A ROMAN CARNELIAN RINGSTONE WITH A PORTRAIT OF OCTAVIAN

CIRCA MID 1ST CENTURY B.C.

Details

A ROMAN CARNELIAN RINGSTONE WITH A PORTRAIT OF OCTAVIAN
CIRCA MID 1ST CENTURY B.C.
½ in. (1.2 cm.) long

Provenance

Ludovisi-Boncompagni collection, Rome, by 1840 (illustration of gem impression preserved on the Beazley Archive).
Paul Julius Arndt (1865-1937), Munich (no. A1410).
Giorgio Sangiorgi (1886-1965), Rome, acquired and brought to Switzerland, late 1930s; thence by continuous descent to the current owners.

Literature

M.-L. Vollenweider, Die Steinschneidekunst und ihre Künstler in spätrepublikanischer und augusteischer Zeit, Baden-Baden, 1966, pp. 39, 54 and 102, pl. 29,2.
M.-L. Vollenweider, Die Porträtgemmen der römischen Republik, Mainz am Rhein, 1972, vol. I, pp. 134, 158, 175, 201, 218ff., 238 and 263; vol. II, p. 101, pls. 157,2 and 5.
E. Zwierlein-Diehl, Glaspasten im Martin-von-Wagner-Museum der Universität Würzburg, Munich, 1986, p. 207.
J. Boardman and C. Wagner, Masterpieces in Miniature: Engraved Gems from Prehistory to the Present, London, 2018, p. 130, no. 118.
Beazley Archive Gem Database "Impronte gemmarie della collezione Boncompagni."

Lot Essay

This fine portrait of a youthful Octavian (later the Emperor Augustus) shows him wearing a mourning beard, indicating that it must have been sculpted shortly after the assassination in 44 B.C. of his maternal great-uncle Julius Caesar. According to Caesar's will, Octavian was posthumously adopted. Together with Mark Antony and Marcus Lepidus, he formed the Second Triumvirate to defeat Caesar's assassins. On several related gems and on coins minted by Octavian after the assassination, he is frequently shown wearing the mourning beard (see for example the impression from a lost gem, no. 743 in Boardman, et al., The Marlborough Gems).

The Ludovisi-Boncompagni provenance for this gem was indicated in Sangiorgi's notes, and confirmed by an impression illustrated in the Beazley Archive Gem Database. The later Arndt provenance is also confirmed from an impression in a box in the Sangiorgi collection identified as coming from Paul Arndt.

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