Three Greek Gem Masters

Author(s): John Boardman

Source: The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 111, No. 799 (Oct., 1969), pp. 587-596
Published by: The Burlington Magazine Publications Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/876083
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 PIERRE PUGET
some personal contact between the artists. Castiglione might
well have obtained the commission for the Assunta relief
for an acquaintance in trouble, a foreign artist who suddenly
found himself forced to earn a living in Italy, one worthy
of better tasks than the execution of such quasi-copies as
the one published here.
If the details of Puget's stay in Rome around 1662 remain
conjectural, the importance of the sojourn is in no way
diminished. The Roman trip may even suggest that Puget's
place in the art world of his time needs reappraisal. Puget's
sculpture has too often been seen as a provincial phenomenon,
this point of view being sustained by the fact that his most
productive years were spent in Provence and Genoa,
rather than Paris and Rome which were the creative
centres of the period. The fact that so large a part of Puget's
bibliography are the writings of ProvenCal amateurs
motivated in part by chauvinism has also served to give
strength to this particular attitude. Yet Puget himself
suggested the context in which he chose to be judged. He
said to the architect Mansard during a trip to Paris in
JOHN
Three Greek
THE study of ancient gem engraving was set on a scholarly
footing by Furtwingler in his great work, Die antikenGemmen,
which was published in I900. By now there is much more
to learn and understand of the art, and the trend must be
away from picture books and studies which subordinate
gem engraving to the other and better documented arts
of antiquity, and to more historical treatments which attempt
to distinguish local styles, workshops, even hands. The
present writer is attempting this task with Greek gems, and
detailed studies by others of Etruscan, Roman Republican
and Roman Imperial gems have appeared or are promised,
while new catalogues of major collections will make more
material available with adequate illustration.1 This article
presents some by-products of the study: identification of an
important Archaic artist, whose character I was not able
to discern when Archaic Greek Gems was published (August
1968) and before a visit to the Hermitage collection dis-
closed a key piece; a reappraisal of some of the works of
Dexamenos, the greatest of the Classical engravers; and
two strange intaglios by a Classical Greek artist working
within the Persian empire. The pieces are illustrated here
at three or four times life size; some in plaster impressions,
1 P. ZAZOFF:EtruskischeSkarabden
[1968]. For early Roman gems see M. L.
VOLLENWEIDER: und ihre Kiinstlerin spiitrepublikanischer
Die Steinschneidekunst
augusteischerZeit [1966] and a forthcoming work on Republican portraits.
For Greek gems the writer's Island Gems[1963], ArchaicGreekGems[1968] and
forthcoming GreekGems and Finger Rings. Miss RICHTER'Snew EngravedGems
of the Greeksand the Etruscansgives a useful range of pictures. New catalogues
of the major collections in Germany (one volume on Munich has appeared),
Geneva (one volume has appeared), Oxford and London are promised.
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IN ROME: 1662
1688, 'Sache Monsieur, queje ne fais de comparisonqu'avec un
cavalier L'algarde et un cavalier Bernin'.30 Given Puget's
orientation, it is clear that the visit to Rome around I662
must have provided a watershed of material for the French
sculptor for the rest of his life. It is hardly a coincidence
that works under way or on view in Rome in 1661-1662
should have had a disproportionate influence on Puget's
later works. He must certainly have used the works he
observed at that time to set his artistic standards of later
years. The sculptor was still drawing on this source for
ideas in his old age, witness the influence of Bernini's St
Jerome in the Cathedral at Siena carved in Rome in I66i-
1663 on Puget's last project for a statue, a St Jerome for the
Carignano Church in Genoa (c. I693).31
3oThe statement is in the ms. of Jean de Dieu, Puget's host in Paris in 1688
whom Bougerel later persuaded to write out his recollections of the artist.
This ms. is now lost but the passage is quoted by LAGRANGE,op. cit., p.266.
31Projects..9.'.
WITTKOWER,op. cit., p.226 and WALTON:'Pierre Puget's op.cit.,
P-94.
BOARDMAN
Gem Masters
some from the original stone; several in both.2
The Master of the LondonSatyr
The superb agate scarab in London with the figure of a
reclining satyr is deservedly one of the better known of
Archaic Greek gems3 (Figs.Io, I ) and may be dated
around the middle of the second half of the sixth century
B.c.
