Lorenz Natter (1705–1763)

‘Having engraved myself at London a Vase
on a small Diamond for Lord James Cavendisch’

 

Hadrien J Rambach

 

 

 

1 Self-portrait cameo by Lorenz Natter (1705–1763)
by Francesco Bartolozzi (1727–1815), 1780. Etching.
Francis Blackburne, Memoirs of Thomas Hollis, 2 vols, London 1780, II, p586

 

 

The talent of Lorenz Natter (1705–1763 was praised by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), who noted that the Dutch collector François Hemsterhuis (1721–1790) ‘gradually put together, through purchase and exchange, a beautiful collection of about 70 pieces, whereby he relied heavily on the advice and instruction of the excellent gem cutter Natter’ (Pl 1).^[1] Natter was also mentioned by Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768)^[2] and subsequently praised as ‘one of the greatest of the modern practitioners of the art’ by Charles William King (1818–1888),^[3] as ‘the prodigious creator of gems and medals, the familiar of great collectors in several of the nations of Europe’ by Ted Buttrey (1929–2018),^[4] and as ‘a master, recognized by all’ by the expert on neoclassical glyptics Gabriella Tassinari.^[5]

 

A travelling artist

Johann Lorenz Natter (1705–1763) was born in Biberach-an-der-Riß (in Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany), the son of a weaver of Swiss citizenship,^[6] and, following his father’s wishes, he trained as a jeweller with his elder brother. Aged thirteen, he was apprenticed to a local goldsmith with whom he remained from 1718 until 1724. He then moved to Neufchâtel in Switzerland, to train under another jeweller, and then to Bern where he stayed until 1730 in order to learn the art of cutting stone-seals and coin-dies from Johannes Hug (1685–1770).^[7]

Aged 25, he left for Venice, and became a professional gem engraver during his two-year stay in La Serenissima, although, according to his own testimony, he only carved armorial seals while in the city.^[8] In 1732 he went to Florence, where he was employed to copy ancient pieces for Gian Gastone de’ Medici (r 1723–1737). The last Medicean Grand Duke of Tuscany was indeed a gem-lover who, in 1731, had acquired some 23 intaglios by Carlo and Tommaso Costanzi. These were not gems bought directly from the artists, but from the Roman prior Antonio Vaini (1660–1737), in whose possession Natter saw these gems, as well as a portrait of Nero engraved on a diamond by their father Giovanni Costanzi.^[9]

Natter’s transfer to Florence might have been at the insistence of the German baron Philipp von Stosch (1691–1757), who had fled Rome in 1731.^[10] Stosch was an active member of the gem-world, noticing promising young carvers and giving them advice: for example, it was he who advised Flavio Sirletti (1683–1737) to use diamond-point to engrave gems,^[11] and, after Giuseppe Torricelli (1722–1789) started to work at the Galleria dei Lavori e Pietre Dure in Florence in 1741, ‘Stosch showed him the important works of ancient engravers and taught him many excellent rules of glyptic art’.^[12] When Winckelmann published in 1760 the catalogue of Stosch’s gems, he noted of several pieces that they were Natter’s works.^[13] Natter owned a copy of this catalogue,^[14] which is assumed to have been sent to him by Stosch’s heir.^[15]

Natter then moved to Rome in 1735, where he stayed for four years and received commissions from Girolamo Odam (1681–1741) and a reward from Clement XII (Pope 1730–1740), to whom he may have been recommended by cardinal Alessandro Albani (1692–1779), who had become one of Natter’s patrons, thanks to Stosch’s introduction. By then, in the words of the great archaeologist Adolf Furtwängler (1853–1907), he had become an ‘outstanding artist’.^[16]

 

Natter in England

Natter moved to England before the end of 1739: George Vertue (1684–1756) recorded the activity of ‘M^r Nattieres Sculptor of Stones Gemms’ by late 1740.^[17] There, he might also have met again a gem-engraver of Bern named Johann Rudolf Ochs (1673–1749), possibly his own teacher, who had established himself in London in 1733.^[18] But he already had British contacts, notably thanks to the medal which he had created in Florence in 1733 for the Earl of Middlesex (1711–1769),^[19] but also thanks to gem-buyers who had visited him in Florence or in Rome: important families such as Bessborough, Carlisle and Devonshire.^[20]

His first documented commission in England is a medal in 1741 for King George II (r 1727–1760),^[21] but he also engraved numerous other important works that year, or even earlier, such as portraits of the antiquary and astronomer Martin Folkes (1690–1754) after a medal by Dassier, of the physician Richard Mead (1673–1754) after a drawing, of the poet Alexander Pope (1688–1744) after a bust – maybe by Roubiliac, and of the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole (1676–1745), after a bust by Rysbrack.

Walpole, the de facto Prime Minister, for whom Stosch had acted as a spy, was a close friend to the 2nd Duke of Devonshire (1672–1729), whose brother commissioned Natter’s diamond,^[22] but Stosch had anyway known the Cavendish family for a long time,^[23] apparently through the scholar Richard Bentley (1662–1742) or the antiquarian Andrew Fountaine (1676–1753): he had even been given access to their collections as early as 1712. Natter then left England, but not before carving a cameo that commemorated the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, John, 2nd Baron Hervey, who had died in August 1743.

A false rumour, related by Pierre-Jean Mariette in 1750, spread and gave rise to the belief that Natter had been called by the Emperor of Persia, Nadhar Qoli Khan (r 1736–1747), also known as Nader Shah Afshar.^[24] It was erroneous, although not the fact that Natter’s fame was such that monarchs all around Europe were requesting his presence. Natter started working in November 1743 in Denmark, at the service of King Christian VI (r 1730–1746), who thanked him with a 12-ounce gold medal in addition to his normal pay and accommodation. He went to Denmark accompanied by the artist Marcus Tuscher (1705–1751), whom he had probably met through Stosch, as Tuscher had been employed by the baron in Rome and Florence to create several hundred drawings of engraved gems. Overall, Natter spent seven months in Copenhagen, staying at the Royal palace.

In July 1744, he left Copenhagen for St Petersburg, via Stockholm. He arrived there in the autumn of 1744 and stayed nearly a year.^[25] Natter was disappointed, as he hardly found clients: ‘I most regret that during my time in St Petersburg I could not be in more demand’.^[26] Nevertheless, among those clients were the Czarina, Elizabeth (r 1741–1762), and courtiers such as her physician and privy counsellor Count Jean de Lestocq (1692–1767), who provided him with accommodation; Hofmarshal Semyon Kirillovich Naryshkin (1710–1775), who had been made Full Chamberlain on the day that the empress took the throne; and the artist Georg Christoph Grooth (1716–1769), whom the empress had already called to her service before her coronation. Natter’s presence was noticed and recorded by Jacob Stählin, tutor to the future emperor Peter III (1728–1762).^[27] A letter of 22 September 1746 indicates that Naryshkin had commissioned the portrait and the arms of the empress’s morganatic husband, count Alexei Grigorievich Razumovsky (1709–1771), for which he was paid 400 rubels, roughly eight kilograms of fine silver.^[28] When Natter was due to travel back to London, his forthcoming departure was announced in the St Petersburg Gazette of 3 September 1745.

Little is known of Natter’s second British stay, but during it he engraved the portraits of several female aristocrats, as well as the diamond gem for Lord James Cavendish on which I will comment below. After possibly visiting briefly in 1746,^[29] Natter moved to Holland in 1747, at the request of the newly enthroned Willem IV of Orange (r 1747–1751), and he was commissioned to carve both gems and medals for the king and his family. Among his creations, a noteworthy one is the large three-quarter-facing cameo bust of princess Anne of Orange and Nassau, daughter of the British king (Pl 2, Pl 2a).^[30]

 

 

2 Bust of Princess Anne of Orange and Nassau (1709–1759) by Lorenz Natter (1705–1763), 1748.
Sardonyx, 67 x 47 mm. Cabinet des Médailles, Paris, inv no. Camée.980 / Chab.379. Photo © Bibliothèque nationale de France

 

 

2a Detail of cameo in Pl 2, showing signature of Lorenz Natter on underside

 

 

After the death of his patron in 1751, Natter returned again to England where he stayed until the summer of 1763,^[31] during which time he published a book entitled A Treatise on the Ancient Method of Engraving on Precious Stones compared with the Modern (1754), a small in-folio volume illustrated with 56 pages and 37 plates which Adolf Furtwängler described as an ‘extremely instructive and also well illustrated book’.^[32]

The book, dedicated to George, Prince of Wales, was also published in French in the same year, with the title Traité de la méthode antique de graver en pierres fines, in a translation by Jean des Champs.^[33] Clearly, Natter’s Treatise was meant as a reply to Mariette’s Traité – as even the choice of the title suggests – but also as an homage to Benvenuto Cellini’s Trattati dell’oreficeria e della scultura in which the goldsmith compared his own techniques with ancient methods. It is noteworthy that the engravers of the book, Cornelius Heinrich Hemerich, Johann Sebastian Müller, Ignace Fougeron and C.G. (Charles Grignon?), were all foreign immigrants – like Natter himself.

