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Cameo with portrait head of a Ptolemaic queen
Greek, Ptolemaic
Hellenistic Period
2nd–1st century B.C.
Medium/Technique
Sardonyx
Dimensions
Height x width: 4.9 x 4 cm (1 15/16 x 1 9/16 in.)
Credit Line
Bartlett Collection—Museum purchase with funds from the Francis Bartlett Donation of 1912
Accession Number23.592
NOT ON VIEW
CollectionsJewelry, Ancient Greece and Rome
ClassificationsJewelry / Adornment – Cameos
Catalogue Raisonné
Lewes House Gems, no. 127 (1920; 2002, additional published references).
DescriptionWatered gray layered onyx. Cameo, in modern gold mount. Head of a queen in the Greco-Egyptian Ptolemaic dynasty, wearing the cap of vulture's feathers and diadem, pharaonic insignia common to Egyptian royal women. She wears her hair in formal corkscrew curls on her brow. The background is lost.
ProvenanceBy 1892, Michal Tyszkiewicz (b. 1828 - d. 1897), Rome [note 1]; June 8 - 10, 1898, posthumous Tyszkiewicz sale, Hotel Drouot, Paris, lot 302. By 1923, Edward Perry Warren (b. 1860 - d. 1928), Rome and London; 1923, sold by Warren to the MFA for $32,948.27 [note 2]. (Accession Date: November 21, 1923)
Notes:
[1]Wilhelm Froehner, La Collection Tyszkiewicz (Munich, 1892), p. 31, pl. XXXIII, 5. Said to have been brought by a man from the “East” to Giulio Sambon of Naples.
[2]Total price for MFA accession nos. 23.576-23.594.
Notes:
[1]Wilhelm Froehner, La Collection Tyszkiewicz (Munich, 1892), p. 31, pl. XXXIII, 5. Said to have been brought by a man from the “East” to Giulio Sambon of Naples.
[2]Total price for MFA accession nos. 23.576-23.594.