Chinese Buddhist Sculptures; their purpose and function

Dear Reader,
Following up on the last post about Chinese Buddhist Sculpture and Fakes, I am now going into the purpose and function of these beautiful works of art.
As many of my readers are aware, but some may not be, Buddhism believes that the world is illusion and the source of suffering, that desire is the cause of pain, and to transcend the world and escape from the world is the highest good. Buddha, through meditation and his middle path, arrived at through years of different practices, attained nirvana, the state of full release from this world. Such an unworldly religion would seem to be antithetical to the creation of art, and for the first few centuries it was aniconic, with no images of the Buddha per se, his presence was represented by a footprint, the wheel of Dharma, the Bodhi Tree under which he attained enlightenment, and an empty throne. It was only in the Gandhara, which was influenced by Greece and Rome as Alexander the Great had gotten that far into India and ties developed between the two worlds, that images of the Buddha started to be created. Legend has it that the King Udayana, who was a disciple of the Buddha, after the Buddha passed into parinirvana, found his absence unbearable and commissioned the first statue of him. According to the legend all subsequent statues of the Buddha were based on that original image.

Standing Buddha
Gandhara, 3rd Century A.D.
Grey schist, Height: 38 inches.
(from my personal collection, sold in 2008)

The above image, of a Buddha I owned for a few years, and then sold, is the prototypical Gandhara Buddha. Characteristic of this style are the Western style drapery which is naturalistically rendered with the body revealed underneath it. Also typical are the un-Western proportions, dictated not by nature but by scripture, as you will read later here.
However, given the emphasis on the internal and personal experience of the follower, who through meditation was attempting to follow the Buddha into Nirvana, the role of art is hard to understand. However as Buddhism developed over time it broadened and incorporated other beliefs into it, and different schools of practice developed. The Mahayana, "Great Vehicle", made room for images, and in China, is explained best in the essay Merit-Cultivation Practices and Image Making in the Northern Dynasties, by Wendi Leigh Adamek, published in Treasures Rediscovered, Chinese Stone Sculpture from the Sackler Collections at Columbia University, in 2008. A remarkable catalog, this essay is one of the best explanations of Buddhism and the role of art in it that I have read to date.

According to Adamek:

"As noted at the outset, it is helpful to see Buddhist images in light of the complex links between faith and doctrine. From the devotional perspective, not only the images of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas but also the scriptures themselves functioned as manifestations of the Dharma (Buddhist teachings), with a salvational power that was accessible to all devotees. This soteriological (from Soter, savior) or salvific, function does not run counter to the Buddhist doctrines of no-self and emptiness....According to this doctrine, ....there are no individual beings....All that appears to us is an illusion....
In the Huayan school of Buddhism, this is explained through a visual analogy: it is as if the universe is a vast net with glittering jewels hung at every intersecting point. Every jewel is reflected in all other jewels, and all the jewels are reflected in each. In reality, however, there are no jewels and no net; in other words there are no beings and no time and space. .....
Ordinary beings perceive the illusory manifestations produced by the interrelation of all phenomena and believe them to be real. Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, however, are those who have realized the ultimate lack of reality of these phenemena. Buddhas (fully realized) and bodhisattvas (on the path to Buddhahood) are no longer bound by appearances, and they are able to work with conventional truth in order to help other beings overcome the illusions that produce suffering....
Devotion to Buddhas and bodhisattvas and to the images that represent them elicits a response, moving the salvific figure to deploy the power of his or her merit to relieve the sufferings of the devotee. Note that according to this view of reality, both the cosmic Buddhas and the images that represent them are illusions, but they are illusions created through merit and thus have the power of "skillful means."....
The Two Truths are two perspectives on the same reality/effect. The seemingly specific and illusory nature of images and merit on the conventional level is not different from unlimited, absolute emptiness. The two levels are inseparable, but they appear to refer to each other."

This is heady stuff, think about it for a moment; if all is illusion, time and space don't exist, then the Buddha is both in the image and in his "Pure Land" at the same time, these images both truly reflect the beings represented even though they are illusions. That the enlightened ones see through the illusion of this world, and can work with it, mean that truly, when you see halos around their heads, and flames shooting around them, these beings radiate power, the power to transform the world. As fire is a transforming agent, it destroys, melts, changes what it touches, so the Buddha's presence does to the world around him. Think of the movie the Matrix, when Neo sees the matrix and can then work with it, he transcended the rules of the matrix. The Matrix is one of my favorite movies as it is one of the best popular culture representations of this Buddhist idea.

Another aspect of Buddhist belief emphasized visualizations as a way to get closer to the Buddha and enlightenment. There were specific exercises and guides to visualization meant to help the believer in this. Images were an aid in this visualization, and were created according the the scriptural descriptions of the Buddha. There were two sets of attributes, the 32 Signs of the Great Man, and 80 secondary characteristics. Not to list them all, here are few to give you an idea of the scriptural description that shaped the images of the Buddha we see here:
Level feet, long slender fingers, arched insteps, hands reaching below the knees, well retracted male organ (that is why he appears almost feminine in the body), Golden hued body, Ten-foot aura around him, and many more, but lastly, Fleshy protuberance on the crown of the head (the ushnisha).