The book sold poorly, leading to the destruction of the copperplates, and to the burning of 100 copies of the English edition.^[34] Nevertheless, Natter’s expertise is demonstrated for example by his rediscovery of the technique of heating carnelians in order to create a superficial white layer.^[35] This treaty proved very beneficial to his reputation as an expert,^[36] and his time in England was to be the peak of his career.

Natter was elected an honorary member of the Society of Antiquaries in 1755 and a fellow in 1759, as well as a fellow of the Royal Society in 1757. He was also appointed assistant to the chief engraver at the Royal Mint, and was requested by the king himself in 1761 to engrave the dies for the official coronation medal of George III (r 1760–1820).^[37] He was also commissioned to write the Catalogue des pierres gravées tant en relief qu’en creux de Mylord Comte de Bessborough (London 1761, 40 pages and 8 plates), which was published shortly before the 2nd Earl of Bessborough (1704–1793) sold his collection for the considerable sum of £5,000 to the 4t Duke of Marlborough (1739–1817).^[38]

Natter was patronized by the royal family, but also supported by enlightened amateurs such as Thomas Hollis (1720–1774), for whom Natter engraved his only self-portrait (see Pl 1), and who wrote on 23 September 1759 that Natter was ‘ingenious, but not ingenuous’.^[39] Hollis was a political philosopher and writer who had inherited great wealth. He was a benefactor of Harvard University, and a great admirer of both Piranesi and Canaletto. It was for him that Natter engraved in 1754 the tiny but refined two-sided cameo of Britannia triumphans, for which he charged the rather high price of 10 guineas.^[40]

 

Engraver to the great and powerful – and the Masons

Shortly after Catherine the Great (1729–1796) became Czarina in June 1762, Natter was recommended by counts Nikita Panin (ambassador to Sweden and tutor to grand duke Paul) and Alexander Vorontsov (ambassador to Britain), and appointed Court Engraver. Accompanied by his brother’s son, a goldsmith who had been working with him, Natter left London in July 1763, and arrived in St Petersburg on 14 September, but a serious asthma attack on 25 September left him an invalid. He died on 27 October, and was buried two days later at the Sampsonievsky cemetery.^[41]

Natter is listed among the founding members of the St Petersburg Capitulum Сlericorum Regularium (predecessor of the Phoenix Lodge) and, when he had gone to Russia in 1763, it was notably thanks to the recommendation of Nikita Ivanovich Panin (1718–1783) who was Russia’s regional Grand Master of the English Grand Lodge. Although it seems to be by mistake that an anonymous book of 1742, entitled Apologie pour l’Ordre des Francs-Maçons (‘Apology for the Order of Freemasons’) and signed by a certain ‘Monsieur N.’, has been ascribed to Natter, it is true that freemasonry likely held an important role in his life – and in the gem world in general.^[42]

Natter was a Mason himself, but it remains unclear whether Natter’s proximity with Stosch and his network resulted from their masonic brotherhood, or – more simply – whether his proximity with Mason clients was thanks to Stosch’s introduction. It was almost certainly through the Prussian spy, and the masonic Loggia degli Inglesi (founded in 1731 and closed in 1738),^[43] that he was entrusted in 1733 with the execution of the Earl of Middlesex medal – seemingly the first-ever Masonic medal to be struck.^[44]

It is known that Natter left Italy ‘carrying with him copies of lodge manuscripts on Kabbalah, magic, and alchemy, from which he developed a system of ‘maçonnerie magique’. Amongst his papers was a set of Rosicrucian emblems taken from the works of Theodore Gualdo, which were later assimilated into illuminist Freemasonry in Sweden’.^[45]

Few of Natter’s works can be found today, although undocumented gems are still occasionally discovered, such as the portrait of the private physician to Empress Maria Theresia, Gerard van Swieten (1700–1772),^[46] and most have very prestigious pedigrees: for example, His Majesty the King still owns Natter’s draped cameo-bust of king William III (r 1689–1702), which the Prince of Wales – the future George IV (r 1820–1830) – acquired in 1787 for the high price of 80 guineas (Pl 3).^[47]

 

 

3 Bust of king William III of Orange and England (1650–1702) by Lorenz Natter (1705–1763), undated.
Sardonyx, 27 x 23 mm. Collection of His Majesty the King, Windsor, inv no. RCIN 65374. Photo © The Royal Collection

 

 

Some other known gems include an intaglio of Christian VI of Denmark (1744),^[48] a cameo-bust of Lord Hervey (1744),^[49] a cameo of Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick (c1760),^[50] a small but five-layered agate cameo of Britannia (c1742) which had been engraved for Thomas Hollis,^[51] a sardonyx engraved with a female bust from the collection of the 4th Earl of Carlisle,^[52] the carnelian portrait-intaglio of the marchioness of Rockingham,^[53] Jupiter attacking the Giants on a chalcedony intaglio,^[54] and his remarkable hessonite garnet intaglio of The dog-star Sirius.^[55]

 

Copyist, inventor, and the student of a thieving spy

Engraved gems seem occasionally to have attracted some curious characters. One of them, already mentioned here, and to whom Natter himself was very close to, is the Prussian baron Philipp von Stosch (1691–1757). Stosch was a man of many faces, being a former theology student working for the British government. Although espionage reports were deemed of little value, his own were apparently read with great interest by the king himself,^[56] and Stosch was hired to report on the activities of Jacobites and of the Stuart Pretender in exile, who himself commissioned his portrait engraved on a gem by the Costanzi brothers.^[57]

A few years later, on 15 February 1731, Stosch had to flee from Rome after being threatened at gunpoint the previous month.^[58] The exact motives remain uncertain: his employment by Walpole’s government had been ‘uncovered’ long ago, around 1724/25, which had allowed him to manipulate the Pope and the Cardinalate by presenting himself as an unofficial representative of the British Crown. This strange man, who received every antiquity connoisseur at his casa-museo (‘home museum’), where he kept owls as pets,^[59] was described by Walpole’s son as ‘a Prussian virtuoso and spy for the court of England on the Pretender. He had been driven to Rome, although it was suspected that he was a spy on both sides; he was a man of the most infamous character in every respect’.^[60]

Isaac D’Israeli (1766–1848) wrote of him:

Medallists … can pick a cabinet and swallow the curious things, and transport them with perfect safety, to be digested at their leisure. An adventure of this kind happened to Baron Stosch, the famous antiquary… forced to confession, this erudite collector assured the keeper of the royal cabinet, that the strictest search would not avail ‘Alas, sir! I have it here within,’ he said, pointing to his breast. An emetic was suggested by the learned practitioner himself, probably from some former experiment.^[61]

Some of his enemies accused him indeed of having stolen in 1713 the carnelian intaglio in the French Royal collection which was believed by some to have been made by Michelangelo (1475–1564) for himself.^[62] This story is implausible as Stosch remained welcomed at the Paris cabinet, and its curator Barthélemy visited him in Italy later in his life.^[63] But it echoes actual thefts of manuscripts which he might have commissioned in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana: the manuscripts were undoubtedly stolen, but Stosch might have acquired them in good faith.^[64]

The Florentine philologist and archaeologist Giovanni Gaetano Bottari (1689–1775) ‘remarked that he would like very much to see a list of the books Stosch had promised to write; another, of the things he claimed to have discovered; and a third, of the things he had stolen’.^[65] Stosch was nevertheless a genuinely passionate collector and scholar, and his ‘Topographical Atlas’ is noteworthy: initiated in 1719, it consisted at the time of his death of 334 large folio volumes which contained over 30,000 drawings, prints and maps.^[66] Stosch built close-ties with everyone that mattered, with a gift for being liked: for example, he charmed the hypochondriac Gian Gastone de’ Medici (r 1723–1737) by presenting him in 1731 with one of Fahrenheit’s new pocket thermometers,^[67] and Natter very obviously benefited from Stosch’s contacts.

