LUIGI PICHLER (1773-1854) ITALIAN, ROME, CIRCA 1810 | INTAGLIO WITH A VICTORIOUS YOUTH AS HERCULES

This superb intaglio is one of the finest carvings by the celebrated Roman gem engraver Luigi Pichler to have been on the market in recent years. It shows a young man wearing a laurel wreath in the guise of Hercules, with skin of the Nemean lion about his shoulders.

Luigi Pichler heralded from a distinguished lineage of gem engravers. His father Antonio and his half brother Giovanni were both gem cutters and he assumed the running of the family studio in 1791. He went on to work for the Habsburg Imperial family in Vienna and so impressed the French court jeweller François-Régnault Nitot that the latter tried to persuade him to move to Paris. Pichler received many distinctions later in life including a diploma from the Academy of St Luke and membership of the Academy in Venice, as well as, in 1839, Knight's Cross of the Order of St Gregory the Great and, in 1842, of the Order of St Sylvester.

The suspension hoop of the pendant mount is very close to those seen on a necklace with gems signed by Pichler in the Albion art collection and published by Diana Scarisbrick, The Art of Gem Engraving: From Alexander the Great to Napoleon III, exh. cat. Hakone Open-Air Museum and Fukuoka City Museum, 2008, p. 286, no. 371. The present mount differs from the Albion mounts in having rams head terminals as opposed to serpentine motifs.