3 Roman Carnelian, Jasper & Bronze Intaglios - Victory, Eagle & Bust

Roman, Republican to Imperial period. A trio of miniature engraved gems and a matrix, each small enough to vanish in a closed palm. The largest is a leaded bronze seal matrix, stamp, or die, used for impressing or casting glass gems, its face carrying a beardless male bust in profile to the left. The mid-size piece is a carnelian intaglio cut with a standing winged Victory turned left, extending a wreath in her outstretched hand. The smallest, an octagonal jasper, holds a striding bird, likely an eagle, moving left with its body in profile. Intaglios of this scale were set into finger rings and pressed into wax or clay to seal correspondence and goods, making each a signature in stone. Sold as a lot of three. Victory, the Roman Nike, was the sanctioned image of favorable outcome: she alights on the prow of ships, crowns generals, and hovers behind emperors on coinage. A wreath held forward, as here, is the gesture of conferral, and on a private seal it functioned as a small daily petition for success in whatever the sealed document contained. The eagle carried a parallel charge as the bird of Jupiter and, from the reforms of Marius onward, the standard of the legions; on gems it reads as both divine escort and imperial loyalty. The bronze element belongs to a distinct and less familiar category. Rather than a gem worn on the hand, it is a working tool: matrices of this kind were used to impress or cast the molded glass gems that supplied the enormous middle market for sealstones, giving artisans a repeatable device for portrait types. Surviving examples are considerably scarcer than the glass and stone gems they produced. Item # 204641

Estimate:£224.25

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