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James I Cameo: c. 1590; Mount: 18th c.

Onyx: grey and black; open gold mount with a wide frame on reverse, suspension loop and ring | 1.9 x 1.7 cm (cameo) | RCIN 65191

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  • Cameo bust of James I of England (1603-25) when James VI of Scotland (1567-1625), in three-quarter profile to the right, with moustache and beard. He wears a doublet and a high-crowned hat with a wide brim. Set within a raised border in the grey layer of the stone.

    The image appears to be based on the medal struck in 1590 to commemorate James VI of Scotland’s marriage to Anne of Denmark. The King is similarly depicted in a portrait painted by Adrian Vanson in 1595 and in a miniature attributed to Adrian Vanson, also dated 1595. The distinctive hat is of a type fashionable in the second half of the 16th century. James I is seen wearing a similar hat in a portrait by John de Critz of c. 1605, at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London.

    Elias Ashmole was asked to catalogue the royal coin collection in June 1660. He made impressions of some of the coins to assist him in his work and appears to have made impressions of the gems at the same time. A wax impression of this cameo survives in Ashmole’s papers in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. It was in Charles II’s Cabinet at Whitehall Palace; of the 136 impressions of ‘onix-stones’ in the King’s Cabinet taken by Ashmole, this was the only cameo; the remainder were intaglios. It was described as being set in a gold ring and was located in ‘the 2nd drawer on the right hand’

    The cameo appears to have been remounted in the eighteenth century; it is not clear whether it left the collection and was reacquired by Queen Caroline or whether she simply ordered new mounts when the objects were placed in the cabinet rooms at Kensington.

    Caroline’s cameos are testament to her interest in the courts of Europe. Among the other princes represented among the gem collection were cameos of Mary, Queen of Scots, Henri IV of France, and Emperor Leopold, cut in amethyst. In turn these were supplemented by coins, including a full set of English monarchs from William I onwards, waxes of numerous German princes and Pope Benedict XIV, a bas relief of Emperor Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy and a woven silk picture of Charles I.

    Text adapted from Ancient and Modern Gems and Jewels in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, London, 2008 and The First Georgians; Art and Monarchy 1714 - 1760, London, 2014.
    Provenance

    Charles I (?) first documented in the Royal Collection in 1660. The cameo is also one of the ‘2 heads of James IST cameos’ noted by Horace Walpole at Kensington Palace in 1763 in his list of ‘Other pictures & curiosities’ of the late Queen Caroline, consort of George II, in a cabinet at Kensington Palace. It is also the ‘King James IST full face, with his hat on, cameo’, still mounted in a ring, which was among the curiosities sent from Kensington to her grandson, George III, by Walpole on 22 March 1764 (RA GEO/Add.Ms.16). The present mount is eighteenth century.

  • Medium and techniques

    Onyx: grey and black; open gold mount with a wide frame on reverse, suspension loop and ring

    Measurements

    1.9 x 1.7 cm (cameo)


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