argument alone, do we prove at once the existence of a Deity, and his similarity to human mind and intelligence."
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| Cameo Louis XII France ca. 1500 onyx Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
"But allowing that we are to take the operations of one part of nature upon another for the foundation of our judgment concerning the origin of the whole (which never can be admitted), yet why select so minute, so weak, so bounded a principle as the reason and design of animals is found to be upon this planet? What peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain, which we call 'thought', that we must thus make it the model of the whole universe? Our partiality in our own favor does indeed present it on all occasions; but sound philosophy ought carefully to guard against so natural an illusion."
– from Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion by David Hume (1779)
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| Cameo Diane de Poitiers France ca. 1550 sardonyx Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Cameo Leda and the Swan France 16th century sardonyx Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Cameo Mars and Venus France after 1503 shell cameo Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Cameo Androcles and the Lion France 16th century shell cameo Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Intaglio Hercules in female attire France 16th century amethyst Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Cameo Julius Caesar France 16th century shell cameo Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Cameo Louis XIII and Marie de' Medici France 17th century agate Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Intaglio Mercury France ca. 1680-1720 rock crystal Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Intaglio A Sacrifice France 17th century lapis lazuli Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Cameo Minerva in crab helmet France 17th century chalcedony Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Intaglio Portait of Julia Titi France 17th century carnelian Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Cameo Louis XIV France 18th century sapphire Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |