Roman Banded Glass Intaglio, Two Cupids with Horse

Roman, Imperial period. A miniature oval glass intaglio, made to be set in a finger ring. It is cast in layers: a band of deep cobalt blue runs down the middle between two bands of leafy green, imitating the striped hardstones that wealthy Romans prized. The sunken image shows two nude cupids, or putti, with a horse. One rides on the horse's back. The other sits in front of the animal and seems to hold a bunch of grapes. Two disc-shaped forms fill the background; they may be shields or stones. Cupids with grapes belong to the world of Bacchus, the wine god, so the scene probably refers to his cult. Pressed into wax, a gem like this could have worked as a seal, but it was just as much a piece of colorful personal jewelry. In the late first century BCE and the first century CE, Roman glassworkers made large numbers of layered glass gems. They copied sardonyx and nicolo, the expensive banded stones used for engraved gems, and sold them to buyers who could not afford the real stones. The colored layers were fused together. The image was usually pressed into the soft glass from a mold taken from a carved stone, so these pastes often repeat subjects known from carved gems. Erotes (winged or wingless child-gods of love) were among the favorite subjects of Roman gem engravers. They often appear in light-hearted scenes taken from the cult of Dionysus, picking grapes, riding animals, or playing with the god's equipment. Item # 204680

Estimate:£227.02

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