Standing Buddha, China, Northern Wei (386-534)
Gilt bronze, Height: 55 1/4 inches
Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

One of the characteristics listed is finely webbed toes and fingers, which some early sculptures show, but later that unnatural feature is dropped. If one were really to create such a figure following the enumerated features, the result would be quite strange, freakish actually. However, the artists managed to find a harmonious medium, using some but not all of the prescripted attributes, but it explains why the figures are not naturalistic, and sometimes appear awkward or even provincial to a Western eye. In the East, the artists were interested in depicting a spiritual reality, not the physical reality we all refer too. The image above of a superb gilt bronze statue at the Metropolitan Museum has the webbed hands, which are huge, on overly long arms, and very unnatural proportions. But it is beautiful and very expressive. Interesting it is dated by an inscription on the back to the year 486 A.D., which makes it a relatively early Chinese Buddhist sculpture.

In summation, while Buddhism's goal is non-being, an escape from reality, achieved through meditation and other practices, the images created were aids on the path, and can be understood in the context of the scriptures and beliefs. The early flowering of Buddhism in China from the Fifth through Eighth Centuries produced some of the worlds greatest sculpture, the equal in its majesty, to Egyptian or Khmer Cambodian sculpture with which it shares an austerity and elegance.

The subject of a gem finally identified!

Engraved banded agate, 20mm long

I have owned this gem for years; an intaglio carved of a domed banded agate, depicting an athletic young man holding a discus in his lowered left hand and an strings in his raised right. When I bought it it was unset, and I put it in a ring of my own making, with a heavy 22k gold bezel around the stone on a silver ring. Unfortunately the stone is cracked, but it is otherwise complete and quite beautiful in quality. The detail of the musculature is remarkably fine and precise for such a tiny image, and the intensity of the gaze is remarkable in how readable it is even though on such a tiny scale. This is a masterpiece of the glyptik arts, but what exactly are we looking at? What is this beautiful young man doing, and is this ancient or a Neo-Classical gem inspired by antiquity?

The impression taken with Sculpey

The first bit of information I got was when researching for parallels, I found an almost exact one in Lippold, Gemmen und Kameen des Altertums et der Neuzeit, published by Julius Hoffman Verlag, Stuttgart, 1920, illustrated with a photo of the impression, described as: "Athlet, Diskos in der Rechten, Riemen in der Linken, Romisch. Petersburg. A.G. XLIV, 30"

illustration of impression in Lippold, plate LV, number 14

So the gem in Lippold's book, which he dates as Roman following his citation of Furtwangler's Die Antiken Gemmen, is almost exactly like mine, so much so that for awhile I was wondering if mine was not the one in Lippold. But of course in Lippold the gem illustrated is said to be in St. Petersburg, which would mean in the collection of the Hermitage, which remains intact as far as I know.

A year or so after buying this gem, I was lucky enough to handle a collection of rings from David Daniels, including the one on the xerox below, which I took from the inventory at the time I had the group on consignment.

Xerox of inventory page for the garnet ring.

While hard to see, I think you can tell that the image is again, almost identical. This is unquestionably ancient as it is in its original massive and very beautiful gold ring. So far two close parallels, both accepted as ancient and hard to distinguish from mine. However for years I left it at that, put the ring in my safe and didn't think much about it. I didn't want to wear it, as the raised dome makes it more vulnerable and the crack made it even more so. However, inspired by some recent purchases of gems at the Miami Beach Antiques show, I revisited the gem.

A word about Gem collecting in the 18th into the 19th Century. Those of my readers unfamiliar with the world of engraved gems may wonder at the dim photographs of impressions from old books and the uncertainty as to dating and wonder what is this all about. The first thing to know is that gems were one of the most highly regarded and emulated of the ancient arts. There are several reasons for this, their survival in relatively high numbers and their reuse as embellishments for state and religious jewelry and objets d'arts. Some gems may never have been buried, as when the barbarians sacked Rome on multiple times, one of the targets was the treasury of the Capitoline Temples, which had a huge gem collection given to it by various benefactors over the Centuries. Small, of durable materials and highly portable, they were dispersed across Europe. When I went to Basel and visited the Cathedral Museum there, I was struck by seeing ancient gems set in reliquaries from the 10th to 14th Centuries, sometimes in very odd an inappropriate ways. For example I was surprised to see a gilt silver relief of the Virgin Mary where the face was a Roman agate cameo of none other than the Gorgon herself, Medusa. How wrong is that, the woman who can turn men to stone at a glimpse of her, on the body of the most benevolent of all female Christian figures? I suspect that the medieval artisans simply saw a female face, and recognized its age and preciousness, but not the subject since the Renaissance was centuries away, and simply put it where it seemed to fit. Personally, I love seeing that kind of reuse, since it in fact preserved many ancient pieces that who knows what would have become of them if they weren't highly regarded.

