Room 3

As you enter the main entrance of the British Museum it’s easy, in the hurly burly of the crowd, to walk right past room 3, immediately on your right. This small, dark, wood-lined room features small but beautifully formed and always FREE exhibitions. My favourite was the one about mummified crocodiles from ancient Egypt.

The story of the stolen gems

Room 3 is currently hosting a small exhibition titled ‘Rediscovering gems.’ This needs a bit of background:

You may have heard about the scandal caused by the discovery that many items had been stolen from the British Museum’s collection. In August 2023 the Museum announced that a number of items had been stolen, were missing or damaged. One report estimates that over 1,500 objects have gone missing.

The Museum soon realised that a major target of the thefts was its collection of engraved gems, including the Townley and Blacas collections (see details below). Such was the scandal that it led, regrettably to the resignation of the Museum’s Director, Hartwig Fischer, who did the decent (and wise) thing and jumped before he was pushed.

Details of stolen gems

Such is the scope of the theft issue that the Museum has a web page devoted to it, Recovery of missing items. From this we learn that the vast majority of the missing items are from the Department of Greece and Rome and mainly fall into two categories: gems and jewellery.

Ancient glass cameo with a Nereid riding a sea horse, a cupid in the waves. Roman, late 1st century BC to 1st century AD © The Trustees of the British Museum

Tell me about these gems

Gems, cameos or intaglios are small objects, often set in rings or other settings, or left unmounted and unfinished. They may be made of semi-precious stone – for example, sard, sardonyx, amethyst – or glass. They may be cast from a mould or engraved by hand.

The majority of these antique gems are from the Hellenistic and Roman world, but some may were made in modern times in imitation of ancient gems. They may feature images of famous individuals from the Classical past, or mythological scenes, animals or objects.

The gems are of varied quality. Some are fragmentary and damaged.

Onyx cameo depicting a nude woman (perhaps Venus) before the statue of Priapus. Roman, 1st century AD. Collection: Charles Townley © The Trustees of the British Museum

Recovered gems

A dedicated team at the Museum is working with the Metropolitan Police and with an international group of experts in gems, collection history and art theft, to recover the missing items. So far the Museum has recovered 356 items and has identified more than 300 others.

One of the challenges with retrieving the missing items is that many of them had never been fully documented. So the Museum has embarked on an ambitious five-year plan to catalogue and photograph the entire gem collection and to make this information freely available online for everyone. Every cloud has a silver lining.

It is 20 or so of these recovered gems which have been put on display in room 3, providing the curators with an opportunity to go to town and really explain this particular type of art form. Thus this small display manages to describe different types of gems, made in different eras, from different materials, as well as explaining the role played by early modern collectors (in the 1700s) in saving and categorising them.

Ancient intaglio representing the head of Omphale, wearing the lion-skin of her lover Herakles. Roman, late 1st century BC to 1st century AD © The Trustees of the British Museum

Rediscovering gems: the exhibition

So, now to the display itself. Room 3 is a relatively small gallery so this is a relatively small display but, then again, these are tiny objects, very tiny, generally the size of one or two pound coin. It’s surprising how much information and beauty you can pack into one room.

Note: if you go to the Museum’s own large print guide (link below) you’ll see that I’ve relied very heavily on the curators’ explanatory text, albeit reordered and partly rewritten to make it flow better. Hopefully.

Tell me more about gems

Gems were the picture book of the ancient Mediterranean world. Carved from semi-precious stones or cast from glass, they depicted famous individuals, gods and goddesses, animals or objects and scenes from myth or daily life.

Used as seals, worn as jewellery, or collected as objects of beauty in their own right, these miniature designs required phenomenal skill to carve and became sought-after luxury objects and status symbols.

Ancient glass intaglio (waster) with Jupiter as an eagle abducting Ganymede. Roman, late 1st century BC to 1st century AD © The Trustees of the British Museum

Classical gems have been highly prized by collectors from the Renaissance onwards, but never more so than in 18th-century Europe. Cabinets of gems took up little room but held large collections of beautiful miniature artworks.

