Italian, probably Rome, late 18th/ early 19th century | Italie, probablement Rome, fin XVIIIe siècle / début XIXe siècle

This beautifully engraved cameo depicts the Trojan prince Hector from Homer’s Iliad as he prepares to go to war. His wife Andromache grasps his right shoulder whilst an attendant holds out his son Astyanax. There is a sense of motion to the right as the horses pulling Hector’s chariot rear forwards and the hero turns back to look upon his family for a final time. According to Jeremy Warren the model was conceived by a member of the Pichler dynasty of gem engravers, either Luigi or his elder half-brother Giovanni (op.cit., no. 437, p. 966). A bronze plaquette with the scene in reverse is in the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford (inv. no. WA OA 264). Various examples in cameo and intaglio are recorded, including a cameo from the Kibaltchich collection which was published by Forrer as by Luigi Pichler (also shown in reverse; op. cit., p. 527). Ingrid Weber published a garnet intaglio with the scene and records a sardonyx (which, like the present cameo, shows the wheel of Hector’s chariot, but is in reverse) in the Staatlichen Münzsammlung in Munich (op. cit., no. 246, p. 195). Tantalisingly a sardonyx cameo with the subject engraved by Giuseppe Girometti (1780-1851) was shown at the 1862 International Exhibition in London (Warren, op. cit.).

RELATED LITERATURE

L. Forrer, Biographical Dictionary of Medallists, London, 1909; I. Weber, Kostbare Steine: Die Gemmensammlung des Kurfürsten Johann Wilhelm von der Pfalz, Munich, 1995;

J. Warren, Medieval and Renaissance Sculpture: A Catalogue of the Collection in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, vol. iii, Oxford, 2014.

Sotheby’s would like to thank Dr Jeremy Warren and Dr Ittai Gradel for their kind assistance in respectively identifying the subject and advising on the cataloguing of this lot.