CIRCA MID 1ST CENTURY A.D.

On this two-layer sardonyx cameo, white on light brown, is a frontal draped portrait bust of a prince. A laurel wreath adorns his short wavy hair, which forms a fringe across his forehead. Stylistically this cameo recalls an example in the Musei Capitolini, Rome (Righetti, Gemme e cammei delle collezioni comunali, pl. XII, 2) previously thought to depict one of the sons of Constantine. In private correspondence between Sangiorgi and the scholar Richard Delbrück, author of a 1933 study on late antique cameos (Spätantike Kaiserporträts von Constantinus Magnus bis zum Ende des Westreichs), it was suggested that the present cameo depicts Constantius II (317-361 A.D.). However, more recent scholarship places related cameos into the Julio-Claudian period. See for example nos. 122 and 123 in M.-L. Vollenweider and M. Avisseau-Broustet, Camées et intailles, Tome II, Les Portraits romains du Cabinet des médailles.