Gems tells us about the ancient world but gem collections offer deep insights into the personal tastes and aesthetic preferences of the people who assembled them.

Charles Townley, Enlightenment collector

The 18th century was a highpoint for interest in engraved gems. Recognized as key pieces of art and culture, they were collected and studied by royals, aristocrats, artists, and antiquarians such as Charles Townley (1737 to 1805).

A wealthy English country gentleman and insatiable collector of antiquities, Townley travelled to Italy on the Grand Tour and acquired important Roman marble statues, and many other ancient objects. The smallest pieces of classical art that caught his eye were engraved gems.

Townley’s wooden cabinets, with their distinctive shallow drawers, were specially designed to hold some of his glass gems and their impressions, made from ‘red sulphur’. Most of the drawers are labelled with strips of paper bearing notes in his handwriting, revealing his enthusiasm and scholarship.

One of Charles Townley’s cabinets containing 656 glass gems © The Trustees of the British Museum. Photo by the author

Townley became a trustee of the British Museum in 1791, and his collection of gems was purchased together with drawings, bronzes, and coins by the Museum in 1814.

Collections of gem impressions

Impressions of gems in wax, plaster and other materials had been known since the Renaissance. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, collections of impressions were commercially produced for connoisseurs and scholars, or as souvenirs of the ‘Grand Tour’. The Roman workshop of Tommaso Cades specialised in making plaster impressions of gems glued in boxes resembling books.

A gem box containing a set of plaster casts of engraved gems, made by Tommaso Cades. It is one of twelve boxes in book form. The book opens each side to reveal 2 trays of 25 casts so that there are 50 casts per volume, 600 casts in all. The casts are copies of gems arranged by date, ancient to modern, and subject matter © The Trustees of the British Museum

The availability of reproductions of gems from the ancient Mediterranean world encouraged generations of engravers to copy famous examples and to create new intaglios in the style of the best ancient artists.

Plaster casts and magnifying glasses

Engraved gems are small. Often set in rings, they need to be seen close-up and with ample light (which is why each display case is accompanied by a magnifying glass (attacked by a wire to the wall so they can’t be pinched; once bitten, twice shy).

A gem impression in plaster is generally more easily read than the original stone even though it is the same size. Townley had access to magnifying glasses but he also employed artists to draw his gems. The sharp eyes and the interpretations of these talented professionals helped to make fine details visible.

Precious fragments

Many cameos appear to be the work of the best artists, which is understandable since the materials employed were intrinsically valuable. The style of cutting closely matches that of major sculpture in stone and metal. In these miniature works we are even able to detect references to more familiar monumental works.

Fragments became particularly coveted among 18th-century collectors because their damaged state was seen as proof of their antiquity. They were mounted in gold to make them wearable again.

Fragment of a banded onyx cameo engraved with the head of a woman in profile. Rome 1st century BC to 1st century AD. Set in an 18th century gold ring by Charles Townley. Collection: Charles Townley © The Trustees of the British Museum

Art in miniature

Cameos, gems where the design has been carved in relief, were probably an invention of the royal Hellenistic court in Alexandria, Egypt. The most spectacular use layered stones (sardonyx). They were particularly popular from the 1st century BC onwards for secular and religious subjects, and they were worn as jewellery.

Cameos were also used for imperial portraiture and propaganda. These are often unusually large, such as the Blacas Cameo.

The Blacas Cameo

This spectacular ancient Roman gem is made from a layered sardonyx and shows the emperor Augustus (ruled 27 BC to AD 14). Augustus wears a headband, which is embellished with a fine assemblage of small cameos and precious stones, probably medieval additions.