‘Baronissimo’ Stosch was possibly the greatest gem lovers of his time, and his passion extended to contemporary works: his own portrait was engraved three times by Natter, in c1733, 1735 and 1739,^[68] and his ‘facial features can also be recognized in the restored head of Lycomedes in the famous ancient sculpture group from the so-called Villa of Marius in Cardinal de Polignac’s collection’.^[69]

In 1724 in Amsterdam, Stosch had published a book which is not only superb and still very much sought after by bibliophiles, but also the result of great research: this work, Gemmæ antiquæ cælatæ scalptorum nominibus insignitæ / Pierres antiques gravées, sur lesquelles les graveurs ont mis leurs noms, remains a reference.^[70]

His 3,444 ancient gems were acquired in 1764 by the Prussian king, Frederick II ‘the Great’ (r 1740–1786). The catalogue of those, published in 1760, is the work that brought recognition to Johann Joachim Winckelman (1717–1768).^[71] His collection of some 28,000 modern gem-impressions were acquired by James Tassie (1735–1799).^[72]

Rudolph Eric Raspe (1736–1794),^[73] who authored the 1791 catalogue of the gem-impressions offered for sale by Tassie, was another dubious character. Raspe is best remembered today for having edited the first collection of Leibniz’s philosophical works in 1765, and for having translated Nathan der Weise (‘Nathan the wise’) into English in 1781. He was the acquaintance and friend of many people, including Benjamin Franklin,^[74] and had been a pretentious young man about whom an acquaintance wrote in 1760, ‘What I disliked bout him was the cocksure manner he had in company’.^[75] He was actually a polymath, who published a number of books and articles, on subjects as varied as paintings, English poetry or geology. After having initially studied law, he became Professor of Archaeology at the Collegium Carolinum of Kassel, and in July 1767 curator of the Landgrave’s Antiquities.^[76] But he left this position in 1775, and fled to England, after being accused to have stolen some 345 gold, and 22 silver, coins, which he sold in Germany and Italy.^[77] Once it was known in London, Raspe was excluded from the Royal Society for ‘divers frauds and gross breaches of trust’.^[78] He then went on to write a famous novel, The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1785).

Even though Raspe is of great importance in the context of the science of engraved gems – because of his catalogue of Tassie’s casts – it is not even clear how they met. Raspe did work as Assay-Master, from 1782 until 1788, for Tassie’s acquaintance Matthew Boulton (1728–1809), but from Cornwall, and so it seems more likely that they had met at Clowance, the home of Sir John St Aubyn (1726–1772), a Mason connection of both Raspe and Tassie. According to his biographer:

The impression that Raspe left behind him was long preserved in the minds of those who met him. The story of a wandering German prospector in the Highlands survived to strike the imagination of Sir Walter Scott, and there can be little doubt that it was on what he could learn of Raspe that he modelled the character of Hermann Dousterswivel, the villain of The Antiquary.^[79]

 

Was Natter a forger?

Natter is obviously mentioned in the Tassie catalogue, both as gem-engraver and as the author of the Traité, and Raspe wrote:

The name ΥΔΡΟΣ or ΥΔΡΟΥ, which appears on some fine engravings, was not so much as suspected. Lippert took it for that of an eminent Greek artist – we have shewn that it is a modern artist, being simply a Greek translation of the German name of Natter (one of the greatest engravers of this age). Like one of the Torricelli’s, Bernabé, Ghinghi, and other excellent modern artists, under the tuition, direction, and influence of the late Baron Phil. Stosch, at Florence, he not only frequently put his name upon his works in Latin capitals, but now and then also in Greek letters and initials; and this Greek translation of his own name is quite in the character of an artist desirous of trying his powers of imposition and excellence-being a puzzle and an impenetrable riddle to every scholar, except his countrymen the Germans. Should he, and the just-mentioned other excellent artists, never have put other Greek names upon their copies or their own works? Should they never have fold them for antiques?^[80]

Natter indeed regularly signed in Greek characters: NATTEP, NATTHP, YΔPOΣ or YΔPOY, and the use of a Greek signature had been suggested to him by the antiquarian painter Girolamo Odam (1681–after 1718), and he adopted a translation of his own surname: Hudros is a water-snake in Greek, which is the meaning of his surname in German. Natter explained this in a letter sent to François Hemsterhuis from London on 20 January 1753:

As I had written my name ναττερ on a stone, this gave Mr. cav. Odam the opportunity to tell me that I should translate my name into Greek, as others had done in Latin, e.g. Smith in Latin Faber, etc. Natter in Latin is Nattrix, a certain species of snake (which we still have in our family coat of arms). The aforementioned cav. Odam translated my name into Greek as you see it written. For my part, I did not bother myself, for better or worse, and that is the story of ΥΔΡΟΥ. I will seal the letter with an original seal, which I took myself in Rome, so I hope that it will be well preserved and that you will read the name as I have written it, and not otherwise.^[81]

This signature in Greek resembles the signature of an ancient gem carver, and a dishonest vendor could take advantage of an incompetent buyer, which is probably why Natter was blamed for having engraved (added) signatures of ancient Greek carvers on his gems.^[82]

According to a letter from spring 1762, sent by Winckelmann to Philipp Daniel Lippert (1702–1785),^[83] Natter himself claimed to have engraved many ‘ancient’ gems that were to be found in Stosch’s collection,^[84] and this might be linked to Stosch’s practice of having gems engraved ‘per regalarne i suoi amici’, ‘to offer to his friends’.^[85] That Stosch could have commissioned actual forgeries is surprising, considering his passion for the glyptic art. But it is undeniable that he commissioned Natter to reproduce several of the gems illustrated in his book,^[86] and that he also commissioned Lorenzo Masini (b 1713) to copy in rock crystal the Head of a Dog by Gnaios which was then in the Bessborough collection.^[87]

Aware of being accused to have added inscriptions / pseudo artists’ signatures to ancient originals,^[88] Natter did admit to having put the name Aulos on a gem copied from an original in the collection of Francesco Vettori (1693–1770):

Immediately on my Arrival at Rome, I was employed by the Chevalier Odam to copy the Venus of Mr. Vettori, to make a Danae of it, and put the Name AULUS to it. I afterwards sold this Piece (which I look upon as a Trifle) to Mr. Shwanau, Governor to a young Prince of Dieterichstein, who knew that it was my Work, and valued it greatly’.^[89]

There is no other documented case of a genuinely fake signature being engraved by Natter: instead, we know of several such instances in the case of other artists, such as Giuseppe Torricelli (1659–1719) who signed an intaglio of Perseus with the signature of Dioscurides.^[90] Might it be instead that Stosch employed other engravers to add names of Greek artists on stones carved by Natter?^[91]

While forgeries were obviously feared and criticised, copies could be appreciated and sought after, even commissioned: for example, Anton Maria Zanetti (1680–1767) kept a copy in carnelian of the amethyst gem by Teukros which he had to return after being informed that it was stolen property,^[92] and Natter himself wrote that ‘most Lovers of this Art prefer a good Copy of an Engraving which they like, to an Engraving newly designed, however perfect’.^[93]

Reproducing the antique was both the usual way to train, and what most buyers requested, and Natter assured his readers in 1754 that he had never sold any copy as an original: ‘I am not ashamed to own that I continue still to make such Copies as often as I am ordered. But I challenge any Man to prove that I ever sold one of them for an Antique’,^[94] and there is no reason to distrust him.

Natter admitted that he did not ‘copy any Antiques till after my Arrival at Florence, where Baron Stosch, being struck with my Taste and Application to Engraving, did everything to make me apply wholly to it’.^[95] This was in answer to a comment of Mariette, the celebrated French connoisseur and the author of the catalogue of the king’s collection.^[96] Mariette in fact was not surprised, as it was the taste of their time, when engravers were often hired to copy ancient gems: the Florence-based engraver Carl Markus Tuscher (1701–1751), for example, excelled ‘ad imitazione degli antichi le pietre dure preziose’, ‘in imitation of the ancients, precious hard stones’.^[97] But interestingly Mariette expressed his personal preference for Natter’s own creations, such as the portrait of cardinal Albani, rather than for his copies of ancient gems, such as the head of Julia Titi by Evodus.^[98]

I must note that Natter’s carnelian intaglio portrait of King William IV (r 1830–1837) displays a very amateurish signature: might it be that he was mediocre at lettering, which is a specific skill, and therefore avoided signing with his own name? To identify Natter’s works, one often needs to rely on attributions, as few pieces are signed.^[99] For example, while one of Natter’s gems in the Marlborough collection is actually signed,^[100] others are only ascribed to him by the Duke in his manuscript catalogue.

 

Natter’s masterpiece: ‘Un vase grave dans un adiamam’

Since Natter died in Russia, some 40 of his collection of gems (of which three were by himself) are now preserved at the State Hermitage Museum, together with archive-documents. Amongst those manuscripts figure Natter’s drawings for his Museum Britannicum, a never-achieved publication in which ‘in 213 plates the author presented 512 gems from 23 British Cabinets’.^[101] The project, entitled in homage to Antonio Francesco Gori’s two-volume Museum Florentinum of 1731–1732, had already been announced in his 1754 treaty: ‘If this Work meets with Encouragement, I shall in a little Time publish a Museum or Collection of those antique Engravings which are now in London. It will contain many curious Pieces not much known at present’.^[102]

Natter aimed at illustrating the best engraved gems in the country, mostly priceless intaglios and cameos from Antiquity, but also his own masterpiece: the Cavendish engraved diamond,^[103] which he described in the manuscript as ‘Un Vase grave dans un adiamam. Chez Ld Cavendish’, ‘a vase engraved in a diamond, at Lord Cavendish’s’ (see Pl 4).

 

4 Diamond engraved with a vase by Lorenz Natter (1705–1763), c1754–56.
Pencil drawing. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Fund I, opis 6 ‘C’,
delo 13, razdely I–VI. Photo The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg

 

This intaglio has been dated to 1745–1747,^[104] and it is now set in an antique ring in silver and gold, within a surround of rose-cut diamonds, to cushion-shaped diamond shoulders, within a foiled closed-back setting (Pl 5).

