Girls' Night on Mount Olympus

Large Bracelet With Shell Cameos in Gilt Silver, Italy/Britain, c. 1870

€ 2,490.00 ^*

Content 1 piece

Incl. VAT, Shipping

Large Bracelet With Shell Cameos in Gilt Silver, Italy/Britain, c. 1870

Description

This description was automatically translated from German. If you have any questions about this piece of jewellery, we will be happy to help!

Bella Napoli: The city on Mount Vesuvius has long been the center of European cameo production. No wonder that a piece of jewellery with cut shell has always been one of the most popular souvenirs from the capital of Campania. Especially in the 19th century, more and more tourists reached the city at the foot of Mount Vesuvius. Like the generations before them, they naturally wanted to take home souvenirs from this trip to the south. Often, cameos with mythological motifs were chosen for this purpose, which were then purchased loose and set in the homeland. The bracelet presented here is such a gem, whose cameos were almost certainly cut in the Bay of Naples. The jewellery features four large cameos set in gilded silver and connected by small chains. Two of the cameos are surprisingly large for the setting of a bracelet, which thus comes to a maximum width of five centimeters. We see on the first cameo the goddess Hebe feeding nectar to Zeus in eagle form. The second cameo depicts the personification of the night, Nyx, with her attributes of owl and opium poppy. Psyche meets us on the third cameo, recognizable by a small butterfly. Aurora, the goddess of dawn, can be seen on the fourth cameo, behind her rays of sunlight. Based on the high quality cut cameos, we date this piece of jewellery to around 1870. We discovered it in London.

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For centuries, possessing ancient cameos was an aspiration of almost all great collections, from the Green Vault in Dresden to the treasury of Rudolf II to large private collections such as that of Baron von Stosch in later times. The 18th and 19th centuries produced numerous large imprint collections of ancient sealstones and cameos, which were able to represent the ancient imagery of glyptic almost in its entirety. Due to the great travels undertaken by young nobles and wealthy citizens during this period, the use of cameos changed in the early 19th century and they were now increasingly used in jewellery.

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Size & Details

Girls' Night on Mount Olympus

€ 2,490.00 ^*

Content 1 piece

Incl. VAT, Shipping

Our Promise

We want you to be 100% satisfied! For that reason, we examine, describe and photograph all of our jewellery with the utmost care.

You can rely on our years of experience in the trade and our expertise as a professional art historians for reviews of the antique jewellery. As a member of various trade organisations and the British Society of Jewellery Historians, we remain committed to the highest possible degree of accuracy. In our descriptions, we always also indicate any signs of age and defects and never hide them in our photos – this saves you from any unpleasant surprises when your package arrives.

Should you for some reason not be satisfied, please don’t hesitate to contact us so that we can find a solution together. In any case, you can return any article within one month and we will refund the full purchase price.

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Girls' Night on Mount Olympus

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