Medieval Gem Engraving

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. It 18 at first sight apparent, rom two considerations, that the(genu1ne Gothic artists never attempted engraving upon hard stones.\ The first, and this an argument of the greatest weight, is that no gems are to be met with exhibiting purely Gothic designs. We know from the innumerable seals pre served, both official and personal, many of them most elabo rately drawn and artistically executed, what would be the designs that gems engraved by a hand contemporary with these seals must necessarily have exhibited for, as the analogy of the two arts requires, the same hand would have cut the intagli in stone and the seals in metal. Thus at a later time we find that the famous gem-engravers of the Revival, such as I] Greco, Matteo del N assaro, and Valerio Belli, were also die sinkers. Any gems, therefore, engraved either in Italy, France, or Germany between the years 900 and 1453 would necessarily present such subjects as saints in ecclesiastical or monastic costume, knights arrayed in the armour of their times, and, above all, architectural embellishments, canopies and niches, the customary deco rations of the mediaeval seals in metal.