 

 

5 Diamond engraved with a vase by Lorenz Natter (1705–1763). c1745–1747.
Intaglio on diamond set in a gold and silver ring, 7.5 x 6.5 mm. Private collection. Photo by Jeremy Zenou, © Hadrien Rambach

 

 

This gem was rediscovered in 2012, and a photograph was published two years later.^[105] It was mentioned in an 2018 article,^[106] and it was then publicly exhibited in 2021,^[107] but it could not, strictly speaking, be described as ‘unpublished’ because Natter had referred to it in his own book of 1754:

I saw at Rome, in the Possession of the Prior Vaini, a Head of Nero engraved en creux on a Diamond. Whether it was antique, or modern, is not material: it at least serves to shew that the Artist had the Curiosity to try, whether a Diamond could be engraved. Whoever did it, there is nothing miraculous, nor even extraordinary in it, for the Engraving is so bad, that it only shews the Curiosity of the Artist who lost his Time and Labour in making the Experiment. If Constanzy the Son cut it, why did he not finish it as highly, as he hath done his other Works? I know by Experience that this is very possible, having engraved myself at London a Vase on a small Diamond for Lord James Cavendisch (Pl 6, Pl 7, Pl 8).^[108]

 

 

6 Copy of the Traité de la méthode antique de graver en pierres fines comparée avec la méthode moderne et expliquée en diverses planches by Lorenz Natter (1705–1763) from the library of king George IV at Carlton House, 1754.
Contemporary red goatskin. Possibly a presentation copy to the Prince of Wales to whom the book was dedicated.
Royal Collection Trust, inv no. RCIN 1080406.
Photo © Royal Collection Trust

 

 

7 Page XIV of the introduction to the Treatise on the Ancient Method of Engraving on Precious Stones
compared with the Modern by Lorenz Natter (1705–1763), 1754

 

8 Page XV of the introduction to the Treatise on the Ancient Method of Engraving on Precious Stones
compared with the Modern by Lorenz Natter (1705–1763), 1754

 

 

Natter then added:

So I am persuaded that I could engrave a Portrait on one, equally well; but not without great Patience, and as much Labour as a Dozen of Oriental Stones should require. But such a Work would amount to so high a Price, that no Artist will undertake it from mere Curiosity, and without an express Order from some Nobleman.

The fact that Natter wrote in the Traité (1754) that he had never engraved a portrait on diamond allows us to discount as unreliable a ‘witness’, Franz Christoph von Scheyb (1704–1777), according to whose 1774 testimony Natter had carved the effigy of the duke of Saint-Aignan (1684–1776) while in Rome, ie between 1735 and 1739:

The renowned Laurentius Natter, a Swiss man admired in Rome and London, kept no secrets from me. I could watch him for half a day, seeing how skilfully he made diamonds and rubies far more precious by cutting portraits into them. He wore the portrait of Emperor Carolus VI carved in ruby on his finger. He engraved the portrait of Duke St. Aignan into diamond in my presenc’.^[109]

Natter showed an interest in engraving unusual precious stones and notably carved around 1738–1739 Stosch’s bust in an emerald (Pl 9).^[110]

 

 

9 Bust of Philipp von Stosch by Lorenz Natter (1705–1763), 1739. Intaglio on emerald, 26 x 22 mm.
The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, inv no. И–3631.
Photo © The State Hermitage Museum

 

He also engraved in 1746 a device and portrait on a triangular topaz which he had received from baron Ivan Antonovich Cherkasov (1692–1758),^[111] and in his 1754 book he commented: ‘As to Mr. Godefrid Krafft of Dantzic,^[112] it was with me that he learnt to engrave on precious Stones: but as we parted soon after, I know nothing of him since. At that Time he gave many Marks of a good Genius.’^[113]

But he was no gemmologist, and Natter erroneously wrote:

Another Thing which contributes to render good Engraving dear, is the Difference in the Hardness of the Stones that are employed. The Oriental Stones, such as a Diamond, a Saphire, a Ruby, a Vermillion, an Onyx, a Beryl, a Grenat [sic], &c. are much harder than a Hyacinth, a Chrysolite, a Topaz, an Amethist, or a Cornelian, and consequently more difficult to engrave.^[114]

What is undeniable is the incomparable hardness of diamonds (10 on the Mohs scale), and the correctness of Natter’s observation that ‘the extreme Hardness of the Stones is a great Obstacle in the Working, because the Tools are sooner blunted and worn out, notwithstanding the Diamond-powder, which must be constantly applied’.^[115]

 

Lord James Cavendish and his father-in-law

Natter’s manuscript described the diamond intaglio as ‘Un Vase grave dans un adiamam. Chez Ld Cavendish’, without precisely identifying which ‘Lord Cavendish’ he was referring to. His published book is, however, more precise, Natter writing that he had ‘engraved myself at London a Vase on a small Diamond for Lord James Cavendisch’, who can be identified as a member of the Devonshire family, though two homonyms were contemporaries. Lord James Cavendish (1701–1741), son of the 2nd Duke of Devonshire (1672–1729), was an unmarried colonel, who died in England only six months after returning from the tropics, several years before the supposed date of the gem’s carving in 1745–1747. It is therefore more likely that the commissioner of this expensive engraved diamond was his uncle, Lord James Cavendish (d 1751) (Pl 10).

 

 

10 Portrait of Lord James Cavendish by Godfrey Kneller (1646–1723), c1715.
Oil on canvas, 74 x 62 cm. Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire, inv no. 1129181.
Photo National Trust Images

 

Lord James Cavendish was a resident of Latimer House (Buckinghamshire) and Staveley Hall (Derbyshire). He sat as Member of Parliament for Derby 1701–1702, 1705–1707, 1707, 1710 and 1715–1742, before being appointed Auditor of Foreign Accounts or Imposts in Ireland.^[116] His late father was William Cavendish (1640–1707),^[117] 1st Duke of Devonshire, a well-educated man (on the advice of Thomas Hobbes) with a broad culture acquired during his 1657–1661 Grand Tour through Europe. An important aristocrat, Cavendish’s betrothal in 1661 was attended by King Charles II (r 1660–1685), and he was one of the four train-carriers at the King’s own wedding on the same year. He was active as a Whig politician, from a Royalist family, and sworn into the Privy Council in 1689. He was installed as a knight of the Garter in the same year and created marquess of Hartington and, subsequently, Duke of Devonshire in 1694.

A painting that is still preserved depicts the signing of his engagement contract with Anne Yale (1687–1734), before their wedding took place in London on 6 July 1708, in St Peter le Poer (Pl 11).^[118]

 

11 Conversation piece showing Lord James Cavendish standing, with his brother seated on the left, his future father-in-law seated in the centre, and the lawyer Mr. Tunstal seated on the right, anonymous, c1708. Oil on canvas, 201 x 236 cm.
Yale Center for British Art, inv no. B1970.1, gifted by the 11th Duke of Devonshire. Photo Yale Center for British Art

 

The scene takes place in Chatsworth, the originally 16th-century castle of Bess of Hardwick that had been rebuilt in 1687 for Cavendish’s father (Pl 12, Pl 13).

 

 

12 Portrait of William Cavendish, 2nd Duke of Devonshire
by Charles Jervas (1675–1739), c1710. Oil on canvas, 126.5 x 103.2 cm.
Collection of the Duke of Devonshire, Chatsworth, inv no. PA 314

 

 

13 Chatsworth House near Bakewell (Derbyshire).
Photo © TravelCatteralls.co.uk 2016

 

The groom’s brother ‘was one of the principal art collectors of the period’, whose collection was split between Chatsworth and Devonshire House in London.^[119] ‘He owned collections of gems and coins, each housed in a specially built Boulle cabinet, one of which appeared with him in the portrait by Charles Jervas’, and so he may possibly have introduced his younger brother to Natter.

Natter did seem to like vases, having drawn several such intaglios.^[120] But his mastery of both English and French may have been limited and so, when he wrote ‘having engraved myself at London a Vase on a small Diamond’,^[121] did he actually mean a vase or might he have meant an urn?^[122] Indeed, while the choice of a vase as iconography for such a precious stone would remain unexplained, an urn would be a more likely subject for a commission by James Cavendish who was a mourning widower.

Natter phrase ‘engraved myself at London a Vase on a small Diamond’ suggests o the hypothesis that the diamond was carved during his second stay in England, which lasted two years after his arrival in the autumn of 1745.^[123] It must nevertheless be recalled that he continued working for British clients while living in The Hague, as his portrait of Lady Caroline Cavendish, Viscountess Duncannon,^[124] is signed and dated 1750 on the back. It seems, by the way, significant that this gem was also engraved for a member of the Cavendish family: she was a great-niece of James Cavendish.