The Blacas Cameo is named after a collector of ancient objects, Pierre Louis Jean Casimir, Duc de Blacas d’Aulps (1771 to 1839), who greatly increased the size and scope of his father’s collection. In 1866, his entire collection, 951 pieces in all, was purchased by the British Museum.

The so-called Blacas Cameo: sardonyx cameo, engraved with a portrait of Augustus wearing a headband embellished with small cameos and precious stones, likely a medieval addition. Roman AD 14 to 20. Collection Duc de Blacas d’Aulps © The Trustees of the British Museum

Renaissance and neoclassical engravers

From the Renaissance (about 1400 to 1600) onwards ancient gems became popular, imitated and collected. Set in fabulous mounts, they were widely reproduced and sometimes faked. Gem engravers used the visual language of the classical world to create new versions of popular subjects, such as the Hellenistic rulers of ancient Egypt depicted on this cameo.

These later gems were often difficult to distinguish from their ancient originals. Correctly identifying them can still be contentious, often requiring a laborious process of stylistic comparison and researching collection history.

Renaissance cameo depicting Hellenistic rulers of Egypt, set in a Renaissance enamelled mount. Late 16th to early 17th century. Collection: Dud de Blacas d’Aulps © The Trustees of the British Museum

Enter Michelangelo

The first publication devoted to describing precious gems was a set of engravings by Enea Vico (1523 to 1567) of the collection belonging to Cardinal Grimani (1461 to 1523). It has been claimed that the male pose in Grimani’s cameo of ‘Augustus on the Capricorn’ inspired the pose of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s figure of Adam in the Sistine Chapel, which is why the display shows them side by side.

Installation view of ‘Recovering gems’ at the British Museum showing (above) a cameo representing Augustus on the Capricorn, his chosen star sign (about 27 BC to AD 14) and (below) ‘The Creation of Adam’ from the Sistine Chapel ceiling (1508 to 1512) by Michelangelo. Photo by the author

Glass gems

Gems were usually engraved in semi-precious stones, such as colourful quartzes. In the later 1st century BC Roman workshops started manufacturing glass gems that imitated hardstone – a difficult process. Glass was pressed into a mould and the excess removed. Often small air holes remain visible in the surface of the glass. Many were unfinished or never set in a mount, such as the cameo depicting the three graces. Slightly different techniques suggest that there were several distinct workshops in antiquity.

Ancient glass cameo with the Three Graces. Roman, late 1st century BC to 1st century AD. Collection: Felix Slade © The Trustees of the British Museum

Nineteenth century fakes

Modern glass reproductions were made in workshops in the 18th and 19th centuries, providing sets and selections of impressions of ancient and neoclassical gems in a variety of materials, including glass. Sometimes these imitations were fraudulently sold as ancient antiques.

Fakes flooded the market in the 19th century, finding their way into many collections. The ubiquity of fakes and the difficulty of establishing provenance explains why generations of scholars shunned this class of object. Today, scientific analysis can successfully detect and date fakes by identifying additives in the glass. Hopefully…

Modern fake intaglio with Venus on two sea-horses. 18th to 19th century. Collection: Felix Slade © The Trustees of the British Museum

Wasters

Sometimes gems were damaged in the production process, especially when made in glass, which was tricky to handle. These were discarded which we know because they were never finished or set. However, surprisingly many of these abandoned pieces survive. The technical term for them is ‘wasters’. Here’s a typical waster.

Ancient glass intaglio (waster) with profile bust of helmeted Minerva. Roman, late 1st century BC to early 1st century AD © The Trustees of the British Museum

Summary

Small but beautifully formed exhibition. Surprising amount of information and huge historical range from the ancient Greeks via the Rome of Augustus, Michelangelo’s Renaissance and Townley’s Enlightenment, right up to the present day and the embarrassing pickle the Museum has found itself in.

Related links

• Rediscovering gems continues at the British Museum until 23 June 2024
• Large print guide i.e. all the wall labels and captions

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• More British Museum reviews