By the Renaissance though, when scholars were re-discovering the ancient texts and looking afresh at ancient art, gems were highly regarded and sought after. One reason for this is that alone of all the arts, gems survive complete and as they were intended, if devoid of their original settings. In other words you see complete scenes and figures, unlike the usually fragmentary survival of larger sculptures and architectural remains. And scholarship of them could be easily disseminated, they lent themselves to line drawings that could be turned into engravings, and you could take impressions of them, make casts of them, and once the skills of the artisans progressed, make new ones. In the Renaissance copying ancient gems was not their purpose, the artists of the day were interested in making art inspired by antiquity but they believed they could improve upon it so did their own thing with it. But by the 18th Century, with the wealth of the aristocracy pursuing everything ancient, and the taste being informed by the new archeological discoveries of Pompeii and Herculaneum, the gem engravers got very skilled at copying the style of the antique and making new gems inspired by the antique that fooled the people of the day.

Information was widely disseminated by the use of plaster casts of impressions and glass casts of the gems. A Scotsman James Tassie (1735-1799) developed a way to make very sharp detailed casts in colored glass and eventually developed a catalogue of of 15,000 of them, which only a very few of the wealthiest collectors bought in its entirety, Catherine the Great being one of them. The V&A is one of the few places with the complete impressions of the entire body, and Oxford got permission to take photos of the complete set, and it is all online now at the Beazley Archives along with the complete scan of the Raspe catalogue.

The most notorious case of modern gems being passed off as ancient was the case of the collection of Prince Stanlislas Poniatowski (1754-1833), a Polish prince, who settled in Rome and built up a large collection of gems starting with a small collection he had inherited from his uncle the King of Poland. The prince restricted access to the collection and it built up a mythic reputation. He published a catalog of it in 1830, and after his death it was sold at Christies in London in 1839, with collectors paying vast sums to acquire the gems. Within a few years though, doubts that had been percolating for years finally came to a head, when scholars could finally examine the gems. It became clear that the Prince had commissioned the 2600 gems from the foremost artists of his day, creating glyptich illustrations of Ovid, the myths of Hercules, and portraits of almost every ancient mythical or historic personage. Based on no ancient or contemporary works of art, these were original creations, if they were deceptively presented. By the mid-19th Century when the scandal had played its course, the mania for gems was essentially over, and gem carving declined in quantity and quality.

Burned by being duped by Poniatowski, scholars became ever more skeptical and this attitude has persisted to this day. One good thing however is that the "modern" gems were highly regarded as works of art on their own and many books on gem engraving such as Lippold and the Tassie impressions have it all, the ancient and the modern. This allows for one to educate ones eye, and chance upon cases where scholars may have been too conservative and put into the modern category a possible ancient piece or visa versa.

This brings me back to my athlete gem. Now re-interested in gems I started to research anew. One thing that changed since I last was researching this gem is the web, and the Beazley Archives from Oxford, which has done my world a great service by putting several entire catalogs of gems and impressions on the web. And then there is Google, which is busy digitizing books, many very obscure, which once could only be gotten in a few places in the world. I found the motif again in the Beazley Archives, mentioned before, see below:

Here is the screen grab of the photos that Oxford took of the Tassie impressions in the V&A. The number corresponds to their entries in the catalog by Erich Raspe, printed in 1791 in both English and French. The entry for the gems above is below:

I at first assumed that Number 7963 is the one in Lippold, and here, while no collection is given for it, the material is, Chalcedony. But since Lippold was early 20th Century, it may not be the same gem, as each is so similar that in these not so great images taken of impressions, are very hard to judge precisely. One point of difference is the position of the upraised arm, even in the dark and blurry images, they do appear to be held at a slightly different angle so they may not be the same gems. The second example, number 7964, is damaged but while a little different in the direction of the gaze of the athlete, very similar in pose and physique. Oddly enough, from a totally random source, I purchased a glass cast of number 7964, and because at first glance it appeared crude to me, I just stuck in on a shelf. However its closeness to the gem I put in a ring I remembered and brought it down to look at. It is much better than I remembered, with the musculature well rendered, and readable. There is a little bubble though in the face, and other tiny flaws resulting from its being a cast, see below:


Pretty remarkable actually, to have stumbled across this from a small dealer at some antique fair, although to be honest, I don't remember who or where now it was so long ago. It is irrefutably of Raspe's number 7964, the damage and pose are identical, and that gem has long been accepted as being ancient.