That this diamond was engraved in London, and in the 1740s, is not coincidental, as it follows the discovery of diamond mines in Brazil:^[125] until then, they had all come from India. It led to an enormous increase in the supply of stones, and to the sudden importance of Portuguese gem-dealers;^[126] but the Portuguese Inquisition led many Jewish diamond dealers to flee to London, leading to the Jewish Naturalisation Act of 1753 in England, where in addition ‘an Act of Parliament in 1732 (had) abolished custom duties on uncut stones’.^[127]

We know that when Natter carved this gem he had already examined at least one engraved diamond, despite their being exceedingly rare, as he wrote ‘I saw at Rome … a Head of Nero engraved en creux on a Diamond’: this had to take place between the gem’s acquisition by Antonio Vaini (1660–1737), after 1723, and the purchase of Vaini’s entire collection by the Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1731. Later, when Natter stayed in Florence in 1732–1735, he could probably gain access to the grand-ducal collections which contained several engraved diamonds.^[128] Finally, when he lived in an apartment within Schloß Christiansborg in Copenhagen in 1743–1744, he was presumably allowed to examine the Danish royal collections, which contained an engraved diamond (now at Rosenborg Castle).

Was it Natter who suggested to Cavendish that he should commission him to engrave a diamond, or was it Cavendish’s own idea? Cavendish may have known of the Yale engraved diamond, ‘that celebrated Diamond ring, on which is cut the Arms of England and Scotland’,^[129] which had been commissioned for £267 on 16 January 1628 by King Charles I (r 1625–1649), and which had been acquired by his father-in-law.^[130]

Cavendish and his wife Anne were close to her father, Elihu Yale (1649–1721). When his daughter Anne married, in addition to a £6,000 dowry, he moreover offered her additionally some £2,000 in jewels.^[131] Yale’s last daughter, who had remained unmarried, died at Latimer House, which he was renting from his son-in-law. Nevertheless, though Anne and James Cavendish had a son in 1711, her father adopted a cousin’s son as heir later that year (his only son having died in infancy), and the Cavendishes did not inherit his collections – among which his celebrated gem cabinet.

Elihu Yale (1649–1721) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, into a prestigious family of North Welsh descent whose arms dated from the 13th century. He is now best remembered for his generosity towards education and his surname was given to Yale College (now Yale University) in recognition for his benefactions. This was a family tradition, his step-father being involved with the founding of the Harvard Corporation, while his great-great-grandfather had founded the first Protestant College at the University of Oxford. Yale’s own career had started in 1670 as a clerk in the London offices of the East India Company, but he soon rose through the ranks, and by 1687 he was governor of Fort St George in Madras (now Chennai, India). In addition to Yale’s work for the EIC:

He carried personal trade throughout India, south-east Asia, and to China and the Philippines. He owned shares in a number of local ships from which he made money from freight charges as well as carrying his own goods. He was particularly successful in the trade in precious stones.^[132]

In 20 years’ service in India he had accumulated by ‘all honest endeavours’ some £200,000’. He remained in India until 1699, and was appointed high sheriff of Denbighshire (North Wales) in 1704.

His wife, with whom he had a son and three daughters,^[133] returned to Britain in 1689. After her departure he had another son^[134] by his mistress, who was the widow of Jacques/Jaime de Paiva, his partner in diamond trading, reinforcing his links to the gem business. Yale, who is depicted wearing a large diamond ring in several portraits, had made a significant part of his great wealth selling stones found in the Golconda mine (not yet seized by the Mughals), which was located only 400 miles away from Fort St George, and which was being exploited among others by the well-known brothers Daniel and Jean Chardin. This is where an exceptional stone, ‘the Regent’, weighing 426 carats in the rough, had been discovered, just before Yale returned to London (Pl 14). It was immediately acquired for a great price by his friend Thomas Pitt (1653–1726), then governor of Fort St George.^[135]

 

 

14 The ‘Regent’ diamond. 32 x 31 mm, 140.615 carats. Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv no. no. MV 1017.
Photo © Réunion des Musées Nationaux

 

 

On those few exceptional engraved diamonds

The fact that both Yale and his son-in-law each owned an engraved diamond is simply remarkable. From the 1880s until the 1900s, the Paris jewellery firm Boucheron commissioned a few dozen engraved diamonds from the Flemish lapidaries Pierre-Charles Bordinkx (c1826–1892) and his son Charles Borromé Louis Bordinkx (b 1852). Those shallow jewels are very decorative items but not actual intaglios: the stones are scratched rather than engraved, and they could not be used as seals.^[136] Natter himself wrote:

Mr. Mariette gives the Preference to Engravings that are shallow: But I question whether every body will subscribe to his Opinion. For my Part, I find that a deep Engraving en creux is unquestionably more difficult in the Execution, and the Impression approaches nearer to Nature, than a shallow one, its Merit is on these Accounts superior, supposing the Designs to be equally good in both (Pl 15)^[137]

 

 

15 The Tools employed in Engraving on Gems, by Lorenz Natter (1705–1763), 1754.

 

 

Otherwise, almost no diamonds have been engraved in history: a few in Mughal India, and a few for European rulers.

 

Some carved diamonds

This article is not the place to list all the carved diamonds that are known still to exist or which were mentioned in literature.^[138] But some of these gems, engraved on those very flat diamonds called lasques (or ‘portrait diamonds’), are very famous indeed, among which are the following

• Coat of arms of Mary Tudor (1516–1558), Queen of England, and wife of King Philip II of Spain (r 1556–1598), was carved around 1556 by Jacopo da Trezzo (now: lost)
• Portrait of Don Carlos (1545–1568), Prince of Asturias and Portugal, son of Philip II, carved in 1562 by Clemente Birago in order to be given to his prospective bride, Anna of Austria, daughter of Emperor Maximilian II (now lost)
• Nuptial ring of Francesco de’ Medici (1541–1587) with Archduchess Joanna of Austria, daughter of Emperor Ferdinand I, carved in 1565 by the same Birago (now lost)
• Arms of King Charles I (r 1625–1649), carved in 1628 by Francis Walwyn on a 8 x 9 mm diamond (now collection of HM King Charles III)
• Portrait of Emperor Nero (r AD 54–68), carved before 1723, supposedly by Giovanni Costanzi (now lost)^[139]
• Lion’s head carved for the Portuguese king João V (r 1706–1750) by Carlo Costanzi (now lost)
• Very small head of Julia Titi carved by Louis Siriès (now lost)

And anonymous artists carved:

• Arms of Austria for the future Emperor Ferdinand III (r 1637–1657) (now Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna)
• Shield with ostrich feathers for the future King Charles I (r 1625–1649), on a 12 x 11 mm diamond which was shown in 1657 by Jean-Baptiste Tavernier to the King of Persia, Shah Abbas II (r 1642–1666) (now collection of HM King Charles III)
• The letters ‘cr’ and a crown on a 7 x 8 mm diamond (now State Hermitage Museum)
• Monogram beneath a crown for king Frederik III of Denmark and Norway (r 1648–1670), on a 8 x 6 mm diamond (now Rosenborg Castle).

In addition to these circa 20 Western diamonds, at least 7 antique Arabic-engraved diamonds are known:

• The Shah, of 88.7 carats, which was inscribed in AD 1591, then again in 1641, and a third time in 1824 diamond (now in the Kremlin Diamond Fund)
• An anonymous diamond of 22.93 carats, which was inscribed in AD 1591/92 (now in the Iranian Crown Jewels)
• The Jahangir diamond pierced, of 83 carats was inscribed in AD 1612, and again in 1632 (now in a private collection)
• The Akbar Shah diamond of about 116 carats, which was inscribed in AD 1619, and again in 1630, but it was recut in 1866 and the inscriptions removed (now owned by the Gaekwar of Baroda)
• The Taj Mahal diamond which is a heart-shaped table-cut diamond that was engraved in 1627 for Shah Jahangir ‘Conqueror of the World’ (1569–1627), and later owned by the late actress Elizabeth Taylor.^[140] Taylor also owned another – oval – diamond, engraved for Shah Jahan (AD 1627–1658) (now both in a private collection).
• Mid-18th-century dagger by Taqi which is set with 2 large round engraved diamonds (now in the Hermitage Museum)

As Diana Scarisbrick observed, ‘Engraved gems, so little valued today in relation to other works of art, were once considered among the ultimate prizes of connoisseurship. The Emperors and kings of antiquity competed for the work of the best artists’.^[141] Indeed, as an example, the engraved carnelian erroneously named ‘the seal of Nero’ from the collection of Lorenzo ‘the Magnificent’ de’ Medici (r 1469–1492), was valued much higher than the price that Michelangelo charged for his 2-metre-high Pietà marble sculpture (now in St Peter’s).^[142] In this context, considering that Natter himself wrote that it would be possible to engrave a portrait on a diamond ‘but such a work would amount to so high a price, that no artist will undertake it without an express order from some nobleman’,^[143] and knowing that he was being employed by most of Europe’s royalty and was often asking as much as 10 to 25 guineas per portrait,^[144] the price which he charged Cavendish for his diamond intaglio can only be guessed but must undoubtedly have been very high indeed.

