Cameo Appearances [adapted from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 65, no. 4 (Spring, 2008)] | MetPublications

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Cameo Appearances
[adapted from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 65, no. 4 (Spring, 2008)]

Draper, James David (2008)

This title is in print.

Description

The Metropolitan Museum's Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts oversees roughly 250 small, wondrously wrought hard-stone cameos dating from the Renaissance to the Victorian era, a collection that outshines that of any other American museum. It was with a view toward bringing these cameos to greater attention that in 2005 James David Draper, Henry R. Kravis Curator in the department, arranged a survey of about 100 examples in the gallery devoted to periodic showings of the department's possessions, subsequently endowed as the Wrightsman Exhibition Gallery. Drawing also upon the resources of the departments of Greek and Roman Art, Medieval Art, and American Art, as well as the Robert Lehman Collection, the Museum at one stroke was able to demonstrate the origins of cameos in classical antiquity, their rare occurrences in the Middle Ages, their efflorescence from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, and their spread to the New World.

The exhibition of cameos proved to be well liked by visitors, and it would have been a disservice to scholarship if it had left no record, particularly as the objects themselves are not only eloquently evocative of past civilizations but also extremely photogenic. The situation is now redressed by this Bulletin.

About the authors

James David Draper is Henry R. Kravis Curator of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Tags

Authors

James David Draper

Artists

Amastini, Niccolè (Italian, 1780–1851) | David, Adolphe (French, 1828–1896) | Girometti, Giuseppe (Italian, 1780–1851) | Pichler, Giovanni (Italian, 1734–1791) | Pistrucci, Benedetto (Italian, 1789–1855; active in England, 1815–55) | Saint-Gaudens, Augustus (American, 1848–1907) | Saulini, Luigi (Italian, 1819–1883)

Keywords

Titles by thematic category (1029)

American Art, 19th Century

European Art in the 17th–18th Centuries

European Art in the 19th Century

Titles by author (29)

James David Draper

Exhibition

Cameo Appearances

Inspired by the recent acquisition of a magnificent jasper carving of the head of Medusa by Benedetto Pistrucci, the exhibition traces cameo carving from Greco-Roman antiquity to the nineteenth century, highlighting the Metropolitan's splendid holdings of Neoclassical Italian cameos by the great gem carvers Pistrucci, Girometti, and Saulini. It also considers related subjects such as cameo glass, illuminates the differences between cameos and intaglios, and discusses fakery.

Cameos are carved in relief on stones such as onyx, sardonyx, or agate, and arranged in variegated light- and dark-colored strata, or layers. In general, hardstone cameos are more prized than those carved in seashells, which are softer and easier to make. Carvers often manipulated the strata so that figures of two or more colors would emerge. One atmospheric example in the exhibition is a late sixteenth-century cameo by Alessandro Masnago. Working with a three-inch-high piece of variegated agate, the artist created a pastoral scene of a shepherdess and her flock resting in a moonlit landscape with a city in the background.