- Material: Sardonyx Shell, 18K gold marked, enamel, French (Paris) gold hallmarks, two eagles heads.
- Size:
1 1/2" by 1 2/8", cameo itself is 1 2/8" by 1"bracelet length 8",
wearable length 7". Bracelet is completely detachable from the cameo.
- Weight: 45.2 grams.
- Date and Origin: Circa 1840 France.
- Conditions:
Immaculate. Just a slighest natural shell line barely visible when the
cameo is backlit, not visible when looking at the cameo from the front.
More
than Excellent Quality cameo depicting Zeus and Nemesis. A rarest
subject never seen before now. Nemesis is the goddess who punishes
mankind’s pride and arrogance. Here, she is seen reading a list of the
guilty. One of her feet is resting on the wheel of fortune. The eagle on
the left is the symbol of Zeus, the ruler of Olympus. The scene
depicted is after a bas-relief by Bertel Thorvaldsen made in 1810 and
titled Jupiter and Nemesis, now in the Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen.
Zeus was a popular subject on cameos but finding him companied by
Nemesis, who is a more than rare subject on cameos, and so wonderfully
carved is rarest. Each smallest detail of the sculpture has been carved
on the cameo and, even if it is enough small, everything is superbly
rendered. The sculpted body of Zeus, his throne, his eagle. Nemesis
dress is amazingly made as the paper she's reading to Zeus. Carving a so
intricate scene on a small cameo is not easy and carving it so superbly
is even harder. The gold bracelet is gorgeous, massive gold and green
enamel, it is spectacular, so elaborate and wonderful. This is another
masterly carved cameo. A very desirable collectors piece.
A Bit of History:
Nemesis
In ancient Greek religion, Nemesis, also called Rhamnousia or Rhamnusia
("the goddess of Rhamnous"), is the goddess who enacts retribution
against those who succumb to hubris (arrogance before the gods). The
name Nemesis is related to the Greek word νÎμειν némein, meaning "to give what is due", from Proto-Indo-European nem- "distribute".
Divine
retribution is a major theme in the Hellenic world view, providing the
unifying theme of the tragedies of Sophocles and many other literary
works. Hesiod states: "Also deadly Nyx bore Nemesis an affliction to
mortals subject to death" (Theogony, 223, though perhaps an interpolated line). Nemesis appears in a still more concrete form in a fragment of the epic Cypria.
She
is implacable justice: that of Zeus in the Olympian scheme of things,
although it is clear she existed prior to him, as her images look
similar to several other goddesses, such as Cybele, Rhea, Demeter, and
Artemis. As the "Goddess of Rhamnous", Nemesis was honored and placated
in an archaic sanctuary in the isolated district of Rhamnous, in
northeastern Attica. There she was a daughter of Oceanus, the primeval
river-ocean that encircles the world. Pausanias noted her iconic statue
there. It included a crown of stags and little Nikes and was made by
Pheidias after the Battle of Marathon (490 BC), crafted from a block of
Parian marble brought by the overconfident Persians, who had intended to
make a memorial stele after their expected victory. Her cult may have
originated at Smyrna. She is portrayed as a winged goddess wielding a
whip or a dagger.
The poet Mesomedes wrote a hymn to Nemesis in the early second century AD, where he addressed her:
Nemesis, winged balancer of life, dark-faced goddess, daughter of Justice
and mentioned her "adamantine bridles" that restrain "the frivolous insolences of mortals".
In early times the representations of Nemesis resembled Aphrodite, who sometimes bears the epithet Nemesis.
Later,
as the maiden goddess of proportion and the avenger of crime, she has
as attributes a measuring rod (tally stick), a bridle, scales, a sword,
and a scourge, and she rides in a chariot drawn by griffins.
Fortune and retribution
The word nemesis
originally meant the distributor of fortune, neither good nor bad,
simply in due proportion to each according to what was deserte. Later, Nemesis
came to suggest the resentment caused by any disturbance of this right
proportion, the sense of justice that could not allow it to pass
unpunished. From the fourth century onward, Nemesis, as the just
balancer of Fortune's chance, could be associated with Tyche.
Nemesis
has been described as the daughter of Oceanus or Zeus, but according to
Hyginus she was a child of Erebus and Nyx. She has also been described,
by Hesiod, as the daughter of Nyx alone. In the Theogony, Nemesis is
the sister of the Moirai (the Fates), the Keres (Black Fates), the
Oneiroi (Dreams), Eris (Discord) and Apate (Deception).
In some
metaphysical mythology, Nemesis produced the egg from which hatched two
sets of twins: Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra, and the Dioscuri, Castor
and Pollux. While many myths indicate Zeus and Leda to be the parents of
Helen of Troy, the author of the compilation of myth called Bibliotheke
notes the possibility of Nemesis being the mother of Helen. Nemesis, to
avoid Zeus, turns into a goose, but he turns into a swan and mates with
her anyway. Nemesis in her bird form lays an egg that is discovered in
the marshes by a shepherd, who passes the egg to Leda. It is in this way
that Leda comes to be the mother of Helen of Troy, as she kept the egg
in a chest until it hatched.
Nemesis enacted divine retribution on
Narcissus for his vanity. After he rejected the advances of the nymph
Echo, Nemesis lured him to a pool where he caught sight of his own
reflection and fell in love with it, eventually dying.
A festival called Nemeseia (by some identified with the Genesia)
was held at Athens. Its object was to avert the nemesis of the dead,
who were supposed to have the power of punishing the living, if their
cult had been in any way neglected (Sophocles, Electra, 792; E. Rohde, Psyche, 1907, i. 236, note I).
Nemesis was one of several tutelary deities of the drill-ground (as Nemesis campestris). Modern scholarship offers little support for the once-prevalent notion that arena personnel such as gladiators, venatores and bestiarii
were personally or professionally dedicated to her cult. Rather, she
seems to have represented a kind of "Imperial Fortuna" who dispensed
Imperial retribution on the one hand, and Imperially subsidized gifts on
the other; both were functions of the popular gladiatorial Ludi held in
Roman arenas. She is shown on a few examples of Imperial coinage as Nemesis-Pax, mainly under Claudius and Hadrian. In the third century AD, there is evidence of the belief in an all-powerful Nemesis-Fortuna. She was worshipped by a society called Hadrian's freedmen.
Ammianus Marcellinus includes her in a digression on Justice following his description of the death of Gallus Caesar.
Zeus (Jupiter)
Zeus
in Greek mythology is the king of the gods, the ruler of Mount Olympus,
and the god of the sky and thunder. His symbols are the thunderbolt,
eagle, bull and the oak. Zeus was the child of Cronus and Rhea, and the
youngest of his siblings. In most traditions he was married to Hera,
although at the oracle of Dodona his consort was Dione: according to
the Iliad, he is the father of Aphrodite by Dione. He is known
for his erotic escapades, including one pederastic relationship with
Ganymede. These resulted in many famous offspring, including Athena,
Apollo and Artemis, Hermes, Persephone (by Demeter), Dionysus, Perseus,
Heracles, Helen, Minos, and the Muses (by Mnemosyne); by Hera he is
usually said to have fathered Ares, Hebe and Hephaestus.His Roman
counterpart was Jupiter.
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