Cameo
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Cameo. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a term applied to gems of different colors sculptured in relief. The art of engraving on gems boasts of high antiquity, having been practiced with various degrees of success by the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. It was revived in Italy in the 15th century, and is even at the present day cultivated with considerable success. The cameos of the ancients were usually confined to the agate, onyx, and sard, which, on account of the variety of their strata, were better suited to display the artist's talents; but they were also also occasionally occasior found exeand even cuted on opal, beryl, or emerald, emerald, on a sort of factitious stone, the the Vitrum obsidianum of Pliny, distinguished by the One moderns as the antique paste. of the most famous cameos is the onyx at present in Paris called the " "Apotheosis of Augustus." It is 1 foot in height, and 10 inches in width.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a gem cut away so that the figure stands out in relief. It is the opposite in this respect to the intaglio in which the figure is a depression. If a cameo be pressed against wax it forms an intaglio, and, conversely, an intaglio pressed on wax forms a cameo impression. Cameo cutting is believed to have been practiced by the ancient Babylonians and Phoenicians. A cameo in an English collection, called the Cupid and Psyche, is believed to have been cut by a Greek not long after the death of Alexander the Great. The material most frequently used is the onyx and various kinds of shell. Artificial cameos are made of glass and other material. Florence, Italy, is celebrated for cameos and intaglio cutting.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The technical definition holds exactly: a cameo is still carved in relief and an intaglio still sunk, and pressing one into wax still yields the other. Two things have moved. The onyx that Collier's called the "Apotheosis of Augustus" in Paris is now known as the Grand Camee de France, kept in the Cabinet des Medailles of the Bibliotheque nationale and generally read as a dynastic scene of the Tiberian court rather than an apotheosis of Augustus; it remains the largest surviving ancient cameo. Meanwhile the trade Aiton's located in Florence in 1910 has long been centred on Torre del Greco near Naples, where shell cameos are still cut, though largely for the souvenir and jewellery market rather than as high art. Scholars have also reattributed many "antique" cameos in old collections to Renaissance and 18th-century carvers.
Written for this edition, 2026.