It would be agreeable if other works from this master's
hand could be recognized. In Archaic Greek Gems the stone
was assigned to a series of gems, the 'Satyr Groups', which
exhibit a considerable unity of style - a feature the more
readily observed for the fact that closely similar subjects
are involved. The finer gems, however, which are of com-
parable quality, are quite clearly by other artists - or, if
by our master, they were made at a stage in his career in
some degree removed from that in which he cut the London
satyr. There is a clue, however, in the scarab back - a
feature of these gems to which insufficient attention has
hitherto been paid. A plaster cast of it is shown in Fig. 15.4 It
is a large stone, 22 mm. long. The back is high and most
carefully detailed with a neat hatched border to the beetle's
thorax, an elaborate head, and incised legs with clearly
2 I have to thank curators in London, New York, Munich, Leningrad and
Boston for permission to illustrate gems in their collections. The photographs
und of all impressions and the original stones in London are by Robert L. Wilkins;
of stones in Leningrad, by the writer; and Fig. 17 from a museum photograph.
Miss V. Grace sent me the photograph of the amphora, Fig.28.
3 H. B. WALTERS: Catalogueof the EngravedGems in the British MuseumNo.465,
pl.8, and the writer's ArchaicGreekGems (hereafter AGGems)No.93, pl.6 and
pp.53ff. for discussion and references.
4 As AGGemsNo.93, pl.40 and the colour photograph, p.55.
587
 THREE GREEK
cut joints. The back of the thorax is bow-shaped, coming
to a point between the wing cases. The plinth is plain, as
for almost all Archaic Greek scarabs, and between the
wing cases there runs a clear spine, a form of carination
which is also characteristically Greek. At the front of the
wing cases the 'V winglets' of Egyptian or Phoenician
scarabs are cut. These are not commonly marked on Greek
scarabs, and here they are exceptionally small in relation
to the size of the whole beetle. Altogether this is an unusually
fine and detailed scarab for the Greek series.
An almost exact replica of the beetle back is to be found
on a gem in Leningrad (inv. 416), shown in Fig.I6. This is
a badly burnt stone, probably originally a cornelian or
agate. Part of its back is missing but it was in every respect
detailed like the scarab beetle of the London satyr. This is
also a large stone, exactly the size of the London gem. The
comparison is so close that the beetles must have been
carved by the same man. This does not mean that the
intaglios were also his work, but it is extremely probable
since such specialization of staff in a gem engraver's studio
seems unlikely. The quality and style of the intaglio device
(Figs. 12, 13) are comparable, even though the scale and
subject do not allow of very close comparisons between the
figures. The border is a cable, which is seen occasionally
on the finer Greek scarabs instead of the usual hatching, as
on the London gem. The subject is a winged youth riding
a horse. The horse is shown from the rear, its head turned
towards the right (in impression) together with its forelegs.5
The youth is sitting on the horse back to front. This is
clearly true of his body above the waist, but below it the
artist appears to be showing buttocks rather than belly,
so that his seat at least is conventionally oriented. The knees
are in profile but the feet are not. Since heels are not marked
we should probably assume that the front of the foot is
shown, in which case the youth is twisted only around the
buttocks. The contortion recalls the minoanizing twist in
animal studies on Island gems,6 and a number of bronze
statuettes, mainly Archaic and from different parts of
Greece, which show the human head alone turned to the
back.7 The purpose is thought to be magical. Even if our
artist did not intend his horsemen to be contorted, he still
has him seated the wrong way round on his horse, a feat
we associate most readily with the modern circus. This is
not likely to be Eros, who at any rate is not usually shown
riding horses in Greek art until much later,s but one of those
demons known to East Greek art and shown in a troupe on
a Clazomenian sarcophagus.9
The rather linear treatment of the horseman's features
and his stippled hair so closely match those of a lyre-player
1 In
glyptic there is another, more conventional view of a horseman from the
rear on a somewhat later gold ring in London, for which see now Antike
Kunst,X [1967], pl.7, N43; and on a Greco-Punic scarab from Ibiza a woman
sits sideways on a horse, seen from behind, VIVES Y ESCUDERO:Necropoli di
Ibiza, pl.26.14.
6 Island Gems,p.93 ; recalled once for a similar subject, a boar, on an Archaic
scarab, AGGems,No.556, pl1.37.
7 For these see D. E. L. HAYNES in Journal of Hellenic Studies,LXXII [1952], P-75
with pl.2c.
8 See J. D. BEAZLEY: Greek Vases in Boston, III, p.89.
9 AntikeDenkmdler,II, pl.27.I.
588
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GEM MASTERS
on a cornelian scaraboid in London'? (Fig.i4) that this
too must be by our artist. When we look back to the London
satyr we recognize too the way incision is used to pick
out the sinews of the legs. The lyre player was placed in
ArchaicGreekGemswith a 'Sphinx and Youth Group I',
where stippling on wing bases and hair was a characteristic
feature.
