Now this question
need be asked no longer.
The cameo, as may be remembered from the many descriptions published at
the time, was said to be absolutely the finest extant. It was a sardonyx
of three strata--one of those rare sardonyx cameos in which it has been
possible for the artist to avail himself of three different colors of
superimposed stone--the lowest for the ground and the two others for the
middle and high relief of the design. In size it was, for a cameo,
immense, measuring seven and a half inches by nearly six. In subject it
was similar to the renowned Gonzaga Cameo--now the property of the Czar of
Russia--a male and a female head with imperial insignia; but in this case
supposed to represent Tiberius Claudius and Messalina. Experts considered
it probably to be the work of Athenion, a famous gem-cutter of the first
Christian century, whose most notable other work now extant is a smaller
cameo, with a mythological subject, preserved in the Vatican.
The Stanway Cameo had been discovered in an obscure Italian village by one
of those traveling agents who scour all Europe for valuable antiquities
and objects of art.
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