On the bezel of the Luxor ring, the most delicate subject in the collection meets bronze — worked with the lost-wax technique, polished and gilded to 18 carats — which gives weight and presence to an allegory that still surprises with its freshness.
The seller moves among her buyers with the ease of an everyday gesture, as an ancient fresco, preserved to this day, returns it to us in all its compositional harmony. It offers itself whole, in its elegance and vivacity.
The cameo is precise and full of detail: shadows shift with the light, the image reveals itself differently at every glance. The body of the ring, round and full, gives this subject material richness — the weight of the jewel, its surfaces and the round, slightly raised setting lend substance to the cameo: an ideal frame, a home.
An intaglio that tells of everyday life and gentle pleasures. The colours open four different atmospheres. Pearl is iridescent: the figures emerge when the light touches them, coming from light rather than shadow — the relief reveals itself gradually, always different. Sky blue carries the figures into the open light of the Campanian coast — a marine, raking air that lifts the composition, the amorini in flight seeming freshly released from the sky. Porphyry returns the image to its own time: that red of the Pompeian frescoes, extraordinary in their quality and use of colour, which even today never ceases to surprise. Pink: the pastel tone enhances the double nature of this cameo — Rococo grace in the amorini and neoclassical composure in the figures coexist in the same work. It is here that the two registers read together with greatest clarity.
Centuries of stories, everyday life, love, choices. All in one jewel.