Yet another scarab can be attributed to the master, and
again the clue is in the scarab back which is detailed in
exactly the manner of the London and Leningradstones. It
is in New York"1(Fig.i7), of cornelian, and exceptionally
large (25 mm. long). Gela in Sicily is its alleged provenience,
from a tomb with black figure vases. The device shows a
lion attacking a bull (Fig.I8). We see again the meticulous
hatched borderof the London gem with the satyr, and stip-
pling on the lion's mane. Set beside the other stones already
discussed the general congruity of style is immediately
apparent. In ArchaicGreekGemsthis stone was placed in
the 'Group of the Munich Protomes'.
With these four stones so securely associated it is worth
reconsideringothers in the groups to which they had been
assigned, in case further attributions are possible. In the
Satyr Groups there is, in fact, one candidate, now that we
have more than the London satyr alone to work from. It
is a cornelian scarab in Berlin,"2from Orvieto, showing
Tityos collapsing, an arrow in his back. Here again there is
the cable border and the hair is stippled, while the beard
and locks are worked with tiny drilled holes which are
uncommon on Archaic Greek gems, but were freely used
by our artist on the London satyr's hair, beard and vases.
The small beetle of the Berlin Tityos is a little simpler
than the larger scarabsand has the V winglets. The 'Sphinx
and Youth Group I' offers nothing sufficientlyclose to the
London lyre player to suggest further attributions there.
But, in the Group of the Munich Protomes,it was suggested
in ArchaicGreekGemsthat four other stones were by the
same artist as the New York lion and bull. First is the name
piece of the group,13 an agate scarab with foreparts of a
lion and bull and a seated lion of Phoenician type in a
papyrus grove (Fig.2o). The scarab beetle is carefully cut,
with the bow-shaped thorax and carination, but no further
elaboration. The second is a small cornelian scarab in
Boston'4 with the head and foreleg of a lion (Fig.19). The
scarab beetle is well cut for its size. The third and fourth,
replicas,16show a maned lioness with two cubs. The beetle
of the one known to me (in Paris) is most like the finest of
those already considered, including the bow-shaped thorax.
It is set in a gold swivel hoop formed by two entwined snakes.
This swells the list of our artist's surviving works to nine,
which is a good tally considering the scarcity of the extant
material.16
10WALTERS, op. cit., No.493, pl.8; AGGems,No.133, pl.9. I cannot follow
ZAZOFF'sattribution of this gem to Epimenes (op. cit., n. I, p.67).
11AGGems,No.4o7, pl.29.
12 AGGems,No.90o,pl.6.
13AGGems,No.4o6, pl.29; E. BRANDT: AntikeGemmenin deutschenSammlungen,
I (Miinchen), No.I89, pl.21.
14 AGGems,No.41o, pl.29.
15 AGGems,No.41 1, pl.29 and no.412.
16The following might also be associated for their beetles and for their general
style: AGGems,Nos.27I, 279, pl.I9 and No.58I, pl.37.
0o. London 465. Agate scarab. Impression. Scale 4:1. I1. London 465. Agate scarab. Original (see Fig.Io).

12. Leningrad 416. Burnt scarab. Impression. Scale 13. Leningrad 416. Burnt scarab. Original (see Fig.12). 14. London 493. Cornelian scaraboid.
4:I. Impression. Scale 4:1.

15. London 465. Agate scarab back. See 16. Leningrad 416. Burnt scarab back. See 17. New York 42.11.I5. Cornelian scarab
Figs. io, i i. Figs. 12, 13. back. See Fig.18.

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18. New York 42.11.15. Cornelian scarab. Impression. Scale 19. Boston 27.684. Cornelian scarab. Impres- 20. Munich A 1284. Aga
4:1. sion. Scale 4:1.

21. Boston 27.580. Chalcedony scaraboid. Impression. 22. Berlin 10520.22. Rock crystal scaraboid. Impres- 23. London 562. Agate sliced
Scale sion. Scale 4:1. barrel. Impression. Scale
4:1i.
a:'.

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 THREE GREEK
It will hardly have escaped notice that these gems are
from three different groups which had been distinguished
in ArchaicGreekGems. The principle of assembling the groups
there depended a great deal on similarity of subject to give
a basis for stylistic comparison. It required the observation
of the Leningrad scarab's back to provide a link between any
of the groups. But the basic unity of the three groups had
been observed without this. The suggestion was made that
Sphinx and Youth Group I and the Group of the Munich
Protomes might be from the same workshop (ibid., p.130)
and in a more general appreciation of Archaic styles (ibid.,
with the Satyr Groups, formed the nucleus
p.I72) these,
of a broader group, characterized for its robust, Ionian
style. This association is now assured, and we can identify
several works of- one of the leading exponents of the style.
