Engraved Gem - Collectors

Collectors

Famous collectors begin with King Mithridates VI of Pontus (d. 63 BC), whose collection was part of the booty of Pompey the Great, who donated it to the Temple of Jupiter in Rome. Julius Caesar was determined to excel Pompey in this as in other areas, and later gave six collections to his own Temple of Venus Genetrix; according to Suetonius gems were among his varied collecting passions. Many later emperors also collected gems. Chapters 4-6 of Book 37 of the Natural History of Pliny the Elder give a summary art history of the Greek and Roman tradition, and of Roman collecting. According to Pliny Marcus Aemilius Scaurus (praetor 56 BC) was the first Roman collector.

As in later periods objects carved in the round from semi-precious stone were regarded as a similar category of object; these are also known as hardstone carvings. One of the largest, the Coupe des Ptolémées was probably donated to the Basilica of Saint-Denis, near Paris, by Charles the Bald, as the inscription on its former gem-studded gold Carolingian mounting stated; it may have belonged to Charlemagne. One of the best collections of such vessels, though mostly plain without carved decoration, was looted from Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade, and is in the Treasury of the Basilica of San Marco in Venice. Many of these retain the medieval mounts which adapted them for liturgical use. Like the Coupe des Ptolémées, most objects in European museums lost these when they became objects of classicist interest from the Renaissance onwards, or when the mounts were removed for the value of the materials, as happened to many in the French Revolution.

The collection of 827 engraved gems of Pope Paul II, which included the "Felix gem" of Diomedes with the Palladium, was acquired by Lorenzo il Magnifico; the Medici collection included many other gems and was legendary, valued in inventories much higher than his Botticellis. Somewhat like Chinese collectors, Lorenzo had all his gems inscribed with his name.

The Gonzaga Cameo passed through a series of famous collections before coming to rest in the Hermitage. First known in the collection of Isabella d'Este, it passed to the Gonzaga Dukes of Mantua, Emperor Rudolf II, Queen Christina of Sweden, Cardinal Decio Azzolini, Livio Odescalchi, Duke of Bracciano, and Pope Pius VI before Napoleon carried it off to Paris, where his Empress Joséphine gave it to Alexander I of Russia after Napoleon's downfall, as a token of goodwill. It remains disputed whether the cameo is Alexandrian work of the 3rd century BC, or a Julio-Claudian imitation of the style from the 1st century AD.

Three of the largest cameo gems from antiquity were created for members of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and seem to have survived above ground since antiquity. The large Gemma Augustea appeared in 1246 in the treasury of the Basilique St-Sernin, Toulouse. In 1533, King François I appropriated it and moved it to Paris, where it soon disappeared around 1590. Not long thereafter it was fenced for 12,000 gold pieces to Emperor Rudolph II; it remains in Vienna, alongside the Gemma Claudia. The largest flat engraved gem known from antiquity is the Great Cameo of France, which entered (or re-entered) the French royal collection in 1791 from the treasury of Sainte-Chapelle, where it had been since at least 1291.

In England, a false dawn of gem collecting was represented by Henry, Prince of Wales' purchase of the cabinet of the Flemish antiquary Abraham Gorlaeus in 1609, and engraved gems featured among the antiquities assembled by Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel. Later in the century William Cavendish, 2nd Duke of Devonshire, formed a collection of gems that is still conserved at Chatsworth. In the eighteenth century a more discerning cabinet of gems was assembled by Henry Howard, 4th Earl of Carlisle, acting upon the advice of Francesco Maria Zanetti and Francesco Ficoroni; 170 of the Carlisle gems, both Classical and post-Classical, were purchased in 1890 for the British Museum.

By the mid-eighteenth century prices had reached such a level that major collections could only be formed by the very wealthy; lesser collectors had to make do with collecting plaster casts, which was also very popular, or buying one of many sumptuously illustrated catalogues of collections that were published. Catherine the Great's collection is in the Hermitage Museum; one large collection she had bought was the gems from the Orléans Collection. Louis XV of France hired Dominique Vivant to assemble a collection for Madame de Pompadour.

In the eighteenth century British aristocrats were able to outcompete even the agents for royal and princely collectors on the Continent, aided by connoisseur-dealers like Count Antonio Maria Zanetti and Philipp von Stosch. Zanetti travelled Europe in pursuit of gems hidden in private collections for the British aristocrats he tutored in connoisseurship; his own collection was described in A.F. Gori, Le gemme antiche di Anton Maria Zanetti (Venice, 1750), illustrated with eighty plates of engravings from his own drawings. Baron Philipp von Stosch (1691–1757), a Prussian who lived in Rome and then Florence, was a major collector, as well as a dealer in engraved gems: "busy, unscrupulous, and in his spare time a spy for England in Italy". Among his contemporaries, Stosch made his lasting impression with a great volume on the subject of Gemmæ Antiquæ Cælatæ (Pierres antiques graveés) (1724), in which Bernard Picart's engravings reproduced seventy antique carved hardstones like onyx, jasper and carnelian from European collections, a volume of inestimable value to antiquarians and historians. It immediately joined the repertory of books of engravings after antiquities of all kinds. Stosch also encouraged the young German artist Johann Lorenz Natter (1705–1763), a German gem-engraver and medalist, whom Stosch set to copying ancient carved gems in Florence. Frederick the Great of Prussia bought Stosch's collection in 1765 and built the Antique Temple in the park of the Sanssouci Palace to house his collections of ancient sculpture, coins and over 4,000 gems - the two were naturally often grouped together. The gems are now in the Antikensammlung Berlin.

The collection of "Consul" Joseph Smith (1682–1770), British consul in Venice was bought by George III of England and remains in the Royal Collection. The collections of Charles Towneley, Richard Payne Knight and Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode were bought by or bequeathed to the British Museum, founding their very important collection. But the most famous English collection was that formed by the 4th Duke of Marlborough (1739–1817), "which the Duke kept in his bedroom and resorted to as a relief from his ambitious wife, his busy sister and his many children". This included collections formerly owned by the Gonzagas of Mantua (later owned by Lord Arundel), the 2nd Earl of Bessborough, and the brother of Lord Chesterfield, who himself warned his son in one of his Letters against "days lost in poring upon imperceptible intaglios and cameos". The collection, including its single most famous cameo, the "Marlborough gem" depicting an initiation of Cupid and Psyche, was dispersed after a sale in 1899, fortunately timed for the new American museums and provided the core of the collection of the Metropolitan in New York and elsewhere, with the largest group still together being about 100 in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

Prince Stanisław Poniatowski (1754–1833) "commissioned about 2500 gems and encouraged the belief that they were, in fact, ancient." He presented a set of 419 plaster impressions of his collection to the King of Prussia which now form the Daktyliothek Poniatowski in Berlin, where they were recognised as modern in 1832, mainly because the signatures of ancient artists from very different times were found on gems in too consistent a style.