However, the subject of the gem remained unknown, it has been variously described as, athlete with reins, a discobolus, even a quoit player. Here enters a new friend, a pen pal really since our relationship has to date been exclusively through email correspondence, whose name is Ittai Gradel and who is known from a book he wrote a book on Emperor worship among the Romans. He first contacted me about the Athena Cameo, and I sent him images of another gem, the Hostilianus, and he was enormously helpful in figuring out what it was and who it represented, see my post about it: story of a gem...
Given Ittai's interest and knowledge of gems, and at his request, I sent him a photo of the Athlete. He was enthusiastic in his response to it, but of course the questions are, what is this athlete doing, i.e. what is the subject, and also is this ancient. Based on style and closeness to accepted ancient examples, we both agreed it is likely to be ancient. Ittai then turned his attention to the subject and in a triumphant email to me wrote this:


So your athlete is a *pentathlete* who has just thrown the javelin, and is now about to throw the discus. The reins/strap/thong he holds is indeed what I mentioned before, connected with javelin throw - e. g. described here (from wikipedia s. v. javelin throw):
'The one major difference between the javelin of the ancient games and the javelin of more modern times is a leather thong, called an ankyle that was wound around the middle of the shaft. Athletes would hold the javelin by the thong and when the javelin released this thong unwound giving the javelin a spiraled flight.'
(The Ancient Olympic Games by Judith Swaddling is the obvious ref here for further study)
Add to this that the pentathlete was in fact considered the ideal type of athlete (again from the excellent perseus site given above):
'Aristotle describes a young man's ultimate physical beauty: "a body capable of enduring all efforts, either of the racecourse or of bodily strength...This is why the athletes in the pentathlon are most beautiful." (Aristotle,Rhetoric 1361b)'

This explains the focus of the gaze of the young man, he has just thrown his javelin and has the discus for his next feat. It also explains the extraordinary physique of this athlete, he is meant to be so as a pentathlete, the ultimate athlete. I think Ittai is correct and he has figured out something no one else has in over two hundred years. Remarkable bit of sleuthing and insight on his part.

You can see why engraved gems are so engaging, they are beautiful, and when you start looking at them and researching them, offer a remarkable depth of knowledge to be acquired. And because they are fairly well documented often, you can find parallels, and in earlier catalogs sometimes even their history. In our time they have been neglected which means you can make discoveries, not only buying things that are unrecognized for what they are, but making new discoveries about them as Ittai did with the Pentathlete.

Springfield Museums again

Last week I found myself heading to my conservator in Holyoke to pick up a piece, and decided to also pay a quick visit to the Springfield Museums, as I really enjoy them. This time I made it to the Springfield History museum, which turned out to be quite a treat.

Widow Seated with Her Dogs, 1640
attributed to Frans Luycx, Flemish, 1604-1668

For some reason this dour picture captured my attention. Beautifully painted the elderly lady is enshrouded with luxurious black satins, with two adorable dogs beside her, one of which reaches up to sniff her hand. This is a great portrait painting, which manages to be both intimidating and somehow sympathetic. At first formidable in appearance upon a closer look, the lady is seemingly almost approachable. The dogs betray her humanity.

Detail of the Portrait of a Widow

While not pretty, and pretty scary still, I think I detect the hint of a smile on her lips. Maybe she is not so mean really.

The real treat this trip though, because the last times I have gone I have not gone into it, was the History part of the museums. I had no idea that Springfield was such a major center of industry, the made cars, motorcycles, guns, Friendly's started there, the list goes on. Below are a few highlights of the automobile portion.

1928 Rolls-Royce Phantom I
made in Springfield MA

This beautiful Rolls Royce was one of the few made in this country, when Rolls Royce, recognizing the market in the US, located their production in Springfield MA. The depression finished it off, they last just about a decade making cars there. This Phantom belonged to a local businessman who was a major patron of the museums, M. Allen Swift. He owned the car for 77 years, the longest of any owner in Rolls-Royce's history, and took care of it himself, it reportedly still runs like new.

1928 Pierce Arrow, Brougham 81 Opera

This beautiful car is another star of the museum, purchased in Springfield in 1928. The label states that it is one of Americas most original cars with only 2763 miles on its odometer. That is very cool, this car never needed to be restored, since it has so little wear, and was always maintained.

The Springfield Museums are definitely worth a visit, there is a lot there to see, across a range of fields. You can expect more posts on it from me!

Theseus Gem

The black agate intaglio of a youth set in rose gold ring.
gem measures 23 x 15 mm.

Dear Reader,
Yet another gem has entered my life, found with an antique jewelry dealer in NYC. It is an image of a heroic youth wearing what I first took to be a lion skin as a helmet as Alexander had in his coins, carved into black agate, and set in a Victorian rose gold ring engraved on the back with initials and the date, "July 23rd, 1880".

View of the back showing the inscription.

It was assumed by the dealer, and myself, that the gem has to be 18th, 19th Century, given the ring, the hard polish of the surface, and the extended oval with a lot of negative space around the carving, more than is typical in ancient gems. However what grabbed my attention as the quality of the carving and image; it is very direct and unfussy in execution and yet fierce. The large open eyes, bulging Scopaic brow reminiscent of Alexander the Great's images, the hair which springs up from the forehead, and the unpolished carved areas of the skin and hair, and the polish of the animal skin remind me of the best of ancient intaglio carvings. Usually the Neo-Classical copyists did not get the spirit of ancient work right, they are usually fussier and finer in detail than ancient work, showing off their mastery of the craft.