It was further argued that the style was introduced to
Etruria where Greek studios were established. The only
two gems by our master with reported proveniences are
from the west (Gela and Orvieto), so he may well have
been the leader of the western studio. His interests in detailed
carving of scarab beetles and in anatomical display17 were
neither of them wholly characteristic of East Greek work
but his practice in Etruria demonstrates just how they
could also become the interests of the native Etruscan
studios which were being founded by the beginning of the
fifth century. The Master of the London Satyr may have
been working in the west for much of the generation before.
Dexamenos
Dexamenos, the greatest of the Classical gem engravers,
signed four gems which have survived, and one of them
vouchsafes the information that he was from the Ionian
island Chios. Much has been written about him already,18
and to the literature I wish to add here only notes on some
attributions and his career.
His best-known piece is the scaraboid in Boston with a
man's head (Fig.21), lovingly worked in every detail to a
degree barely matched on any other gem or coin die of its
day.19 Scholars have not been slow to recognize in this one
of the earliest examples of Greek portraiture. The early
identification of a Demosthenes was forgotten in favour
of Athenian Kimon, proposed by Arthur Evans.20 Furt-
wingler dropped no names but, since the gem was found
in a tomb in Attica, he too thought of an Athenian: 'ohne
Zweifel das individuellste, treuste und lebendigste Portriit eines
vornehmenAtheners aus der Zeit der peloponnesischenKrieg das
auf uns gekommenist'.21 Miss Richter allows an element of
detachment in the portrayal: 'an impersonal rendering if
17 See AGGems,p.59.
is The most important studies of Dexamenos are by A. FURTWANGLER in
Die antiken Gemmen, III, pp.I37-139; J. D. BEAZLEY in Lewes House Gems,
pp.48f. ; M. L. VOLLENWEIDER in Connaissancedes Arts [February 1959], PP-54-59 ;
V. BORELLI in Enc. dell'Arte antica, III, s.v.; E. DIEHL in Berliner Museen Berichte,
XVII [1967], pp.44ff.
19Closest,
perhaps, the fine scaraboid signed by Sosias, Naples I297, American
Journal of Archaeology,LXI [1957], pl.8o.I.
20 Revue Arche'ologique, XXXII
pp.337ff.; G. M. A. RICHTER in Greek
[1898.I],
Portraits,IV, p.2o, and Portraitsof the Greeks,I, p.Io2.
21Jahrbuchdes deutschenarchdologischen
Instituts, III [1888], p.88; Die antiken
Gemmen,III, p.138.
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GEM MASTERS
you like, and yet the portrait of a specific person'.22
The status of the Boston gem becomes something of a
problem, however, in the light of Dr Erika Diehl's recent
publication of a rock crystal scaraboid in Berlin, which she
rightly attributes to the master's hand. It shows the head
of a youth (Fig.22) which in its treatment of hair and
detail exactly matches the Boston head. But can this really
be a portrait too ? If so we would have to judge it a portrait
of the same man, younger and beardless, since the physiog-
nomy and hair are exactly the same. This, of course, would
not be impossible, but now that these features have become
so familiar, repeated on two stones, we may look for them
elsewhere.
An agate sliced barrel in London,23 from Epirus, was
associated with the work of Dexamenos by Furtwingler. It
shows a young boxer binding a thong on one fist (Figs.23,
24). It may be, as Furtwingler suggested, a representation
of a statue since the figure stands on a well defined base
quite unlike the usual treatment of exergues or ground
lines on Classical gems. The boxer's head is, of course,
far smaller than the heads on the Boston and Berlin stones -
barely 4 mm. high - but, grossly enlarged in Fig.24, this
can surely be seen to be the same man, with the same wild
hair and set of features. The similarities seem to go beyond
the generic similarities observed in portraits of different
persons by one artist. It might appear that the sitter and
Dexamenos, between them, monopolize the beginnings of
Greek portraiture, but it is time to ask the question whether
these are portraits at all. The date of the Boston gem seems
fairly well established, little later than the middle of the
fifth century, by the treatment of the eyes and comparisons
with coin types and vase painting. Indeed, somewhat
earlier dates have been proposed for it. If these are indeed
portraits, and the beardlessversions, if of the same man, are
as early as the mid century, we may well wonder that we
have so long to wait before there are any other surviving
examples of unquestionable portraiture in Greek art, let
alone on Greek gems.
