Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

About this Work

This ring represents a class of luxurious ornaments popular in the Hellenistic period. Its carving is particularly fine, giving a sample of the artistry employed by the royal courts of the time. This is a superior, lucid gem, carved by a first-rate stone cutter.

Heads dominating the entire field of a gem begin to appear in the Early Hellenistic period, probably in the wake of rising demands on court artists who, unlike their ideal-bound fifth-century predecessors, now cast a fresh eye upon the range of subjects available to them. With the more frequent appearance of actual portraits on coins, the step to presenting them on gems became but a small one. The idea of depicting busts of mythological figures seems to have been influenced by the same artistic forces.