A ROMAN AGATE CAMEO OF A FEMALE PRINCESS, CIRCA 2ND-3RD CENTURY A.D.

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A ROMAN AGATE CAMEO OF A FEMALE PRINCESS, CIRCA 2ND-3RD CENTURY A.D. Of oval form, carved in low relief from a pale banded agate, the white upper stratum worked against the warmer translucent ground to yield the profile bust of a woman facing right. The head is shown in strict profile, the features finely modelled with a straight nose continuing the line of the forehead, a small closed mouth, and a rounded chin. The hair is dressed close to the skull and drawn back from the brow in fine parallel striations, gathered at the nape into a shaped chignon rendered with vertical fluting. The bust terminates at the shoulder, the drapery falling in soft folds across the upper chest and gathered into a looped fold at the front. Iron-brown earthen incrustations remain in the recesses of the hair, drapery, and along the edges of the field, and the perimeter of the stone retains an irregular natural contour. The subject is identifiable as a woman of high status by the treatment of the coiffure and the formal profile bust format, both drawn from the imperial portrait tradition. The tightly waved hair drawn back into a low nodus or chignon at the nape follows a fashion current among Roman women of the Antonine and Severan periods, and closely echoes the coiffures seen on coin portraits of empresses and princesses of the imperial house. The strict profile view, cut close to the surface of the upper layer of the stone, follows the convention established for cameo portraits of members of the Julio-Claudian and later dynasties, in which the sitter's rank is signalled by the medium itself as much as by any diadem or attribute. Cameo carving in banded agate and sardonyx was among the most prestigious of Roman glyptic arts. The technique required the lapidary to work the harder upper layer of the stone away in graduated relief while preserving the darker ground beneath, a slow and unforgiving process demanding both material of the correct natural stratification and considerable technical command. The stones themselves were imported into the workshops of Rome and the wider empire from India and Arabia, and the finished cameos were reserved for imperial portraits, dynastic gifts, and the private commissions of the senatorial and equestrian classes. Portraits of imperial women in this medium served both as objects of personal adornment, mounted in rings or pendants, and as instruments of dynastic display circulated among the court. This cameo exemplifies the private-scale imperial portrait tradition of the middle Empire, in which the profile bust of a princess or lady of the court was rendered in miniature on precious banded stone for use in personal jewellery. The type stands at the intersection of portraiture and adornment, transmitting the visual language of the coin and the state relief into the intimate register of the ring stone. Dimensions: Height: 3.2cm

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