If they are not portraits we have to deal with a highly
distinctive characterization for male heads which was
favoured by Dexamenos. Whether it was based on the
features of any one man, on his mirror, or on a generalized
view of his contemporaries, we cannot say. What most
surprises us about it is the marked contrast with contem-
porary idealizing heads of Classical sculpture in Athens. In
other arts, however, as vase painting, there are examples
of equally distinctive characterizations, and we should not
judge the Ionian Dexamenos by the standards of the
Periclean 'court style' in sculpture. That there had been
an early interest in caricature and characterization in East
Greek art is suggested, for instance, by the ancient account
of the sculptor Bupalos - another Chian.24 In glyptic we
may point to another characterization, with a more domed
head, balding, lean chops, hooked nose, and wispy beard,
22 RICHTER in Rendicontidella
PontificiaAccademia,XXXIV [ 1961-62], p.54.
23
WALTERS, op.cit., No.562, pl.io.
24 On this and the evidence for
early caricature see A. RUMPF in Archdologischer
Anzeiger[1936], pp.52-63; and v. ZINSERLING in Die griechischeVase (Rostock),
PP-57Iff.
591
 THREE GREEK
which is shown on two gold rings - one in Berlin,25 the
other in Oxford26 from a Greek city in the Crimea. This is
the head type which is repeated, in broad essentials and
with more hair, in the satrap 'portraits' on coins from the
end of the fifth century and later.27 The Dexamenos type,
on the other hand, resembles the 'Pythagoras' on coins of
Abdera in North Greece."2
A closer date for the signed gem in Boston with the man's
head is not easy to establish. It is even more difficult with
the two signed gems from South Russia showing herons
(Figs.25, 26, 29, 30), but the fourth, in Cambridge, offers
some possibilities. It shows a mistress and her maid
(Fig.3I)
and it was cut for a lady called Mika, whose name appears
on the stone as well as Dexamenos's signature.29 Miss
Diehl, who dates the Boston head c. 455 B.c., puts the Cam-
bridge gem c. 460-455 B.c. She observes, with others, that
Mika was a common name in Athens, and since the Boston
gem was found in a tomb in Attica she deduces that Dexa-
menos worked in Athens. This seems to be generally held,
and we could add that an immigrant artist might be ex-
pected to advertise his home by adding an ethnic to his
signature, as Dexamenos does once. However, Athenian
sculptors working at home sometimes sign as 'Athenians'
and Dexamenos might have had other reasons for this
advertisement, which is not matched on any other Classical
gem. Two of his signed gems are domed scaraboids of blue
chalcedony, a shape and material especially favoured in
East Greece and for the Greco-Persian gems, but there is
other evidence to indicate a Chian school of engravers of
the period of Dexamenos.
A scaraboid from Kerch in the Crimea (ancient Pan-
tikapaion), now in Leningrad, shows a wine amphora30
(Fig.27). Furtwingler had connected it with the work of
Dexamenos because it was of the same mottled jasper that
he employed for other gems. Since then the attribution has
been ignored or discounted,31 but it should be noticed that
the amphora, with its bulging neck and knob toe, is not only
clearly identifiable as Chian (as the example from Athens
shown in Fig.28), but also closely datable, to the middle of
the fifth century and just afterwards.32 The device of a wine
amphora served as part of the island's blazon beside the
sphinx on coins and amphora stamps,33 and we may well
imagine that the Leningrad gem was cut for a wine mer-
chant, and perhaps for one dealing with the Black Sea cities
where many amphorae of this type have been found, as
well as the gem itself. The number of other gems by Dexa-
menos or associated with him which have been found in
25 FURTWANGLER:Die antiken
Gemmen,pl.Io.35; RICHTER,op. cit., p.56, fig.24.
26 BEAZLEY: LewesHouse Gems,pl.A.29; RICHTER, op. cit., p.56, fig.25.
27 Ibid., p.55, figs.Ig-22; c. M. KRAAY and M. HIRMER: GreekCoins, figs.62I,
622, 623, 718.
Portraits,IV, pp.I8f., fig.I6; op. cit., n.22, p.51, fig.18, and
28 RICHTER: Greek
compare the glass scaraboid in Cambridge, p.56, fig.26.
29 In Cambridge. Die antiken Gemmen,pl.14.I ; G. LIPPOLD:Gemmenund Kameen,
pl.64.. It is 21 mm. long.
30 s. REINACH:
Antiquites duBosphorecimmirien,pl.24. I5.
31 AS DIEHL,
op. cit., P.47, n'.I4.
32 I was glad to learn that this observation had been made independently and
long before me by Miss Maximova. For the amphora type see Annual of the
British Schoolat Athens,LIII-LIV [1958-59], PP-300, 3o8; V. GRACE:Amphoras
and the ancientwine trade,fig.44.
33 See GRACE, op. cit., figs.48, 49-
592
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GEM MASTERS
South Russia indicate that this region provided good
customers for Chian glyptic. If the gem with the amphora
is by Dexamenos, which must now again seem probable, it
is the only one for which a close date can be argued and on
grounds other than style.
