Antique Cameo Gold Brooch after Thorvaldsen, c. 1860

The present brooch presents a finely carved cameo made of shell: we see a male figure stepping towards a seated female figure with a slightly forward movement and handing her a small child. The figures are connected by their gestures and gazes in a diagonal, while the child forms the center of the depiction. The scene is based on an ancient myth: the child is Bacchus (Dionysus in Greek), son of the supreme god Jupiter (Zeus) and the mortal Semele, a daughter of the Theban king Kadmos. Jupiter's wife Juno (Hera), jealous of the affair, deceived Semele and made her allow Jupiter to appear in his divine form. As no human being can bear the sight of a god in full power, Semele burned to death. Jupiter saved the unborn child and allowed it to mature until it could be born. To protect it from Juno's persecution, he handed the infant over to the messenger of the gods Mercury (Hermes), recognizable here by his winged hat and shoes, who took the child to Semele's sister Ino. Ino and her husband Athamas took Bacchus in and raised him. The depiction of our cameo is based on a relief created by the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen in Rome in 1809, of which several versions have survived. Below is a marble relief based on this model, which is kept in Thorvaldsen's Museum in Copenhagen and can also be viewed online, here. The cameo was probably created on the Gulf of Naples in Italy, based on an engraving of this pictorial invention. The oval cameo is held by a simple gold setting with a surrounding pearl bar. The work, which was created in the c. 1860s, is beautifully preserved and came to us here in Berlin.

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