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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2011
On 13th May 1856 Granville George Leveson Gower, 2nd Earl Granville (1819–91), Liberal diplomat and politician, wrote to Viscount Canning announcing his appointment as representaive of Queen Victoria at the coronation of Tsar Alexander II in Moscow that summer. He added that before accepting he had consulted his wife Marie, who had ‘pronounced some sage aphorisms, but danced a hornpipe and lamented that it would be necessary to buy twenty gowns and have her diamonds reset’. Marie Granville's sense of the importance of jewellery on such an occasion was shared by her husband's uncle, William, 6th Duke of Devonshire (1790–1858), who, on behalf of George IV, had attended the coronation of Tsar Nicholas I in 1825. Having himself experienced Russian hospitality at its most magnificent he knew what was expected of the representatives of foreign royalty, and he not only gave the Granvilles money and lent them also his silver, but he commissioned a set of jewels incorporating hundreds of diamonds and eighty-eight cameos and intaglios from his ancestral collection.
1 Fitzmaurice, Lord Esmond, Life of Granville George Leveson Gower (London, 1905), I, p. 181Google Scholar. Marie Granville, widow of Sir John Acton of Aldenham in Shropshire, married Lord Granville in 1840. Brought up in France, she was the daughter of Emeric due de Dalberg, of an ancient Rhineland family claiming descent from a Roman soldier related to Jesus Christ who had settled at Herrnsheim. Her great uncle, Karl von Dalberg (1744–1817), Archbishop Elector of Mainz, Grand Duke of Frankfurt, is the subject of cameo portraits in the Cabinet des Médailles, Paris, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. Cf. Kris, E., Catalogue of Postclassical Cameos in the Milton Weil Collection (Vienna, 1931)Google Scholar, no. 81. Her portrait, by Ary Scheffer (1795–1858), is in the collection of her descendant, the Hon. Mrs. J. M. Corbett.
2 Hancock, C. F., Illustrated and Descriptive Catalogue of the Celebrated Devonshire Gems from the Collection of the Duke of Devonshire K.G. Arranged and Mounted for His Grace as a Parure of Jewels (London, 1857).Google Scholar
3 Sir Joseph Paxton (1801–65), architect and landscape gardener, manager of the Derbyshire estates of the 6th Duke of Devonshire.
4 Morning Chronicle, 30th April 1857, quoted by C. F. Hancock, op. cit. (n. 2): ‘To the taste and zeal in professional matters of Mr. Hancock not only the construction and arrangement of this valuable set of jewels, but also the first idea of turning the gems to such an account is due’. The parure was exhibited at the Mechanics Institution, Manchester, February-March 1857, at the Archaeological Institute in London, 1861 (cf. Arch. J. xviii (1861), 300–2), and at the International Exhibition, South Kensington Museum, 1862, where the International Jury of Class Three especially noticed the setting of the Devonshire gems (cf. Masterpieces of the Exhibition (London, 1863), pl. 203).Google Scholar
5 Information kindly supplied by Mrs. Shirley Bury, F.S.A., formerly Keeper of Metalwork, Victoria and Albert Museum.
6 Babelon, E., Catalogue des camées antiques et modernes de la Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris, 1897), no. 367, illustrates a gold necklace with two cameo pendants and four gold coins all set in openwork mounts dating from the third century A.D., which is the most important piece of cameo-set jewellery surviving from antiquity.Google Scholar
7 Vever, H., Histoire de la bijouterie française au I9ème siècle (Paris, 1906), I, pp. 66–70.Google Scholar
8 Ibid., p. 40.
9 Smyth, Coke, Album of Forty Costumes at Buckingham Palace Masked Ball (London, 1843).Google Scholar
10 Fortnum, C. D., ‘Notes of the Antique and Renaissance gems and jewels at Windsor Castle’, Archaeologia, xiv (1874), 1–28Google Scholar, and Tonnochy, A. B., ‘Jewels and engraved gems at Windsor Castle’, The Connoisseur, xcv, May (1935), 276–81.Google Scholar
11 A design for the frame of a Medusa cameo by Étienne Delaune (1519–83) is in the Department of Western Art, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Delaune Folio III, no. 70), and others are engraved by René Boyvin (fl. 1576), Livre de dessins de joaillerie et de bijouterie (n.d., repr. Paris, 1876), nos. 4 and 8.Google Scholar
12 Hackenbroch, Y., Renaissance Jewellery (London, 1980), pp. 82–4.Google Scholar
13 Pliny, Natural History, XXXVII, 8: ‘the man who made the excellent likeness of Augustus of revered memory which his successors have used as their seal, namely Dioskourides’.