We return now to the Cambridge stone (Fig.3I). It is
perhaps deceptively Early Classical in appearance. The
body of the seated woman is boldly modelled and there are
no 'antiquarian' features about the composition which de-
mand an early date, although the way the figures fill the
field is not characteristic of gems from the later part of the
fifth century. On the other hand, some very late dates have
been proposed, on grounds of comparison with late fifth-
century sculpture.34 But, for the transparent appearance of
the drapery we have to remember that in cutting an in-
taglio the naked figure can be drilled out first, and the
drapery folds then added by deeper incision to give this
effect, rather like the drapery drawn over naked outlines
on white ground Athenian vases. We need not, therefore,
date Mika's gem far away from the Boston head, and if it
looks less accomplished, this may be because Dexamenos
was more at home with physiognomic studies and animal
subjects than with the stock scenes of Classical art. All this
we might well believe of a Chian.
The nervous delicacy of the engraving on the Boston
head appears also on the two signed gems with herons35
(Figs.25, 26, 29, 30). This rare and distinctive quality is
seen again on a gem in London36 with the device of a
woman seated and playing a triangular harp (trigonon),
shown in Figs.32, 33. The stone had been attributed to
Dexamenos by Furtwingler, who insisted on similarities
in the treatment of dress and the stool with Mika's gem.
But both these features are commonplace, and there seems
a world of difference in style. The lean, round-shouldered
figure on the London gem, with her tiny head, looks rather
towards the fourth century. Moreover, the type of triangu-
lar harp seems to come into fashion only towards the end of
the fifth century.37 Can this still be Dexamenos at work?
No excessive longevity is involved, but what is rather
surprising is the total revolution in style and renunciation
of all earlier mannerisms. Were it not for its obvious associa-
tions with Dexamenos's work it would be easier to date the
stone within the fourth century. Dare we ask whether we
have one Dexamenos or two? Recall how many men took
the name Polygnotos in the Athenian potters' quarter, and
the two named Epiktetos. Father and son? Did the later one
deliberately sign himself once as 'the Chian' to distinguish
himself from another ? Or was this simply advertisement of
a school in Chios to which the ethnic draws attention, and
for which the gem with the Chian amphora has provided
34 RICHTER: Handbook of GreekArt, pp.236f. dates the Boston head c. 420-400,
and Mika c. 420 B.C. The Hades and Persephone on her fig.347 is a good
example of Early Classical drapery on a gem and a clear contrast with the
treatment on the Dexamenos gem, her fig.346. In her new book (see n.I)
the two Dexamenos gems are dated in the third quarter of the fifth century.
3SDie antiken Gemmen,pl.I4.4 and III, p.I37, fig.94; Revue Archiologique,
XXXII [1898.1], pl.8.i, 3; BOARDMAN: GreekArt, p.176, fig.I62.
36 WALTERS, op. cit., No.529, pl.9; Die antikenGemmen,p1.I4.20; LIPPOLD,
op. cit., pl.59.IO; a rock crystal scaraboid, length 35 mm. Miss Vollenweider
convinced me of the validity of this technical and stylistic comparison.
37 See R. HERBIG in AthenischeMitteilungen, LIV [1929], pp.169ff., fig.2.
25. Leningrad. Agate scaraboid. Original. Scale 26. Leningrad. Agate scaraboid. Impression 27. Leningrad. Jasper scaraboid. Original. Scale 4
4:1. (see Fig.25).

29. Leningrad. Chalcedony scaraboid. Original. Scale 4:1. 3o. Leningrad. Chalcedony scaraboid. Impression (see Fig.29). 31. Cambridge
Scale 4:1.

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32. London 529. Rock crystal scaraboid. Impression. Scale
3:1I. 33. London 529. Rock crystal scaraboid. Original (see Fig.32).

34. Istanbul. Chalcedony scaraboid. Impression. Scale 3:1 . 35. London 524. Chalcedony scaraboid. Impression. Scale 3:1.

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 THREE GREEK
further evidence? None of these possibilities can be wholly
discounted.
We should be content that we seem to have as many as
four signatures from the finest of the Classical gem masters,
but it may lead to the false assumption that there were no
others of comparable skill. Sosias, whose superb gem in
Naples has been published by Miss Richter,38 was his
equal in technique and perhaps more wholly Classical in
temperament. A proliferation of attributions to Dexamenos
may only serve to obscure both the quality of his work and
the achievements of his contemporaries and followers. The
London stone, and many others regularly associated with
his name, are probably better not too readily added to his
wuvre.The survival rate of gems is small and this is a period
in which the identification of two by the same hand can
rarely be assured. It is unrealistic to hope that we have so
many from the hand of the greatest engraver of them all.
