Classical Revival Carnelian Intaglio Depicting a
Homosexual Couple Engaged in Fellatio
This Gorgeous Seal Has Been Mounted in a
Modern 18 Karat Gold Ring
The art of glyptics, or carving on colored
precious stones, is probably one of the oldest
known to humanity. Intaglios, gems with an
incised design, were made as early as the fourth
and third millennia B.C. in Mesopotamia and the
Aegean Islands. The exhibit a virtuosity of
execution that suggests an old and stable
tradition rooted in the earliest centuries. The
tools required for carving gems were simple: a
wheel with a belt-drive and a set of drills.
Abrasives were necessary since the minerals
used were too hard for a metal edge. A special
difficulty of engraving intaglios, aside from their
miniature size, was that the master had to work
with a mirror-image in mind.
The Classical Revival was a phenomenon that
swept through Europe in the 18th and 19th
Centuries. A new appreciation for antiquity and
ancient art forms was fostered by discoveries in
the nascent scientific field of archaeology.
Perhaps the Classical Revival also reveals a latent
longing towards the Arcadian lifestyles of
yesterday abandoned as Europe became rapidly
industrialized and increasingly urbanized. A
scene quite unbecoming of refined Victorian
tastes has been carved onto the polished face of
this precious gemstone. A pair of bearded men
are engaged in an act of fellatio as one man rest
on his knees and pleasures the other man as well
as himself. Such a bawdy scene is surely an
imitation of earlier classical examples which were
quite common. In antiquity, this pairing would
have had little of the stigma attached with it
today. In addition, erotica was openly accepted,
if not flaunted. Perhaps no other seal better
conveys the longing of Classical Revival artists to
reconnect with the past for such an scene would
surely have been controversial to the tastes of
polite 18th Century European society.
- (FJ.6782)
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