Another photo showing the intaglio in reflected light.

When I first saw the gem I assumed the skin on the head was the typical lion skin, known from images of Hercules who slew the Nemean lion and wore it as a helmet, and adopted by Alexander the Great in his portraits portraits and coins. Mithradates also adopted the lion skin to identify himself with Alexander and by extension Hercules. However upon closer examination once I got the gem home I realized that this was no lion skin but improbably, the head of a skinned bull with little horns and the legs tied around the neck with hoofs at the ends like a bow. Thinking that this might be an 18th Century carving inspired perhaps by an Ancient Greek Coin of some Hellenistic ruler who adopted a variation of the animal skin helmet, I searched my coin catalogues in vain. But not being a numismatist, my library is limited so I sent an email of the gem to a friend who is a coin and gem collector/dealer, Hadrien Rambach. He replied in minutes telling me that it was an image of Theseus wearing the skin of the bull of Marathon, and was after a gem in St. Petersburg. Thankfully the gem collection of the Hermitage is online, and I was able to find it see below.

(Image from the Hermitage website, of their gem.)
Head of Theseus, Ancient Rome.
Workshop of Hylloes, 1st Century BC to 1st Century A.D.
Cornelian, intaglio 2.7 x 2cm
Source of Entry: Collection of the Duke or Orleans, 1787

While beautiful, the St. Petersburg gem is not as finely carved as mine, the hair and animal skin are not as finely detailed, the carving of the face not as well resolved. However it is inscribed with the initials of Lorenzo de Medici, who once owned it, an incredible provenance. If this gem did not have that inscription and was brought to me, I would wonder about its antiquity given the not very accomplished carving.

A little about the subject; Theseus is the hero who is the mythological founder of Athens, and follows the example of Hercules in that he accomplished a series of exploits paralleling the labors of Hercules. Son of Aethra, a princess of a small city near Athens, he had two fathers, her husband Aegeus the king of Athens, and Poseidon, and as such Theseus had both mortal and immortal qualities. Aegeus took up with Medea when she abondoned Jason of the Argonauts, and he left Aethra in her familial kingdom with her son Theseus. He left his sandals and sword under a huge rock, telling Aethra that when their son was grown strong enough to move the rock himself, that they would prove his royal birth. When Theseus was old and strong enough, he moved the rock and took the sword and wore the sandals traveling to Athens and having adventures along the way. When he arrived at Athens, Aegeus did not recognize him, but his sorcerous wife Medea did and feared for the succession of her own son who she hoped would inherit the throne. So she convinced Aegeus to send Theseus to capture the Marathonian Bull on Crete, a terrible beast she hoped would kill him in the attempt. Of course Theseus accomplished the feat, and after sacrificing the bull is on this gem depicted wearing it as Hercules did the lion skin. One of my favorite parts of the myth is when Theseus returns to Athens and Medea recognizes who he is but his father does not, she convinces the king that this powerful youth was dangerous and serves him a cup of poisoned wine. Just as Theseus takes the cup, the father recognizes his sword and sandals, realizes this is his lost son and knocks the cup out of Theseus's hand saving him. I am not sure what happens to Medea, but rest assured, she does not die, merely flees. For her power, ruthlessness and ability to get away with things I admire her. She kills her own brothers to aid Jason's escape, kills her own children by Jason when he takes up with another princess and kills the princess and her father with a dress that bursts into flames, escapes in a chariot drawn by flying dragons, and next we see her as the wife of the King of Athens. What a fascinating mythological figure, I wonder what her real symbology and origin is.

The connoisseurship of ancient gems is very difficult, in that they were highly sought after from the Renaissance until the 20th Century, and widely imitated and emulated by some of the greatest glyptich artists who ever lived. In the early to mid 19th Century engraved and carved gems, cameos and intaglios, could be as valuable as houses to give you an idea of relative value. A contemporary engraved portrait intaglio had the same value as a painted one by Gainsborough or Romney bemoaned Lorenz Natter, (the same Natter who carved the Hostilianus gem in a former post on my blog), in his book "Traite de la methode antique de graver en pierres fines", printed in London in 1754. (According to The Romans of Seals and Engraved Gems, by Beth Benton Sutherland published my Macmillan 1965.) After the Paniatowski scandal and the doubt it created, the interest in gem engraving waned. The scandal was that his princely collection of carved gems was sold at Christie's London in 1839 as ancient, and it turned out to be that they were all commissioned by the prince, i.e., not ancient, really fakes if they were passed off as such. For the past one hundred years gem engraving has not been valued as an art form, although some exceptional older gems get high prices.