A Greekin a PersianCourt
Study of the so-called Greco-Persian series of gems39
reveals that, apart from the most typical specimens, with
their scenes of Persians hunting or with animal subjects,
there is a number with purely Greek subjects in a nearly
pure Greek style. They can be distinguished from the pro-
ducts of homeland Greek studios for their tendency to
summarize details on figures and for their failure to disguise
all evidence of technique - mainly the drilling for features
and limbs. This is characteristic too of the main series of
Greco-Persian gems. Moreover, many are from sites within
the Persian empire, most are cut in the blue chalcedony
which was favoured there more than in Greece, and many
are scaraboids with domed backs, which is again more
common in the east. The Greek subjects on some of them
introduce versions which go outside the familiar icono-
graphic tradition of the Greek world, but which are, in
terms of Greek art and myth, wholly acceptable. This is not,
then, evidence for provincial copying or misunderstanding,
which can account for some Etruscan mutations of Greek
myth, but evidence for Greek artists working within the
Persian empire, who had perhaps lost something of the
technical quality of work in the Greek studios, but who kept
alive certain traditions in myth and representation which
are hard to trace in Classical Greece itself. This becomes
most clearly apparent when the whole field of Classical
Greek and Greco-Persian glyptic is surveyed. I present
here simply two works, clearly by the same hand, which
illustrate vividly the observations made above, and which
have a considerable intrinsic interest of their own.
Both gems are of blue chalcedony and are scaraboids
with high domed backs. Their material and shape are
characteristic of the Greco-Persian series as a whole, but are
shared to some degree by the purely Greek studios, and it
was Greek example which popularized the large scaraboid
as a gem shape within the Persian empire. The gem whose
impression is shown in Fig.34 is in Istanbul,40 and was
38
Above, n.x9.
39These will be more fully discussedin a forthcomingbook. The most impor-
tant recent studiesare by H. SEYRIG and RICHTER in Archaeologia
Orientalia
(in
memoriam E. HERZFELD) and by Miss RICHTER in Hesperia, Suppl. VIII,
pp.291ff.
40o . D. CURTIs:
Sardis,XIII.I, No.IoI, pls.9, II. Length 29 mm.
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GEM MASTERS
excavated in the cemetery of Sardis, the Lydian capital
which served the Persians as the seat of the administrative
area or satrapy of Saparda. The impression shown in
Fig.35 is from a gem in London4' which is said to be from
the Punjab, and so from the easternmost satrapy of the
empire, Hindush. Style and shape indicate a date no earlier
than the mid-fifth century B.c. and there is nothing in them
necessarily of the fourth century. They are from opposite
ends of the Persian empire, over 2,500 miles apart, yet a
glance at the treatment of the human features and drapery
on the intaglios declares them the work of a single artist.
He was almost certainly a Greek, and working in southern
Asia Minor. This is not the place to explain the reasons for
suggesting this location. Suffice it to say that the Lydian
court of Sardis generally used seals or gems more purely
Persianin type; and that there are good groundsfor believing
that the Greco-Persian stones were not being cut in the
eastern empire, although stray finds have been made
there, including one of several stones in the Greco-Persian
style in the Hindush capital at Taxila.
The special interest of these devices lies in their subjects.
On the Sardis gem we see Athena and Hermes. Athena is
dressed in the peplos with long overfall caught in by the
belt, in the Attic manner. Her pose, with spear and shield
on the ground, is a common Classical one for which it
would be rash to insist on any single sculptural prototype.
The Hermes is more interesting. He wears his travelling
hat. A short cloak fastened at his neck hangs down his back
and is carried over his left arm, which holds his caduceus.
His right hand is extended in a gesture of expostulation or
demonstration, such as can be readily matched in vase
painting. The gesture for a Hermes standing in much the
position of our figure, is seen in the statue of the Hermes
Ludovisi in the Terme Museum of Rome, a Roman copy
of a work which is generally associated with the studio of
Phidias.42 Other copies of broadly similar Classical statues
of Hermes exist, differing mainly in the position of the
drapery43and the set of the body. One of them may relate
to a work by Polyclitus at Lysimachia (it is not certain
which). This is described by Pliny (NaturalHistory,XXXIV,
56) as a Hermes Logios, and the epithet well suits the gesture
of the statue and of the Hermes on the gem, which is the
earliest original evidence for the type, albeit in miniaturist
glyptic.
