Lady With A Unicorn, by Raphael

I just wrote about the wonders of Dover Publications. With some of the samples they e-mailed me this week came a painting from their 120 Italian Renaissance Paintings CD-ROM and book called Lady With A Unicorn, by Raphael. Amazingly, last week Emma Alvarez posted a very interesting and informative article about unicorns on her blog entitled Unicorns, Symbols of Purity .

With unicorns mentioned in a number of cultures, literature, and even nines times in The Bible, did these mythical animals really trot and gallop here on earth?

Three Coliseums

The University of Georgia where I did both my undergraduate and graduate studies periodically sends me travel brochures of their annual trips around the world. The trips are always to exotic and beautiful locations dripping with Romance and history. Two years ago, I received a brochure that stunned me. On it was a photo of a structure that the average person is probably not aware of. Most everyone has heard of and seen photos of the coliseum in Rome, famous for its gladiatorial fights and notorious for the martyrdom of many early Christians. I was stunned to see on a brochure about a trip to Croatia that there is another ancient coliseum still in existence which is in better condition than the one in Rome. This second coliseum is located in the city of Pula and can be seen here.


Even in my mundane southern town, there is also a coliseum on the campus of my old university. Here is an old post card of it. It can be said that I graduated from high school in a coliseum because the building below is where I and my 12th grade classmates gathered on evening in early June to end one phase of our lives and to begin another.

The Romance of Cameos

Today when I was out, a woman came up to me and just stared at my throat because from it hung one of my most treasured pieces of jewelry, a genuine, hand engraved shell cameo pendant of Mary Queen of Scots. Since I was a girl I have adored cameos. The woman who approached me was a nurse, and said she has long wanted to own a cameo. I told her that what I had on was the real thing, not some mass produced junk.

When some people think of cameos they probably envision prim Victoria ladies in high collars with a cameo pinned on their collars at their necks. I envision them too in my mind’s eye, but my imagination also takes me further back in time to ancient Roman patrician ladies in elaborately circled hairdos with cameo earrings dangling from their earlobes and with intricate necklaces composed of a number cameos around their necks.

The making of handmade cameos is an ancient and dying art which began in the 6th century in ancient Greece. After ancient Roman times cameos enjoyed revivals during the Renaissance, the 17th and 18th centuries and in Victorian times. For a time they were produced and were quite poplar in post World War II Germany.

M + M Scognamiglio is run by Amedeo Scognamiglio who is keeping the cameo tradition alive and well in Italy as are a few other families there. Amedeo comes to the US several times a year and appears on the Home Shopping Network to present new batches of his company’s cameos once they are produced. Some of his available cameos can be seen here. The production of cameos is a painstaking process. Since each piece is made by hand, no two items are exactly alike. Most cameos today are made out of shell, but in the past, cameos were sometimes made out of precious or semi-precious stones. Engraving cameos in stone is more difficult than in shell.

The word “cameo” means “to engrave,” and is believed to be to come from the ancient Hebrew or Arabic word “kamea” which means “charm” or “amulet.” Folkloric claims say that cameos bring on good fortune and or health.

Here is my own cameo which I bought nearly two years ago from M + M Scognamiglio of the tragic and beautiful Mary Queen of Scots.

Last year my mom and I went to see an exhibition of Byzantine artifacts at The Georgia Museum of Art here in Athens on The University of Georgia campus. The collection contained a good quantity of jewelry with pieces that were cameos in semi-precious stone. Over the centuries the subject matter of cameos has tended to be from classical mythology and the profiles of rulers. The Byzantine cameos were not only from Greek mythology, but also on Christian themes since the Byzantine Empire was the Christian offshoot of the Roman Empire. I had a very special and full feeling in the rooms where those pieces were on display because of their mystic and ancient beauty. I wondered about the long dead people who wore those cameos. Most of the pieces which came from what is now Turkey, Syria, and Iraq were well over 1000 years old.

Amedeo Scognamiglio has said that people who appreciate cameos today are those who live history, tradition, art, and beauty. The art of cameo making is a Romantic craft that I hope will never die. I hope to increase my collection someday.