 

 

 

Hadrien J. Rambach, rue du Noyer 282–28, 1030 Bruxelles, Belgium, hadrien2000@hotmail.com, +33659604736.

About the author

Hadrien Rambach is a professional numismatist advising high-end collectors, Expert judiciaire auprès des cours et tribunaux belges, whose company HJR Fine Arts (Brussels) also deals in glyptics and antiquarian books. He is a specialist in the history of collecting, especially ancient coins and engraved gems, notably in the 18th century.

 

 

1. Thomas P Saine and Jeffrey L Sammons, eds, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. From My Life, Poetry and Truth, part four. Campaign in France 1792 / Siege of Mainz, Princeton 1987, p730. ↑
2. Max Kunze, ed, Johann Joachim Winckelmann. Geschichte der Kunst des Altherthums. Allgemeiner Kommentar, Mainz am Rhein 2007, p124. ↑
3. Charles William King, Antique gems and rings, London 1872, vol I, p436. ↑
4. Theodore Vern Buttrey, ‘Natter on gem collecting. Thomas Hollis, and some problems in the Museum Britannicum’, Journal of the History of Collections, vol 2, no. 2 (1990), pp219–226, p1. ↑
5. Gabriella Tassinari, ‘Winckelmann e la glittica del suo tempo’, in E Agazzi and F Slavazzi, eds, Winckelmann, l’antichità classica e la Lombardia, Rome 2019, pp223–250: ‘un maestro, riconosciuto da tutti’ (p233). ↑
6. Elisabeth Nau, Lorenz Natter 1705–1763, Gemmenschneider und Medailleur, Biberach an der Riß 1966, p15. ↑
7. Adolf Fluri, ‘Die Siegel der Stadt Bern 1470–1798 mit besonderer Berücksichtigung ihrer Stempelschneider’, Anzeiger für schweizerische Altertumskunde, vol 17, no. 2 (1915), pp120–135, pls IX–X. ↑
8. Paul A Beck, ‘Schwäbische Biographieen. 8. Lorenz Natter, Edelsteinschneider und Medailleur aus Biberach (1705–1763)’, Diöcesan-Archiv von Schwaben, vol 14, no. 3/4 (1896), pp33–49; Gay van der Meer, ‘Natter-Herdenking’, De Geuzenpenning, vol 14, no. 1 (January 1964), pp8–9; Walter Kittel, ‘Lorenz Natter zum 200. Todestag. Ausstellung in den städtischen Sammlungen in Biberach a. d. Riß’, Schwäbische Heimat, vol 1 (February 1964), pp13–16; Hermann Maué, ‘Lorenz Natter’, in J Turner, ed, Dictionary of art, New York 1996, vol. 22, pp683–684; Christopher Marsden, ‘Natter, Johann Lorenz’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online, Oxford 2004. ↑
9. Giuseppe-Antonio Aldini, Instituzioni glittografiche o sia della maniera di conoscere la qualità, e natura delle gemme incise, e di giudicare del contenuto, e del pregio delle medesime, Cesena 1785, p123. ↑
10. John Boardman, Julia Kagan and Claudia Wagner, Natter’s Museum Britannicum. British gem collections and collectors of the mid-eighteenth century, Oxford 2017, p7; Paweł Gołyźniak, Ulf R Hansson and Hadrien J Rambach, Philipp von Stosch: Collecting, Drawing, Studying and Publishing Engraved Gems, 3 vols, Leiden 2025, pVII. ↑
11. Romolo Righetti, Incisori di gemme e cammei in Roma dal Rinascimento all’800, Rome 1952, p34. ↑
12. Gabriella Tassinari, ‘Giuseppe Torricelli, un incisore di pietre dure negletto’, in AM Massinelli, ed, Il Trattato sulle pietre di Giuseppe Antonio Torricelli, Livorno 2019, pp35–49: ‘Stosch gli mostrò le opera rilevanti degli incisori antichi, gli insegnò molte e ottime regole della glittica’ (p37). Torricelli was meant to copy those ancient works, and we know that Sirletti copied various ancient signed gems (signatures included) for the collector Gabriele Medina. It is noteworthy that 46 of the 225 Medina gems entered the Bessborough collection, which in turn was included in the Marlborough collection (Gabriella Tassinari, ‘L’Iliade, un intaglio Marlborough e una gemma al Museo di Como’, Rivista Archeologica dell’antica provincia e diocesi di Como, vol 200 (2018), pp28–50, p30 and p37): considering that the duke hired engravers such as Burch, Marchant and Natter to reproduce some of his own gems, it may be that some were in fact copies of copies. ↑
13. Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Description des pierres gravées du feu Baron de Stosch, Florence 1760, pp567–568, as noted in Tassinari ‘Winckelmann’ 2019, p231. ↑
14. Boardman Kagan Wagner 2017, pp24–25. ↑
15. Tassinari ‘Winckelmann’ 2019, p236. ↑
16. Adolf Furtwängler, Die antiken Gemmen. Geschichte der Steinschneidekunst im klassichen Altertum, Leipzig & Berlin 1900, vol III, p381: ‘Ein hervorragender Künstler war Lorenz Natter’. ↑
17. George Vertue, ‘Notebook III’, Walpole Society, XXII (1933–34), p87. Natter was again mentioned in 1741 (ibid, pp101, 107), in 1745 (ibid, p127) and in 1749 (ibid, p150). ↑
18. Boardman Kagan Wagner 2017, pp9–10. ↑
19. Charles Sackville, later 2nd Duke of Dorset. ↑
20. Boardman Kagan Wagner 2017, pp9–10. ↑
21. Christopher Eimer, British Commemorative Medals and their values, London 2010, p94, no. 565 (only listed in silver). ↑
22. See below. ↑
23. Another link between the Devonshire family and Stosch is that one of the latter’s protégés, Preißler, drew gems for the 2nd Duke of Devonshire (Marco-Leopoldo Ubaldelli, Corpus gemmarum. Dactyliotheca capponiana. Collezionismo romano di intagli e cammei nella prima metà del XVIII secolo, Rome 2001, p136; Julia Kagan, ‘Lorenz Natter in England. The ‘Museum Britannicum’’, Gem engraving in Britain from antiquity to the present, Oxford 2010, pp117–133: p111; Boardman Kagan Wagner 2017, p28). ↑
24. Pierre-Jean Mariette, Traité des pierres gravées, Paris 1750, 2 vols, p144. On this author, see Kristel Smentek, Mariette and the Science of the Connoisseur in Eighteenth-Century Europe, Farnham 2014, and Valérie Kobi, Dans l’oeil du connaisseur. Pierre-Jean Mariette (1694–1774) et la construction des savoirs en histoire de l’art, Rennes 2017. ↑
25. Boardman Kagan Wagner 2017, p17. ↑
26. State Archive of Ancient Acts, Moscow; Fund 1239, opis 3, delo 61603: Письма Наттера управляющему Кабинетом ЕИВ г-ну Черкасову из Лондона (отпуски, письма и прочие о табакерках и других мелких вещах, сделанных из каменьев, о работах и прочем английского резчика Наттера о резьбе каменных вещей [‘Letters from Natter to the Head of the Cabinet of H[er] I[mperial] H[ighness] Cherkasov from London (Payments, letters etc on snuffboxes and other small items made of stones, on the works and similar carving of stone items by the English engraver Natter)’], f°5; quoted in Boardman Kagan Wagner 2017, p19. ↑
27. KV Malinovsky, ed, Записки Якоба Штелина об изящных искусствах в России [Jacob Stählin’s Notes on the Fine Arts in Russia], vol I, Moscow 1990, pp334–335; quoted in Boardman Kagan Wagner 2017, p20. ↑
28. Moscow 61603, f°4; quoted in Boardman Kagan Wagner 2017, p21. ↑
29. Horace Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting in England, London 1827, vol IV, p201. ↑
30. Paris, BnF, inv no. Camée.980 (Anatole Chabouillet, Catalogue général des camées et pierres gravées de la Bibliothèque impériale, Paris 1858, p72, no. 379). ↑
31. Natter remained in England apart from an interruption in 1756–1758 when he went back to the Netherlands to serve as chief engraver at the Utrecht mint for six months, and then to engrave a few gems (copies, allegories and portraits) in The Hague. ↑
32. Furtwängler 1900, p381: ‘Er ist der Verfasser eines äußerst instruktiven und auch gut illustrierten Buches.’ ↑
33. Boardman Kagan Wagner 2017, p12. Des Champs was minister of the Savoy chapel in London, and brother-in-law of gem collectors John and Antony Chamier. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781) mistakenly thought that Natter had written the book in French, and that it had then been translated into English (GE Lessing, Werke, Munich 1970, p217). ↑
34. Anton Friedrich Büsching, ‘Nachricht von dem Herrn Lorenz Natter’, Gelehrte Abhandlungen und Nachrichten aus und von Russland, vol I, no. 1, Leipzig, Königsberg and Mittau, 1764, p207. ↑