No discussion of the Hermes type associates it with an
Athena, and we may take two views of the group presented
by our artist on the gem. Hermes and Athena are very
commonly associated in Greek art in these years,44 es-
pecially on Athenian vases. The artist may simply be ack-
nowledging this association by setting side by side what to
him were stock figures of the deities. If so, it was a very
odd thing to do, since in this period Greek gem engravers
preferred only one figure on their gemstones or, if two, the
association is an explicit and intelligible one; while Greco-
Persian engravers, other than our artist, seem even more
41 WALTERS,op. cit., No.524, pl.9. Length 35 mm.
42 A recent study of this by s. KAROUZOUin AthenischeMitteilungen,LXXVI
[I96i], pp.91ff.
43 For this feature see R. TOLLE in Jahrbuch,LXXXI [1966],
pp.159f.
44 P. ZANKER: WandelderHermesgestalt,pp.68-70.
595
 THREE GREEK
restricted and conventional in their choice of subject. If
the group on the gem is to be taken seriously, as a copy of
some other work, probably sculptural, this is again an odd
choice for a gem, and we are hard put to guess what the
model could have been. The only Classical group of Athena
and Hermes statues mentioned by any ancient author is
that before the entrance to the Ismenion sanctuary at
Thebes, where, Pausanias tells us (IX, 10, 2), the Hermes
was by Phidias and the Athena by the fourth-century
sculptor Scopas. Pausanias could have been misled about
the sculptors, and the two figures shared an epithet -
Pronaoi,'before the shrine' - so were perhaps intended as a
group. The problem remains and may be insoluble, but
we shall have to return to the Hermes figure.
On the London stone (Fig.35) we have a tableau repre-
senting the immediate sequel to Heracles's successful
encounter with the Nemean lion. The hero has laid aside
his club, useless at any rate against a beast invulnerable
to weapons. He paces forward over the prostrate body,
placing one foot on it in what we might recognize as a
traditional safari pose, and extends his hands towards a
woman who offers him a jar. She is dressed in a peplos
with long overfall, girt like the Athena on the other gem.
Her jar is probably meant for a water jar although the side
handles are not shown, and her intention is obvious, to
offer the hero refreshment.She must be the nymph Nemea,
in whose territory the contest took place, but generally it is
only on later works that she is shown, and then merely as
a spectator to the fight. Heracles's pose, with one foot
raised, is a popular one from the Early Classical period
on,45 but here the figure is not at rest but moving forward.
The master of the Olympia sculpture had first used the rare
motif of showing the hero with his foot on his victim on one
of the metopes of the great temple,46 but there his raised
knee supports his elbow, and his hand his weary head,
while it is an Athena who comforts him.
4" Discussed by P. JACOBSTHAL in Die melischenReliefs, pp.Igoff. (fig.3o for
our gem, dated too early). Athena has her foot on a ram slain by mad Ajax
on an early Etruscan red figure vase, Archaeologische Zeitung[I87I], p1.46.x;
BEAZLEY: EtruscanVasePainting, p.42.
46 See B. ASHMOLE and N. YALOURIS: Olympia,pl.143.
596
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GEM MASTERS
So far the scene is remarkable only for its inclusion of
Nemea, and her presence and purpose are easily explicable,
but there is a complication. Overhead there flies a winged
figure with a wreath, partly lost in a crack in the stone. We
would here look for a Victory crowning Heracles, but
instead this is an Eros crowning Nemea. The implication is
obvious: Heracles is to be comforted by love as well as
liquor. No ancient author and no other extant representation
from antiquity recordsthis episodeand we are left wondering
whether this is an improvement to the story made by our
artist, or evidence for a detail of the myth which has other-
wise escaped survival.
For a second time the artist has surprisedus, and we may
enquire from what source or school he learned these rarities.
He was working far from the Greek homeland, and it
could well be that he had arrived from some East Greek
or even Cypriot city to serve a market within the Persian
empire with a strong taste for the Hellenic. If so he was
drawing on iconographic traditions which are far less well
recordedfor us than those of Athenian painting or mainland
Greek narrative sculpture. We might ask what further
evidence there is in the east for such idiosyncrasy,and we
need look no further than two of the motifs which have
occasioned discussion here. For the only other early repre-
sentation of Heracles with his foot on the dead lion, apart
from the Olympia metope, appears on a clay impression
from a gem, found at Ur:47from a central area of the Persian
empire and close in date to the extant gemstone. And the
only other representationof a 'Hermes Logios'is on another
gem,48 from Egypt and of unquestionable Greco-Persian
type, both for its shape (a tabloid with faceted back) and
for the intaglio devices on its other faces, all from the
Greco-Persian repertory although, it seems, by a different
hand. The Hermes on its back could well be another work
of our artist's, and this might help locate his studio, for the
tabloids seem to belong to south-westernAsia Minor, the
area of Cilicia or even Syria.
47 L. LEGRAIN: Ur Excavations,X, No.746, pl.4o.
48 ArchaeologiaOrientalia,pl.3o.I, 2.