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Gonzaga Cameo

Gonzaga Cameo
The Gonzaga Cameo in the Hermitage Museum
Height15.7 cm
Width11.8 cm
Createdpossibly 3rd century BC
Present locationSaint Petersburg, Russia

The Gonzaga Cameo is a Hellenistic engraved gem; a cameo of the capita jugata variety cut out from the three layers of an Indian sardonyx, dating from perhaps the 3rd century BC.[1] It was a centrepiece of the Gonzaga collection of antiquities, first described in a 1542 inventory of Isabella d'Este's collection as representing Augustus and Livia.[2] The figures were later identified as Alexander the Great and Olympias, Germanicus and Agrippina the Elder, Nero and Agrippina the Younger, and many other famous couples of antiquity.[1] The male figure on the cameo is clad in the attributes of Alexander, including a laurel-wreathed helmet, and wears a gorgoneion. His other aegis represents a bearded head, probably that of Zeus Ammon.[3] The man's laurel wreath is crowned by a snake which suggests the uraeus. The contrasting male and female profiles were in all probability intended to suggest Zeus and Hera.[4] The brown necklace is a later addition masking that the cameo was, at some point, broken in half.

  1. ^ a b Gonzaga Cameo history Archived 2009-06-24 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference сто was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference pollitt was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Portraits of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II Archived 2009-04-02 at the Wayback Machine. The Hermitage Museum. Retrieved on 2009-05-15.

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