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CHAP.

I.

Theban

exhibiting a model of the impression or cast yielded to a signet. The use of the caméo was not perhaps introduced before the period of the Roman power. Such relics are rarely found in Greece; and even when discovered, with the exception of the remarkable stone Stone. found at Thebes, representing a female Centaur suckling its foals, the workmanship is bad. Concerning the Theban Gem, it may perhaps be proved that the subject thereon exhibited was originally derived from a very popular picture painted by Zeuxis; and as its execution is by no means uniformly excellent, there is reason to conclude that the work is not of remote antiquity. Every traveller who has visited. Italy may have remarked a practice of repre- commemosenting, both by caméos and intaglios, the subjects Gems. of celebrated pictures; such, for example, as those of the Danae and the Venus by Titian, and many other. Copies of this kind were also known among the Romans, and perhaps at an

Paintings

rated upon

(5) This celebrated Caméo has been long known to all travellers ho have visited Greece. It belonged to a peasant, who esteemed it beyond all price, from its imaginary virtue in healing diseases. Many persons in vain endeavoured to purchase it. The Earl of Elgin, ambassador at the Porte, at last found the means of inducing its owner to part with it.

(6) The famous mosaïc picture of the Vase and Pigeons, found in the Villa of Mecenas, and lately in the Capitol at Rome, exhibits a subject frequently introduced upon the antient gems of Italy.

I.

Notice of a

Picture by Zeuxis from an antient Greek Manuscript.

CHAP. earlier period, taken from the works of Grecian painters. The first style of imitating such pictures by engraving was probably that exhibited by the intaglio, from whose cast the caméo was made. Gems of this kind, executed by the lapidaries of Greece, even so long ago as the age of Zeuxis, may have given origin to the Theban Stone. That it does exhibit a subject nearly coinciding with an antient description of one of his pictures, is manifest from a fragment of the Zeuxis of Lucian, inserted as a Commentary upon Gregory Nazianzen. This was discovered by the late Professor Porson, in a Manuscript of that author brought from the Library of the Monastery of the Apocalypse in the Isle of Patmos1. The Commentary would perhaps have been illegible to other eyes than those of the learned Professor. It is, when "That same

literally translated, as follows.
Zeuxis, the best painter that ever lived, did not

(1) The writing, both of the commentary and of the text, in that Manuscript, was deemed, by the learned Professor, as antient as that of Plato from the same place, now with the copy of Gregory in the Bodleian Library.

(2) In the first edition, the author had said, that the difficulty of deciphering this marginal note would baffle all but Porsonian acumen; but it has been also transcribed with the minutest accuracy by Professor Gaisford of Oxford (Catalogus Manuscriptorum in Biblioth. Bodl. Pars Prior, p. 37. Oxon. 1812): and there is this difference in the two copies; that Professor Porson's copy, containing all the emendations in Hemsterhusius's

I.

paint vulgar and common subjects, or certainly CHAP. but a very few; but was always endeavouring to strike out something new; and employed all the accuracy of his art about some strange and heterogeneous conceit. He painted, for instance, a female Hippocentaur, nursing two infant Hippocentaurs. A copy of this picture, very accurately taken, existed at Athens: for the original, Sylla, the Roman general, sent away, with the rest of the plunder, to Italy; and it is said, that the ship having foundered off the Malean Promontory, the whole cargo, and with it this picture, was lost. The copy of the original painting is thus with some difficulty described by Callimachus and Calæses (or Calaces). 'The female Centaur herself is painted as reclining upon a rich verdure, with the whole of her horse's body on the ground, and her feet extended backwards; but as much of her as resembles a woman, is gently raised, and rests on her elbow. Her fore-feet are not stretched out like her hind ones, as if she were lying on her side; but one of them is bent, and the hoof drawn under, as

Hemsterhusius's Edition of Lucian, carries with it internal evidence that he had visited the source whence the Note had been originally derived: Professor Gaisford's copy, being a faithful transcript, without those emendations, also proves how well acquainted he was with the author from whom the extract was taken; because he added to it, "Verba sunt Luciani in Zeuxide, c. 3. tom. 1. p. 840."

I.

CHAP. if kneeling; while the other is erect, and laying hold of the ground, as horses do when endea

Substances

used for the

Cyprus.

vouring to spring up. One of the two infants she is holding in her arms, and suckling, like a human creature, giving it her teat, which resembles that of a woman; but the other she suckles at her mare's teat, after the manner of a foal. In the upper part of the picture, a male Hippocentaur, intended to represent the husband of her who is nursing the children, is leaning over an eminence as it were, and laughing; not being wholly in sight, but only half way down, and holding a lion's whelp in his right hand, to frighten the children. The admirable skill of Zeuxis consists in displaying all the variety of the art in his treatment of one and the same subject: here we have a horse, proud, spirited, a shaggy mane over his chest and shoulders, a wild and fierce eye; and a female, like the Thessalian mares, never to be mounted nor tamed; the upper half a woman, but all below the back like a satyr; and the different bodies fitted, and as it were blended together.'

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The signet-stones of Cyprus, although cut in a Signets of variety of substances, were more frequently of red carnelian than of any other mineral. Some of the most diminutive size were finely executed in red garnet, the carbuncle of the Antients.

Others were formed of plasma, onyx, blood-stone, topaz, jasper, and even of quartz. Of all these, the most antient had the scarabæan form. Two

CHAP.
I.

Most an

tient form

very interesting examples are here represented. of the Sig

nets of

Cyprus.

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The first is of the most remote antiquity. It

was found among the ruins where the idols recently alluded to were discovered. The substance of it is an onyx, in a very advanced state of decomposition. The characters are evidently Phoenician, and correspond with those exhibited by inscriptions found upon the same spot, and published by Pococke'. The subject represented appears to be the dove, Avis PAPHIA, a very antient symbol of Venus, and of Astarte2. But whether the figure placed before the bird be a grain of the bearded wheat so common in Cyprus, or any other type connected with its antient

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