Marlborough gem

The "Marlborough gem" is a carved onyx cameo that depicts an initiation ceremony of Psyche and Eros. It is the most famous engraved gem in the extensive and prominent collection both inherited (through a marriage in 1762) and expanded by George Spencer, 4th Duke of Marlborough. It is conserved in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where it is called Cameo with the Wedding of Cupid and Psyche, or an initiation rite, reflecting the view of its subject generally held until the last century.

In the carving, Cupid and Psyche are depicted as veiled putti accompanied by other infants, one of whom holds over their heads a winnowing-fan filled with pomegranates, emblems of bios and fertility. Signed Tryphon, it was probably made in the 1st century CE, though its date has been questioned and a case made for a 16th-century origin. The Gem was given by Peter Paul Rubens, who declared that he loved gems beyond all other relics of antiquity, to Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel, in the 17th century. Another famous gem from the Marlborough Collection that is also sometimes known just as the "Marlborough Gem" is a head of Antinous.

The artist's signature is minutely incised into the black background of the stone, just above the central figures in the frieze-like procession. Various 18th-century sources reported that Louis XIV of France had been prepared to offer the equivalent of £4000 in the previous century. An early 16th-century drawing of the subject by the architect and antiquarian Pirro Ligorio was seen among the papers of Rascas de Bagarris recorded by Jacob Spon. The gem was carefully drawn by Theodorus Netscher and engraved by Bernard Picart for Philipp von Stosch's Gemmae antiquae caelatae (1724) which placed its magnified image in the hands of all Europe's antiquarians and rendered it part of the visual repertory of milordi on the Grand Tour, who knew it from its illustration added to the 1728 French edition of the Jonathan Richardsons' (Senior and Junior) Account..., published in French as Traité de la Peinture et de la Sculpture... Amsterdam, 1728; in the 18th century the English could be counted on to pay top prices for outstanding carved hardstones of assured antiquity.

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