Lot Essay
Several boxes by Neuber survive with carved hardstone cameos. Two closely related oval examples, each with a sardonyx cameo of a classical female profile, are in the Victoria & Albert Museum (illustrated in Walter Holzhausen, Johann Christian Neuber, Dresden, 1935, figs. 35 and 37). Another similar cameo, a portrait of Juno, is on a box sold in the Anatole Demidoff sale, l'Hotel Drouot, January 13-16, 1863, lot 42. An oval box at the Louvre is set with a red jasper cameo of the head of Omphale (Serge Grandjean, Les Tabatires du Muse du Louvre, 1981, fig. 430). A box set with a carnelian cameo of Catherine the Great is illustrated in Henry and Sidney Berry-Hill, Antique Gold Boxes, 1953, illus. 118. Another carnelian-set example, at the Victoria & Albert Museum, is illustrated in Holzhausen, op. cit., fig. 36.