To sum up the case against this gem being ancient; the long oval of the stone and larger negative areas around the carving than most ancient gems have, and the bright hard polish of the flat areas. In favor of possibly being ancient; the carving style which is right on for ancient, and possibly the scratches and nicks on the stone's surface and edges, which seem incongruous given that the ring itself is in very good condition. The stone does sit up over the gold setting and is more exposed to damage, so that might account for the damages to it. I will just have to continue to research the gem and will relate back any findings. If not ancient it may be possible find out who engraved it, it is by one of the very best artists in the media, whatever period it was done.

Story of a gem; Discovery, disappointment and the joy of learning

Dear Reader,
I live to find things, and frequently my hunches are proven correct, many times there is no way to fully prove a piece, and then sometimes I am just wrong. This story is a case of being wrong on my initial hopes, but surprisingly, I am very happy as I have learned a great deal and still own yet another precious piece of history.

The story starts with a visit to a friend on 47th St. in NYC, in the jewelry district. My friend is a dealer in antique jewelry and frequently he has pieces with engraved gems. This day he showed me a beautiful engraved imperial Roman portrait in chalcedony, set in a Georgian gold ring. The assumption he made was that the gem was also 18th Century, but when I looked at it I thought it might be ancient, and bought it. (see below)

Intaglio of a Roman Emperor, carved in blue chalcedony, set in a gold ring.
The gem measures 2.25 cm long.

The gem seen in transmitted light from the back.

You can see in the photos above the incredible quality of the carving. At first because of this high quality, I assumed it had to be Julio-Claudian, a period which represents the apex of gem engraving in antiquity. However the chopped military hair cut is not typical of imperial portraits of the time, the Julio-Claudian emperors sported long locks with distinctive arrangements which differed emperor to emperor and is one of their identifying attributes. However the profile is very close to that of Caligula, and he had a military upbringing so I thought perhaps it was him. However a gem enthusiast who got in touch with me at this time and to whom I sent images of the gem to, pointed out that not only was the hair style wrong, but so was the cloak with its prominent button completely wrong for a 1st Century date. He presumed it therefor to be an 18th century forgery. Then, in a subsequent correspondence he made the leap in thought to the 3rd Century AD and identified the subject as Gordian III, in which case the hair and cloak all were exactly correct. We at this point assumed the gem to be ancient as an 18th Century engraver would not do a gem carving of this quality of an obscure late emperor of little note. So it had to be ancient!

Certainly the coin portraits of Gordian III look a lot like the intaglio, although there is something about it which is not quite identical, which I attributed to the different media. See below:

A gold coin of Gordian III, which corresponds in all respects to my gem, the wreath, cloak and profile. The face is not identical though but very close, at least the profile is.

Needless to say I was thrilled and sent photos to Max Bernheimer of Christies who has a great interest in ancient gems and jewelry. After a first excitement and highish estimate, he asked about its history. I had none for it, the jewelry dealer I purchased it from had got it from two men whose collection of jewelry he bought. They were all over place in terms of taste and quality and this fine piece was not typical of their collection and there was no history as to where they got it from. But I told Max that obviously the gem had a history, it was set in a Georgian ring, but that my library was inadequate to fully research it.

The ring from the side showing the multi layered bezel setting and decoration of the shoulder.
It is clearly an 18th Century setting.

It turned out that Max does have a good library, a day later I got an email with good/bad news. The gem is from the Marlborough Collection, and earlier the Bessborough Collection, going back to the mid 18th Century. This is the most distinguished provenance you could hope for with a gem. The bad news, it is from a series of 40 late emperors carved my Natter to complement the Bessborough Collection which he cataloged as well. Based on gems and engravings, every effort was made to make the gems identifiable and true to Roman types. At first I was disbelieving, happy to have a piece with such a illustrious history, but disappointed my gem was thought not be ancient. My first thought, was who said it was 18th Century? However prompted by Max's revelation, I found the Beazley Archive, which has the entire collection illustrated online in impressions and photos of the gems. And there I found the impression of my gem, marked as by Natter, and described as lost.

The online image on the Beazley Archive website of the wax impression of the gem, described as being of Hostilianus, and whereabouts unknown.

Seeing it online was quite a surprise, and I better understood how Max knew that it was in the Marlborough collection but the identification as Hostilianus surprised me, and also I wondered why it was thought to be by Natter. The Marlborough collection, started by the 3rd Duke of Marlborough in the early 18th Century was greatly increased and developed by the 4th Duke whose acquisitions brought it up to 800 gems. The Dukes bought individual gems, but also acquired entire collections, most notably the Arundel collection created in the 17th Century and then the Bessborough collection which had been published in a catalog written by Laurent Natter in 1761. After the 4th Duke died in 1817, his collection of gems was sold by his family en bloc in 1875 to David Bromilow, who then sold it piecemeal in 1899 at an auction at Christie's London. The gems were dispersed and most lost to scholarship. The Beazley Archive under John Boardman's direction is attempting to relocate the lost gems, out of 800 only about 300 have known whereabouts. To have found one quite by accident is very exciting.

A silver coin of Hostilianus from 250 A.D. Image taken from the Auktionshaus H.D. Rauch, Vienna website.

