gems, glyptic, antique gems, engraved gems, rings, beryl, emerald

In 1888, M. Bode, who had just acquired for the Berlin Museum a small painting representing a head of Christ, which he attributed to Jan van Eyck, sought, in the Zeitschrift für christliche Kunst, to determine the type to which this very regular profile should be related. He then published a medal, the obverse of which bore a head of Christ in profile and the reverse the following inscription: “Presentes figure ao (sic) similitudinem domini ihesu salvatoris nostri et apostoli pauli in amiraldo impresse per magni theucri predecessores antea singulariter observate misse suut ab ipso magno theucro s. d. n. pape innocencio octavo pro singulari dono ad hune finem ut suum fratrem captivum retineat.” M. Bode very rightly pointed out that this medal, half a century later than the painting, could not have been the immediate model copied by the Netherlandish artist, but that the latter must have attempted to reproduce, with the greatest possible fidelity, an ancient, traditional type derived from this emerald of Constantinople sent to Rome to Innocent VIII. “Such imitations,” he added, “appear to have reached the West as early as antiquity and to have served as a type for representations of the Savior.”