14 O. Neverov, ‘Gems in the collection of Rubens’, Burlington Magazine, cxxi, July (1979), 424, quoting from a letter from the painter to the antiquary Claude Nicolas de Peiresc: ‘nothing has ever delighted me more than gems’.
15 J. Grove, The Lives of all the Earls and Dukes of Devonshire (London, 1744), p. 114, discusses the collection formed by the 2nd Duke and also the gems—‘representing a whole history on the little precious stone, some swelling in the majestick relievo, camea ways on the oriental sardonyx and onyx: others incusely engraved on the beautiful cornelian, the portraits and real resemblance of the famous poets, historians and philosphers there to be seen, where the virtues, the graces, the divinities of old are all in perfect representation handed down by these arts for posterity to behold’.
16 Kagan, J., ‘On the history of seventeenth-century glyptics in England’, Western European Art of the Seventeenth Century (Leningrad, 1981), pp. 177–97, discusses the formation of these three collections.Google Scholar
17 Lewis, L., Connoisseurs and Secret Agents in Eighteenth-Century Rome (London, 1961).Google Scholar
18 Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, Codex. Lat. Ottoboni 3116.
19 J. J. Winckelmann, Catalogue des pierres gravées du feu Baron de Stosch (Florence, 1760, repr. Baden Baden, 1970).
20 Pliny, Natural History, XXXVII, 8: ‘Pyrgoteles undoubtedly the most brilliant artist in this field. Next to him in fame have been Apollonides …’.
21 Reinach, S., Pierres gravées (Paris, 1895), Pierres Publiées par Stosch, VIII, nos. 11 and 29.Google Scholar
22 Gosmond de Vernon, Collectio Figuraria Gemmarum Antiquarum ex Dactyliotheca Ducis Devoniae (London, 1730); Beloe, W., Anecdotes of Literature (London, 1814), 1, p. 186, praises these engravings: ‘they possess no inconsiderable share of breadth and simplicity of style and have the further recommendation of faithfulness’.Google Scholar
23 E. Nau, Lorenz Natter (1703–1763) (Biberach, 1966).
24 ‘Catalogue des pierres gravées de la fameuse collection de Monseigneur le Due de Devonshire’ (1761), MS. at Chatsworth. Arch. J. xviii (1861), 301, mentions a copy formerly the property of Lord Bessborough, ‘now in the possession of Mr. Slade’. The royal copy, transcribed by Gabriel des Champs of Mecklenbourg, is in the British Library, Kings MS. 392.
25 MS. at Chatsworth. Mrs. Strong was advised by Professor Adolf Furtwängler, who illustrated some of the most important gems from the Devonshire collection in Die antiken Gemmen (Berlin, 1900). In vol. III, pp. 409–11, of this work he praises the connoisseurship of Philip von Stosch.Google Scholar
26 F. Blackburne, Memoirs of Thomas Hollis (London, 1780), p. 172.
27 L. Natter, Traité de la méthode antique de graver en pierres fines (London, 1751), p. xxxvi: ‘Mais j'espère de publier dans quelques terns un Musaeum ou Cabinet des Gravures Antiques qui se trouvent actuellement à Londres’, and in his Catalogue des pierres gravées de Mylord Comte de Bessborough (London, 1761), ‘le peu d’encouragement que j'ai trouvé dans ce pays m'a fait abandonner cette idée’. J. Kagan and O. Neverov, ‘Lorenz Natter's Museum Brittanicum gem collecting in mid 18th-century England’ I and II, Apollo, cxx (Aug. and Sept. 1984), nos. 270 and 271.
28 Diadem, nos. 57 and 63.
29 Coronet, no. 80.
30 Diadem, no. 55. Cf. Henig, M., Corpus of Engraved Gemstones from British Sites, B.A.R. 8 (Oxford, 1978), p. 43, for a discussion of the motifs recorded on signets from military sites in Roman Britain.Google Scholar
31 Kent, J. P. C., Roman Coins (London, 1978), no. 42.Google Scholar
32 Diehl, E. Zwierlein, Die antiken Gemmen des Kunsthistorischen Museums in Wien (Munich, 1979), 11, no. 1516, for another gem depicting Victory being applauded in this way.Google Scholar
