Antique Pendant-Brooch With a Shell Cameo of Hera, ca. 1880

The Greeks worshipped her under the name Juno, the Romans as Hera: she was the wife of the king of the gods Jupiter or Zeus and watched over marriage and childbirth. The present cameo shows us the beautiful goddess as the ancient Roman sculpture called Hera Campana, now kept in the Louvre, shows her to us: With a tiara in her wavy hair and a veil falling over her neck. She is depicted classically in profile. White, the cut rises above the darker layers of the shell. So finely and precisely is the cameo worked that one almost thinks it is cut in layered agate - but it is the shell of a sea snail. The beautiful cameo of Hera was probably created in the Gulf of Naples, where a major center of the art of gem cutting had developed in the 19th century. Here, skilled cameo cutters carved classical motifs based on models from prints and engravings. The motifs were not taken from antiquity by chance, since it was the works of art and buildings of antiquity that attracted the travellers and thus the cameo cutters' best customers. The invention of the railroad had melted away long distances at once, and the financially strengthened middle class now also enjoyed a Grand Tour through Italy, as it had once been reserved only for the nobility. Even today, the "Ferrovia Circumvesuviana", which opened in 1884, takes you comfortably and inexpensively from Naples to Sorrento, past Pompeii and Herculaneum, always with a magnificent view of the Gulf of Naples and Mount Vesuvius. Locally acquired cameos were then usually set in gold or silver in the home country of the travellers. Often it is these settings that allow a more accurate dating. Here, the finely openwork setting with shell motifs and a trim of seed pearls tells us that it was created in the years around 1880.

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