35. Tassinari 2018, p29; Jack Ogden, ‘Etched carnelian intaglios’, in Gems & Jewellery (June 2007), p16. ↑
36. Ulf R Hansson, ‘ “Ma passion… ma folie dominante”. Stosch, Winckelmann, and the Allure of the Engraved Gems of the Ancients’, MDCCC 1800, vol 3 (July 2014), pp13–33: ‘In the 18th century, to publish a learned text on the engraved gems of the Ancients was an excellent way of positioning oneself in antiquarian circles within the Republic of Letters’ (p13). ↑
37. Julia Kagan, ‘Лоренц Наттер в Англии’ [Lorenz Natter in England], Труды Государственного Эрмитажа [Papers of the State Hermitage], vol XXII (1982), pp73–87 and p164; Janet Snowman, ‘King and Country. The coronation medals of George III’, The Medal, vol 47 (2005), pp23–41. ↑
38. Gertrud Seidmann, ‘An eighteenth-century collector as patron: the 4th duke of Marlborough and the London engravers’, in CM Brown, ed, Engraved gems: survivals and revivals, Washington 1997, pp263–279. ↑
39. The Diary of Thomas Hollis, 14 April 1759–3 July 1770, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge (MA), MS Eng 1191, 6 vols; Buttrey 1990. ↑
40. By comparison, Thomas Gainsborough charged 25 guineas for half-length portraits, Joshua Reynolds could ask as much as 80 guineas to paint a full-length portrait in 1761, and Casanova’s rent was 87 guineas per month for his furnished house in luxurious Pall Mall in 1763, including servants and cook. But most employees would only earn between ½ and 2 guineas monthly at the time. ↑
41. Boardman Kagan Wagner 2017, p22. ↑
42. Francesca Fedi, ‘Diplomazia, collezionismo e massoneria nel tardo Settecento (il caso Denon)’, in F Fedi, ed, Artefici di numi. Favole antiche e utopie moderne fra Illuminismo ed Età napoleonica, Rome 2004, pp113–135. For example, it is probably not by chance that William Dugood (fl 1715–1767), a freemason and spy like Stosch, had a collection of gem casts (cf David Connell, ‘Recently identified at Burton Constable Hall. The collection of William Dugood FRS – jeweller, scientist, freemason and spy’, Journal of the History of Collections, 2009, pp1–15). Purchased by William Constable in 1760, those casts were in turn copied by plasterer William Collins into free-standing and relief pieces of plaster sculpture for the dining room at Burton Constable (East Yorkshire, England) in 1768–1769. ↑
43. On Stosch and freemasonry, see Paolo Casini, ‘The Crudeli affair: Inquisition and reason of state’, in P Gay, ed, Eighteenth-century studies presented to Arthur M. Wilson, Hanover 1972, pp133–152: pp142–147; Maria Augusta Morelli Timpanaro, Per una storia di Andrea Bonduci (Firenze 1715–1766): Lo stampatore, gli amici, e loro esperienze culturali e massoniche, Rome 1996; Maria Augusta Morelli Timpanaro, Tommaso Crudeli Poppi (1702–1745): Contributo per uno studio sulla inquisizione a Firenze nella prima metà del XVIII secolo, Florence 2003. Another network to which Stosch belonged was that of the ‘non-marrying men’ (ie homosexuals), but not Natter, who married twice. ↑
44. A letter sent in 1733 by Joseph Spence to Arthur Smyth, Archbishop of Dublin (Yale University Library, Osborn MS Files, no.17355) describes the circumstances in which Natter produced the medal of the Earl of Middlesex as Masonic Master at Florence. ↑
45. Marsha Keith Schuchard, Emanuel Swedenborg, Secret Agent on Earth and in Heaven, Leiden and Boston 2012, p266. ↑
46. Ingrid Szeiklies-Weber, ‘Zur deutschen Gemmensammlungen und Gemmenschneidern des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, vol 59, no.2 (1996), pp138–161: p154. ↑
47. Kirsten Aschengreen-Piacenti and John Boardman, Ancient and Modern Gems and Jewels in the collection of Her Majesty the Queen, London 2009, p140. This amount (equal to 84 pounds sterling) in 1787 was worth the 2021 equivalent of about £11,360 in real-price / £143,600 in labour value / £162,200 in income value / £1,092,000 in economic value, according to the website MeasuringWorth. ↑
48. Wax impression at Rosenborg Palace, Copenhagen, 12–38. Illustrated in Nau 1966, p37, fig. 17, but not listed in Jørgen Hein, The Treasury Collection at Rosenborg Castle: Royal Heritage and Collecting in Denmark-Norway 1500–1900, 3 vols, Copenhagen 2009. ↑
49. Malcolm Baker, Colin Harrison and Alastair Laing, ‘Bouchardon’s British Sitters: Sculptural Portraiture in Rome and the Classicising Bust around 1730’, The Burlington Magazine, CXLII (December 2000), pp752–762: p760, fig. 34; Kagan 2010, p120, fig. 7.7: Ickworth House, Horringer, Suffolk. ↑
50. Marjorie Trusted, The Making of sculpture. The materials and techniques of European sculpture, London 2007, p148, pl 282: Victoria & Albert Museum, London, inv no. no. A.2–1954 (acquired from H. Landsberg & Son). ↑
51. Ulrich Klein, ‘Der Britannia-Kameo von Lorenz Natter aus dem jahre 1754’, Numismatisches NachrichtenBlatt, no. 3 (1996), pp21–23; Boardman Kagan Wagner 2017, pp168–169: Landesmuseum Württemberg, Stuttgart, coin-cabinet, inv no. no. L MK 1995–10 (acquired at Sotheby’s, London, 6 April 1995, lot 133). ↑
52. British Museum, inv no. no. 1922,0213.1. ↑
53. Diana Scarisbrick, ‘The Ramsden Jewels’, The Society of Jewellery Historians. Newsletter, vol 9 (1980), p3; Kagan 2010, p256: owned by the Ramsden family (descendants from the Marquess of Rockingham, 1730–1782), and sold at Christie’s, London, objects of vertu auction, 19 March 1980, lot 86. ↑
54. Marielouise Cremer, ‘Eine unbekannte Arbeit des Gemmenschneiders Lorenz Natter in Köln’, Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch, vol 58 (1997), pp143–152: Museum für Angewandte Kunst Köln, Cologne, bequeathed by the goldsmith Elisabeth Treskow (1898–1992). Copy of the gem by Athenion which is now in the Archaeological Museum in Naples. ↑
55. Charlotte Gere, Judy Rudoe, Hugh Tait and Timothy Wilson, The Art of the Jeweller, A Catalogue of the Hull Grundy Gift to the British Museum, London 1984, no. 828: British Museum, inv no. no. 1978,1002.1069. Copy of the gem by Gnaios which is now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. ↑
56. Dorothy MacKay Quynn, ‘Philipp von Stosch: Collector, Bibliophile, Spy, Thief (1611–1757)’, The Catholic Historical Review, vol 27, no. 3 (October 1941), pp332–344, p339. ↑
57. Jan Heringa, ‘Philipp von Stosch als Vermittler bei Kunstankäufen François Fagels’, Verzamelen in Nederland, Haarlem 1982, pp55–110: p62, fig.6. ↑
58. Ulf R Hansson, ‘On the Study of Gems: Stosch, Winckelmann, Furtwängler’, Valör: Konstvetenskapliga Studier, vol 3–4 (2012), pp34–48: p34; Ulf R Hansson, ‘ “An Oracle for Collectors”: Philipp von Stosch and collecting and dealing in Art and Antiquities in early eighteenth-century Rome and Florence’, in S Bracken and A Turpin, eds, Art Markets, Agents and Collectors: Collecting Strategies in Europe and the USA 1550–1950, New York 2021, pp113–128: p117. ↑
59. He did not only keep owls, but also rare Maltese cats – which excited curiosity among English aristocrats (MacKay Quynn 1941, p340). ↑
60. Helen D Toynbee, Letters of Horace Walpole, Oxford 1903, vol I, p103 n4. In the words of Ulf Hansson, Stosch, who is credited with starting the fashion of wearing a monocle (in order to examine gems) for which Horace Mann called him ‘Cyclops the antiquarian’ in 1744, ‘was a tall, thinly built, slightly hypochondriac and witty man, who famously kept a pet owl in his home. He was called many flattering things, such as Royal Polish Court Councillor, Royal British Minister, aristocrat, diplomat, literatus, antiquarian, polyhistor, bibliophile, connoisseur, collector etc., as well as less flattering things like heretic, spy, forger and thief’ (Hansson 2014, p14). This was inspired by an earlier description as ‘Hofmann, Diplomat, Spion, Kaufmann, Kenner, Polyhistor, Museumsintendant, Gelehrter usw.’ ie ‘courtier, diplomat, spy, merchant, connoisseur, polymath, museum director, scholar, etc.’ (Peter and Hilde Zazoff, Gemmensammler und Gemmenforscher, von einer noblen Passion zur Wissenschaft, Munich 1983, p9) ↑