33 Diadem, no. 63.
34 Diadem, no. 69.
35 Plutarch, Lives, XXIV, 3, describes Mark Antony arriving in Ephesus in 42 B.C.: ‘the women met him dressed up like Bacchantes, and the men and boys like satyrs and fauns, and throughout the town nothing was to be seen but spears wreathed round with ivy, harps, flutes and psaltries, and Antony in their songs was Bacchus, the Giver of Joy, and the Gentle’. For gems connected with this cult see Vollenweider, M. L., Die Steinschneidekunst und ihre Künstler im spätrepublikanischer und augusteischer Zeit (Baden Baden, 1966), pl. 9, 10, 26.Google Scholar
36 Comb, no. 8.
37 Diadem, no. 71.
38 Necklace, no. 46.
39 R. Raspe and J. Tassie, A Descriptive Catalogue of Engraved Gems (London, 1791), nos. 5091 and 4211.
40 Reinach, op. cit. (n. 21), ‘Pierres gravés du Due d'Orleans’, VII, p. 138, planche 126, no. 66, cornelian head of Bacchus: ‘le Régent portait souvent cette pierre au doigt et s'amusait à en tirerdes empreintes’.
41 Vollenweider, op. cit. (n. 35), p p. 18–20.
42 Diadem, no. 65.
43 Dio Cassius, XLIII, 43.
44 Necklace, no. 41.
45 Stomacher, no. 31.
46 Bandeau, no. 13.
47 Vollenweider, op. cit. (n. 35), pl. 59. no. 2.
48 Ibid., pl. 41, no. 1.
49 Raspe, op. cit. (n. 40), nos. 9385–474.
50 Suetonius, 11, 50.
51 Bandeau, no. 10.
52 Necklace, no. 42. Babelon, op. cit. (n. 6), no. 302, relates to this portrait. Information kindly supplied by M. L. Vollenweider, who discusses the group in her forthcoming catalogue of the gems in the Cabinet des Medailles.
53 Karabacek, J., ‘Ein römischer Cameo aus dem Schatze der Aijubiden Sultane von Hamah’, Sitzungsberichte der K. Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philos.-Histor. Klasse c XXIX, Abh. v (Vienna, 1893), 1–22. Information kindly supplied by Ralph Pinder-Wilson, F.S.A.Google Scholar
54 Pope-Hennessy, J., The Italian Plaquette, Hertz Lecture, British Academy (1964), p. 67.Google Scholar
55 Natter, op. cit. (n. 27), p. xxvii: ‘Les amateurs préfèrent de beaucoup une bonne copie d'une gravure qu'ils affectionent à une gravure nouvellement imaginée quelque parfaite qu'elle put être dans le fonds’. A. P. Giulianelli, Memorie degli intagliatori (Livorno, 1753), p. 156, describes how Thomas Hollis while in Florence saw a gem of a dancing Bacchante in the collection of Cavaliere Luigi Pitti and, wanting one exactly like it, ordered a copy from the engraver Borghiani.
56 A. Maffei, Gemmae Antiquae Figuratae (Rome, 1707), IV, pl. 28; P. von Stosch, Gemmae Antiquae Caelatae (1724), pl. LXIII.
57 A. F. Gori, Dactyliotheca Smithiana (Venice, 1767), pls. XXI and XXII.
58 de Don Juan, Conde de Valencia, Catalogo de la Real Armeria de Madrid (Madrid, 1908), no. 64, shield of Charles V, made by Negroli of Milan.Google Scholar