I guess the coin of Hostilianus looks something like the gem, but he was usually depicted with a radiate crown, not just a laurel wreath. It is not as close a resemblance as it is to the coins of Gordian III.

Once I started looking at the documentation on the Beazley Archive website I learned that Natter described my gem as being of Hostilianus and it was part of a suite of 40 intaglio portraits of later Roman Emperors commissioned to fill out and complement the Earl of Bessborough's collection. It is thought that he carved the suite of himself, although I wonder about that, there is some variety stylistically within the group and it would be a great deal of work to carve so many really fine gems. It is not clear from the catalog that he carved them himself, what is clear is that they were carved for Bessborough, and are therefor all 18th Century.

What I find remarkable about this is how well documented this gem is. See below the scanned copy of the original catalog written by Natter in 1761 of the Bessborough collection.

This is the title page of Natter's catalog.

And here it is, Natter's description of the suite of Roman Emperors, translated here by a friend:

"Series of the Roman emperors from the Second Triumvirate to Valerian.

I shall observe merely that these portraits have all been copied from the best medals and the best ancient engravings; the connoisseurs will easily note the resemblance; in order to further elevate the quality of this collection, the types of gemstones have been varied as much as possible."



My gem is the so called Hostilien, number 38 clearly marked as being in Chalcedony.

Above the catalog description from the 1899 Christies sale. The suite of 40 emperors was sold in bloc, and subsequently dispersed. Interestingly and a clincher is that in the description it is stated that the settings were marked with figures corresponding to the list; on the side of the bezel of the ring is a slightly rubbed 38, clearly marking it as the Hostilianus above.

While initially disappointed to learn that my gem is not ancient, I am thrilled to have something from the Marlborough collection and to have identified a gem thought to be lost that has been actively sought by scholars for years. It is also extremely rare, and rare for me personally to be able to truly get a full understanding of an object. So many objects are unchronicled and one feels that one is guessing; here I now have full knowledge and can see the evidence with my own eyes. This is a thrill for me, and reward in itself.

Natural History Museum, New York; is it the worst run museum in the City?

Hall of Northwest Coast Indians

In my newly kindled interest in Northwest Coast American Indian Art, I went to see the great collection at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It truly has a great collection, of not only Indian material, but an incredible pre-Columbian Collection, both from meso-America and South America. But, aside from some updated displays in the South American section, the other areas are conspicuously neglected. I have been going to this museum for 30 years now, and these areas have never been redone, light bulbs are out, the lighting is terrible and sepulchral, it is nearly impossible to see the great objects of art. And harder still to photograph, but thanks to the miracles of the newest iphone, I was able to take passable images.

I was inspired to re-visit the Northwest Coast Indian collections by my bracelet. While I found nothing quite like what I have, they have a lot of great, if unappreciated objects. One frustrating thing is that they have amazing totem poles and carved wooden columns probably from lodges, but not one of them has any identifying labels to tell you where they were from, who made them, or when. It is as if they are just decoration, when in fact they are extremely rare and important works of art, a collection like this could not be created today, the material is simply not there.
Below are some of the highlights.

These carved bone or whale tooth objects were worn by shaman as talismans, objects that relate their spirit stories and give them power to communicate with the spirits. Each is quite individual, different one from the other. Frequently human figures are featured, but always subject to animal forces, the lowest one has an enormous bird beast swallowing a small human, the mid figure has two fishmen wrestling over what appears to be a doughnut but is actually a mouth of some other beast. The top one has a human cowering between two enormous animal figures, almost Munch like.

Two more of these bone or ivory objects. The one of the left is particularly dense, the human figure is surrounded by power animals. The right one looks like an owl, made of other birds with an animal head on the bottom.

One of the totem poles, or perhaps a column from the interior of one of their lodges. No information is available on where, what or who of these, but they are fantastic. I love the way one animal has the other in its mouth, a chain of life. In the Northwest Coast Indian culture, it is not about one animal eating another, as much as transmitting power one to and from the other. Not that one animal was not eating the other but here for example a killer whale is shown with a seal in its mouth, with a bear biting his tail. Bears don't and can't eat killer whales but both are powerful creatures so in this culture I think this indicates one power leading into the other.

Better image of the killer whale, with a seal in its mouth, its tail in the mouth of a bear.

Another great pole, one figure on top of the other, and incredibly well carved.

A closer view of the pole above. I love the tiny human figure suspended upside down from the mouth of the giant bear, with another human held by another bear above.

The box above is beautiful, but the real gem of this case is the head-dress ornament of carved wood depicting a frog held gently in the hands of a human. The frog is being presented, supported and held, and wielded almost like a weapon, I imagine power radiating from the focused forward gaze of the frog. This is not an animal in panic, he is fully in command of his situation.


