On view
Gem depicting Athena (Minerva) with Nike
Engraved gemstones were popular and useful personal items in both Republican and Imperial Rome, and featured a wide range of subjects, including deities, portraits of individuals, everyday objects, and mythological scenes. Many of these gemstones were used as seals that their owners could press into clay or wax, leaving behind an impression of the engraved image. These impressions functioned as the owner’s signature in business, politics, and personal affairs. A gemstone’s material, the quality of its engraving, and the identity of its maker also demarcated its owner’s wealth and status. By the second half of the first century BCE, gems were also collectors’ objects or could function as votive objects that were given to a god. Wealthy Romans would compile cabinets of engraved gems and display them in their homes or dedicate them in temples.
Information
Roman Empire
- Darrell A. Amyx and Barbara A. Forbes, Echoes from Olympus: reflections of divinity in small-scale classical art: supplement to the catalogue, (Berkeley, CA: University Art Museum, 1974). , p. 104
- D. A. Amyx, Echoes from Olympus: reflections of divinity in small scale classical art, (Berkeley, CA: University of California, Berkeley, University Art Museum, 1974)., no. 20, p. 21 (illus.)
- Barbara Ann Forbes, Catalogue of engraved gems in The Art Museum. Dissertation (Berkeley, CA: University of California, Berkeley, 1978)., p. 153; pl. 34:143