59 B. de Montfaucon, L'Antiquité expliquée, suppl. tome v (Paris, 1725), pl. LI.
60 Dalton, O. M., Catalogue of the Engraved Gems of the Post-Classical Periods (London, 1915), no. 208.Google Scholar
61 Babelon, op. cit. (n. 6), no. 623.
62 Raspe, op.cit. (n. 39), nos. 7374,7375 (without veiled woman).
63 Necklace, no. 51.
64 Diadem, no. 53.
65 Stomacher, no. 26.
66 Stomacher, no. 25.
67 Lucian, Dialogues of the Sea Gods, 15.
68 G. P. Valeriani, Hieroglyphica (Cologne, 1631), p. 774, cap. XLI.
69 Ibid., p. 734, cap. XIV.
70 Stomacher, no. 21.
71 Hackenbroch, op. cit. (n. 12), fig. 9, p. 4.
72 Eichler, F. and Kris, E., Die Kameen im Kunsthistorischen Museum (Vienna, 1927), nos. 195, 229, 260.Google Scholar
73 Stomacher, no. 29.
74 Kagan, J., Western European Cameos (Leningrad, 1973), p.16.Google Scholar
75 Bandeau, no. 15.
76 Planiscig, L., Venezianische Bildhauer der Renaissance (Vienna,1921), pl. 163.Google Scholar
77 Kagan, J., ‘Portrait cameos in the age of the Tudors: problems of interpretation, dating and attribution’, Museum, 1 (Leningrad, 1980), pp. 29–36, for a full discussion of this subject. She associates these cameos with another product of the English court school of engraving hitherto neglected in this context—the Lesser Georges worn by the Knights of the Order of the Garter. An exception to the almost exclusively royal series of portraits is the sardonyx cameo of Sir Christopher Hatton with his crest at the back, preserved at Drayton, Northants.Google Scholar
78 Kagan, ibid., also mentions the magical properties ascribed to these stones.
79 Necklace, no. 48.
80 The Vertue Note Books, IV, Walpole Society, vol. 24 (Oxford, 1936), p.84.Google Scholar
81 A.Gorlaeus, Dactyliotheca, ed. J.Gronovius (Leiden, 1695), no. 103, subsequently in the Arundel and Marlborough Collections; cf. Maskelyne, N. Story, Catalogue of the Marlborough Gems (London, 1870), no. 498c.Google Scholar
82 The Vertue Note Books, VI, Walpole Society, vol. 30 (Oxford, 1955), p. 53: ‘Richard Atzile graver of stone paid a fee of £20 yearly’, and for gift to Henry VIII, 1st January 1539, ‘a broach of gold with an antique head’. Kagan, op. cit. (n. 77), p. 33.Google Scholar
83 Oman, C., British Rings (London, 1974), p. 31Google Scholar, quotes from G. Cavendish, Life of Wolsey, describing how at Christmas 1529 the King sent the fallen Cardinal a ring from his finger, set with his portrait on a ruby, originally Wolsey's gift to himself. Although this ring has disappeared there is a signet set with the portrait of Henry listed by Oman, op. cit., p. 106, 46B, and fully discussed on p. 31. He notes that the engraving is not high quality, and that an impression from it is on a deed signed on 31st October 1576 by Dorothy Abington of Hindlip, Worcs., wife of the cofferer to Queen Elizabeth I. Other versions of Royal portraits are recorded in wood, cf. Cecil MS., Historical Manuscripts Commission (London, 1883), vol. 1, p. 129Google Scholar: stuff delivered to the Lady Jane, usurper at the Tower, ‘two little images of box graven representing the King's majesty and the late King Henry his father’.
84 Society of Antiquaries, MS. 129 A, fol. 1556.
85 Necklace, no. 36.
86 Diadem, no. 57.
87 Kagan, op. cit. (n. 77), suggests that the good supply of onyxes and sardonyxes reflects the extent of the market established in London by British trading enterprise during the Tudor period, as well as pointing to an English origin for the group.
88 Grueber, H., Medallic Illustrations of the History of Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1911), no. 17, pl. VIII.Google Scholar
89 Nichols, J., Progresses of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1823), 11, p. 389.Google Scholar
90 Diadem, no. 66.
91 Kagan, op. cit. (n. 77), gives the medallic and painted prototypes for each of the figures represented. Note 1 refers to articles by O. Neverov on the Roman dynastic cameo.
92 The Vertue Note Books, 11, Walpole Society, vol. 20 (Oxford, 1932), p.91.Google Scholar
93 Bury, Shirley, ‘A Royal Order of Victoria and Albert’, Society of Jewellery Historians Newsletter, vi, January (1979),8.Google Scholar
94 Comb, no. 4.
95 Kagan, op. cit. (n. 16), p. 183.
96 Another, still in original enamelled setting, is in the British Museum, Dalton, op. cit. (n. 60), no. 388.
97 I. Scandaliato Ciciani, La letteratura numismatica nei secoli XVI-XVIII, exhibition 29th May-29th June, 1980, Palazzo Venezia, Rome.
98 Diadem, nos. 59 and 62 respectively.
99 Diadem, no. 64. Cf. Kent, op. cit. (n. 31), no. 349.
100 Dalton, op. cit. (n. 60), lxxxvi; similar to no. 88.
101 Coronet, nos. 74, 76, 82, 83, 84.
102 Billing, A., The Science of Gems, Coins and Medals (London,1875), p. 22, ‘notwithstanding the exquisite work of the jeweller’.Google Scholar