And of course the Pre-Columbian collections of the museum are the best of their kind in New York and probably one of the best in this country. Sadly, they were set up in the 60's, and no one has updated them since. The lighting is attrocious, and what few lights they have, many of the bulbs are out, as they were in this case with a series of spectacular Veracruz yokes in basaltic stone. They date to the 5th to 7th Centuries A.D., from one of the great cultures of Meso-America. Used or based on yokes used in the ritual ball game that was the focus of much of their religious ritual, these yokes show the interest in wrapping the object in the creature, here a frog around the piece, much as in Northwest Coast Indian art, and that of Archaic China.

Another beautiful Veracruz yoke in basalt, and another frog, this one however embellished by complicated patterns that are hard to decipher, and perhaps are yet other creatures or divine beings.

A detail of the yoke above, showing the complexity of the patterns of which this frog is composed of. In the dim light of the museum, and bad placement of the yoke in the case, it is almost impossible to make out what is represented.

While I love the collections of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, I am frustrated by the terrible manner in which so much of it is presented. It is a throwback to another era, when the art of "primitive" peoples were considered as ethnographic curiousities not worthy of a "real" art museum. Thus they are treated like so many stuffed birds or dead animals or fossils that the rest of the museum is filled with. And those are better lit than the great works of art of these collections. And it has been this way since I have been going to the museum. Yet, no end of money has been raised by the Museum, they built that huge monument to the big bang, the planetarium, which is beautiful and educational, but couldn't they find a few dollars to spruce up what should be considered some of their greatest treasures. Or they should transfer these collections to an art museum that would give the objects the respect they deserve.

The question for my readers, is this one of the worst run museums in New York and the country? Certainly not the world, many third world countries have museums equally ill displayed and lit, but poverty excuses them. But in New York? What is their excuse, except for directors who have no interest in art, with neither the ability to recognize great things nor respect for their own collections.

Haida silver bracelet

I was just in Montreal, which I will post about soon, and bought a silver bracelet by a Haida artist named John Brent Bennett. I have always admired Northwest Coast American Indian art, but don't know much about it. I respond to its highly stylized images, and the great skill and sophistication of much of the objects from those cultures. I have seen other bracelets, and so when I was in Montreal, I went to the Canadian Guild of Crafts on Sherbrooke St., quite close to the Musee Des Beaux Arts. And there were just three engraved bracelets by this Haida artist, and I chose this one because it had the most identifiable features. On wearing it, I have learned a lot about Haida art, and finally have been able to decipher the imagery. And now I understand why I love Northwest Coast Indian art; it is part of a shamanic culture that extends the rim of the Pacific Culture. You find echoes in its imagery from thousands of years and miles apart. It is no accident this, but a product of a way of looking at the world, and communing with it and the spirit world as well as a sustained tradition and contacts that account for these similarities.

Three quarters side view, showing the face with part of the side. What we are looking at is an exploded body of an animal, I think here a badger, or bear, but not sure which. The face is clear enough, the claw is apparent, less obvious is the entire arm, and the rear leg which are also done in the same stylized manner. Once you see it, you see it, before, it was just a bunch of shapes tucked together.

The other side view, you can here make out the foreleg and the rear leg with claws that curl around the bracelet.

Now you might wonder why I would post about what at first glance might appear to be a tourist trinket. Some points to be made; this is hand engraved, and deeply so, by someone highly skilled with tremendous vision and understanding of his cultural traditions. He has captured the essence of a beast in what appears first to be pure pattern. This is an example of shamanic art at its best. I had not thought such traditions could be kept alive in our modern world, I think I may be wrong. Below are the other traditions and objects that this seemingly minor object relates to in my mind.

This basalt yoke is from Veracruz Mexico dating to the 5th to 7th Century A.D., which sold at Sotheby's New York in May of 2005. (Image found on google on thecityreview.com) It is carved with a stylized image of a frog who is stretched over both sides of the yoke. I see a strong similarity and it is not an accident, both are New World cultures and even if separated by time and space, they belong to the same cultural milieu. The images are not only about spirit animals, the one a shaman would transform into in his trances, but also apotropaic, the object was animate and would ward off evil.

This is a photo of a section of an Archaic Chinese bronze vessel, showing the classic Shang Dynasty toatie mask, which is an exploded monster figure stretched out across the surface of the vessel.

Here, from another google search as was the image above, is a diagrammed taotie mask, with the parts labeled. The same diagrammatic depiction as on my Haida bracelet.

The visual similarity between these archaic chinese toatie masks, my Haida bracelet and the pre-Columbian yoke is not coincidence, despite there being thousands of miles and years apart. As said before, they were all shamanic cultures, where the shaman was taking drugs going into a trance to commune with the spirit world. While not much is known about the more ancient religions, we do know a lot about that of the Haida and other Northwest Coast American Indians, as they are still with us and much tradition has been passed down. They are essentially animist, seeing spirit in all living things, animals being seen as prey and spirits that must be respected and appealed to for their own prosperity and protection. Who is to say we cannot work backwards taking the visual similarities and think that the ancient Chinese also saw the natural world in a similar manner? Or the pre-Columbians?
Such are the musings I have on what some might regard as a tourist trinket.