LOT 0383

Chalcedony and Silver-Gilt Bust of the Emperor Vespasian

ITALY, 17TH-18TH CENTURY A.D.

4 1/4 in. (208 grams total, 10.9 cm high including stand).

The head, carved from pale green chalcedony, polished to a smooth lustre and with a drilled aperture at the crown, the hair in tight curls around the nape and crown; the silver-gilt torso dressed in a draped toga carefully chased with deep folds and traces of gilding across the high points; mounted on a later patinated bronze column stand in the neoclassical manner.

Acquired on the European art market.

See for comparable mounted hardstone busts of emperors, frequently combining chalcedony, agate or jade with gilt-metal or bronze mounts, in the Munich Residenz Treasury and the Grünes Gewölbe, Dresden, both collections rich in small-scale lapidary works of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

This small-scale portrait evokes the Roman tradition of imperial portraiture and the early modern fascination with the ancient world. From the seventeenth century onwards, artists and collectors revived classical subjects through hardstone and gilt-metal compositions, often intended for display in Kunstkammer or Grand Tour contexts. The combination of a reused ancient or earlier element with a later mount was a practice typical of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, reflecting the period’s reverence for antiquity and its imaginative recontextualisation of ancient forms.