the sacred fluid
was preserved. This vase is an onyx, beautifully cut, with fine
figures, and is over eight inches high, mounted at foot and collar
with Byzantine gold and jewelled work. The subject appears to be
an episode during the Siege of Troy,--a whimsical selection of
design for an angel.

Some apparently mediaeval cameos are in reality antiques recut with
Christian characters. A Hercules could easily be turned into a
David, while Perseus and Medusa could be transformed quickly into
a David and Goliath. There are two examples of cameos of the Virgin
which had commenced their careers, one as a Leda, and the other as
Venus! While a St. John had originally figured as Jupiter with his
eagle!

In the Renaissance there was great revival of all branches of gem
cutting, and cameos began to improve, and to resemble once more
their classical ancestors. Indeed, their resemblance was rather
academic, and there was little originality in design. Like most of
the Renaissance arts, it was a reversion instead of a new creation.
Technically, however, the work was a triumph. The craftsmen were
not satisfied until they had quite outdone the ancients, and they
felt obliged to increase the depth of the cutting, in order to show
how cleverly they could coerce the material; they even under-cut
in some cases. During the Medicean period of Italian art, cameos
were cut in most fantastic forms; sometimes a negro head would
be introduced simply to exhibit a dark stratum in the onyx, and
was quite without beauty. One of the Florentine lapidaries was
known as Giovanni of the Carnelians, and another as Domenico of
the Cameos. This latter carved a portrait of Ludovico il Moro on
a red balas ruby, in intaglio. Nicolo Avanzi is reported as having
carved a lapis lazuli "three fingers broad" into the scene of the
Nativity. Matteo dal Nassaro, a son of a shoemaker in Verona, developed
extraordinary talent in gem cutting.

An exotic production is a crucifix cut in a blood-stone by Matteo
del Nassaro, where the artist has so utilized the possibilities of
this stone that he has made the red patches to come in suitable
places to portray drops of blood. Matteo worked also in Paris, in
1531, where he formed a school and craft shop, and where he was
afterwards made Engraver of the Mint.

Vasari tells of an ingenious piece of work by Matteo, where he
has carved a chalcedony into a head of Dejanira, with the skin of
the lion about it. He says, "In the