The most precious antique example in paste is the Portland Vase. It was discovered in the sixteenth century in a sarcophagus within the monument of the Emperor Alexander Severus and his mother, Julia Mamæa, on the Frascati road, about two miles and a half from Rome. It was long known as the Barberini Vase, having belonged to that family in Rome for two hundred years; thence it came to England in the last century, and after twice changing ownership, at the death of the Duchess of Portland, from whom it takes its name, it was sold to the Duke of Marlborough, and is now in the British Museum. It has been broken and mended. It is about ten inches high, and at the broadest part six inches in diameter. It was formed of paste, and afterward engraved.
The paste is in imitation of onyx, in two strata, white upon blue, of an amethyst tinge; the figures are cut in relief on the lighter color, the blue forming the second plane or background.
Though the antique paste cameos and intaglios are largely reproductions of subjects also found engraved on pietradura, we are indebted to this class of gems for many examples of ancient cameos and intaglios which we would otherwise never have seen; in fact, from the rare beauty of some specimens in paste, they never could have existed in any other material.
Not only do both intaglios and cameos in antique paste present us with the choicest examples of miniature art, but the iridescence created on them by time frequently renders them the most beautiful specimens in a collection.
MYTHOLOGICAL.
Through the possession of these Pagan cameos and intaglios we have become heirs to the most thorough knowledge of Mythology.
Hundreds of distinct specimens may be gathered from glyptic work centuries before Christ, and so arranged as to form several genealogical trees.
In Mythology there is not one single ancestor of all, as in the biblical history, where Adam is honored with being our original and only progenitor and equally censured with being the testator of our legacy of all human ills. The myriad bigamist ancestors of the countless mythological beings pictured on ancient gems have created and bequeathed to us numerous families of celestial and terrestrial divinities, denizens of earth, air, and water, and hundreds of grotesque chimeras.