Monday, November 27, 2017

European Cameos, 19th century

Anonymous Italian gemcutter
Head of Hercules
ca, 1850
sardonyx
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Adolphe David
Cameo - Fall of Phaeton
ca. 1850-75
sardonyx
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

THE STORM

The storm that batters the magnolia's
impermeable leaves, the long-drawn drum roll
of Martian thunder with its hail

(crystal acoustics trembling in your night's lair
disturb you while the gold transfumed
from the mahoganies, the pages' rims
of the de luxe books, still burns, a sugar grain
under your eyelid's shell)

lightning that makes stark-white the trees,
the walls, suspending them  
interminable instant  marbled manna
borne now as condemnation: this binds you
closer to me, strange sister, than any love.
So, the harsh buskings, bashings of castanets
and tambourines around the spoilers' ditch,
fandango's foot-rap and over all
some gesture still to be defined . . .
                                                         As when
you turned away and casting with a hand
that cloudy mass of hair from off your forehead

gave me a sign and stepped into the dark.

 Eugenio Montale (1896-1981), translated by Geoffrey Hill

Giovanni Antonio Girardet
Cameo - Amorino with Garland
ca. 1860-70
onyx
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Giuseppe Girometti
Cameo - Head of Hercules
ca. 1825-50
sardonyx
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Giuseppe Girometti
Cameo - Head of Cicero
ca. 1815-25
onyx
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Giuseppe Girometti
Cameo - Nessus abducting Dejanira
ca. 1815-25
sardonyx
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Giuseppe Girometti
Cameo - Bust of the Muse Thalia
ca. 1825-50
onyx
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Niccolò Morelli
Cameo - Bust of Bacchante
ca. 1820-30
onyx
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Niccolò Morelli
Cameo - Bust of Bacchante
ca. 1820-38
onyx
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

MARCH WIND

I will know nothing of my life but its mysteries,
the dead cycles of the breath and sap.

I shall not know whom I loved, or love
now that in the random winds of March

I am nothing but my limbs. I fall
into myself, and the years numbered in me.

The thin blossom is already streaming from my boughs.
I watch the pure calm of its only flight.

 Salvatore Quasimodo (1901-1968), translated by Don Paterson

Benedetto Pistrucci
Cameo - Marine Venus with Cupid
ca. 1820-30
onyx
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Benedetto Pistrucci
Cameo - Head of Medusa
ca. 1840-50
jasper
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Benedetto Pistrucci
Cameo - Nymph and Swan
ca. 1830-40
agate
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Elena Pistrucci
Bust of Minerva
(after the Giustiniani Minerva in the Vatican)

 ca. 1870-80
onyx
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Maria Elisa Pistrucci
Head of Hercules
ca. 1850
onyx
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Luigi Saulini
Cameo - Cupid with Dog
ca. 1860-70
shell
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York