61. Isaac D’Israeli, Curiosities of literature, vol I, London 1791, p350. ↑
62. Mariette 1750, pl XLVII (after a drawing by Edme Bouchardon); Chabouillet 1858, pp320–323, no. 2337; Gołyźniak Hansson Rambach 2025, vol 3, pp163–164. ↑
63. Gołyźniak Hansson Rambach 2025, p23. ↑
64. Richard Engelmann, ‘Die Manuskripte des Barons Philipp von Stosch’, Centralblatt für Bibliothekswesen, vol 26 (1909), pp547–577. ↑
65. MacKay Quynn 1941, p336. ↑
66. Hansson 2021, p119; Ulf R Hansson, ‘Philipp von Stosch and his “Museo”‘, in MC Cola, ed, Mostrare il sapere: biblioteche, camerini, studioli e raccolte antiche tra Barocco e Settecento, Città del Vaticano 2022, pp45–68: p57. It is now in Vienna, divided between the Albertina and the national library. ↑
67. Hansson 2021, p117; Hansson 2022, p59. ↑
68. Julia Kagan, ‘Philipp von Stosch in Porträts auf geschnittenen Steinen aus den Sammlungen der Leningrader Ermitage und der Berliner Museen und einige Fragen der Ikonographie’, Forschungen und Berichte, vol 25 (1985), pp9–15 and pls.1–2; Riccardo Gennaioli, Le gemme dei Medici al Museo degli Argenti. Cammei e Intagli nelle collezioni di Palazzo Pitti, Florence 2007, p441. ↑
69. Hansson 2021, p120; Hansson 2022, p59. Although not uncommon, such desire to have one’s effigy preserved was not general, and it seems, for example, that only one portrait of the major art dealer consul Joseph Smith (c1674–1770) is known (Lucy Whitaker, ‘A portrait of Consul Smith’, The Burlington Magazine, CLX (March 2018), pp214–216). ↑
70. Recently republished with extensive annotations: Gołyźniak Hansson Rambach 2025, vol. 2. ↑
71. Recently republished with extensive annotations: Adolf Heinrich Borbein, Max Kunze and Axel Rügler, eds, Johann Joachim Winckelmann. Description des Pierres gravées du feu Baron de Stosch, 3 vols, Mainz am Rhein 2013. ↑
72. Gabriella Tassinari, ‘Lettere dell’incisore di pietre dure Francesco Maria Gaetano Ghinghi’, LANX, vol 7 (2010), pp61–149: p93; Hansson 2014, p21; Gołyźniak Hansson Rambach 2025, pp99–100: half the impressions were lost during their transfer to Hamburg. ↑
73. Laura Tarkka-Robinson, Rudolf Erich Raspe and the Anglo-Hannoverian Enlightenment, Helsinki 2017. ↑
74. John Carswell, The Prospector, Being the Life and Time of Rudolf Erich Raspe, London 1950, p34. ↑
75. Johann Georg Jacobi (1740–1814), quoted in Carswell 1950, p28. ↑
76. Raspe was in charge of the Landgrave’s ‘Antiquitäten, Medaillen, Raritäten und alle übrigen Pretiosa und Effekten’ (‘Antiques, medals, rarities and all other precious items and effects’), the numismatic element of which contained ‘no fewer than 15,406 items, of which more than seven thousand were silver, and five hundred and eighty-four, gold’ (Carswell 1950, p48). ↑
77. Andrea Linnebach, ed, Der Münchhausen-Autor Rudolf Erich Raspe. Wissenschaft – Kunst – Abenteuer, Kassel 2005, p20. ↑
78. Council Minutes Copy, vol. 16, p290. ↑
79. Carswell 1950, p228. ↑
80. Rudolf Erich Raspe, A Descriptive Catalogue of a General Collection of Ancient and Modern Engraved Gems, Cameos and Intaglios, Taken from the Most Celebrated Cabinets in Europe; and Cast in Coloured Pastes, White Enamel, and Sulphur, London 1791, pXXXVI. ↑
81. ‘Come j’avois ecrit mon nom ναττερ sur quelque pierre, cela a donné occasion à Mons. Ch. ODAM de me dire que je devrois traduire mon nom en grec, come les autre ont fait en latin, p. exempl. Shmith, en latin FABER, etc. Come cela NATTER en lattin Nattrix. Une certaine espece de serpent (que nous avons ancore dans les armes de famille). Ce dit Chev. ODAM m’a dont traduit mon nom en grec en tell façon come vous le voyez ecrit, pour ma part je ne m’embarassois pas, allors successoit bien ou mal, voila l’istoire d’ΥΔΡΟΥ. Je (gateray) la lettre avec une pate original, que j’ay pris à Rome moi meme, ainsi je espere que cela vous conviendra bien conservé et vous lirez le nom come je vous ay ecrit, pas autrement’ (Weimar, Goethe-Schiller-Archiv, GSA 33 / 509; Frans Hemsterhuis, Briefwisseling met overige correspondenten, Berltsum 2017, pp235–237). ↑
82. Francesco Vettori, Dissertatio glyptographica, Rome 1739, pp97–98. ↑
83. Philipp Daniel Lippert, Dactyliotheca Universalis signorum exemplis nitidis redditae, Leipzig 1755–1762 was published to accompany series of 3,149 gem casts, presented in three book-shaped cases containing 20 drawers each, and an additional box was issued in 1776. ↑
84. Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Briefe, vol IV, Berlin 1957, pp15–18; quoted in Erika Zwierlein-Diehl, Antike Gemmen und ihr Nachleben, Berlin and New York 2007, pp301–302; Hansson 2014, p22: ‘Da Euch endlich meine Beschreibung der tiefgeschnittenen Steine des Stoßischen Musei zu Händen gekommen ist, so glaube ich, werdet Ihr aus dieser Arbeit selbst urtheilen können, ob es wahr sey, was Herr Natter, berühmter Steinschneider, welcher itzo in Holland ist, allenthalben vorgiebt, daß wenigstens die Hälfte der beschriebenen geschnittenen Steine neu und größentheils von ihm selbst gearbeitet sey […] Unglaublich aber scheinet mir nicht, daß Herr von Stosch von Herrn Natter Copien alter Steine hat machen laßen, und wenn dieselbe gerathen, es einigen jungern Anfängern in Liebhaberen dieser Art zweydeutig gelaßen, ob es alte oder neue Arbeiten seyn’. ↑
85. Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Briefe, vol. I, Berlin 1952, p430. ↑
86. The gem illustrated in Philipp von Stosch, Gemmæ antiquæ cælatæ scalptorum nominibus insignitæ / Pierres antiques gravées, sur lesquelles les graveurs ont mis leurs noms … et traduites en François par M. de Limiers, Amsterdam 1724, pl IV was copied and the reproduction is illustrated in Nau 1966, no. 52. Similarly, the gem Stosch XIII inspired the gems Nau 5–7, Stosch XLVI Nau 18, Stosch XXII Nau 35, Stosch XXIII Nau 19, Stosch XXIV Nau 48, Stosch XXXV Nau 41, Stosch LXV Nau 27–28, Stosch LXIII Nau 29, and Stosch LXVII Nau 69. ↑
87. Masini was a Venetian-born engraver, praised by his contemporary, who met Natter at least twice in Rome in the late 1730s and may have even been his pupil: cf Aldini 1785, pp133–134; Gabriella Tassinari, ‘Un incisore di gemme nella Venezia della metà del XVIII secolo: Giammaria Fabi’, Symbolae antiqvariae, vol 6 (2013), pp25–100: p27; Boardman Kagan Wagner 2017, p16. ↑
88. Carl Justi, ‘Philipp von Stosch und seine Zeit’, Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, vol 7 (1872), pp293–308 and pp333–346: p336. ↑
89. Lorenz Natter, A Treatise on the ancient method of engraving on Precious Stones, compared with the modern / Traité de la méthode antique de graver en pierres fines, London 1754, pXXVIII. ↑
90. Tassinari ‘Torricelli’ 2019, p35. ↑
91. Gabriella Tassinari, ‘Antonio Pichler e gli incisori di pietre dure a Napoli: Ipotesi e suggestioni’, Napoli nobilissima: Rivista di arti, filologia e storia, vol 6.1, no. 1–2 (2010), pp23–52: pp31–32. ↑
92. Ulf R Hansson, ‘Philipp von Stosch’, in M Magrini, ed, Lettere artistiche del Settecento veneziano – 6. Anton Maria Zanetti, Venice 2019, pp59–69: p67. ↑
93. Natter 1754, pXXVI. ↑
94. Natter 1754, ppXXVIII–XXIX. ↑
95. Natter 1754, pXXXII. ↑
96. Mariette later wrote to Natter, on 5 May 1755, defending himself against accusations of criticism: ‘I did not in any way intend to reproach you for putting the name of an ancient Greek on your engravings. It was Chevalier Vettori who, in his Dissertation on the Art of Engraving in Precious Stones [Dissertatio glyptographica, sive gemmæ duæ vetustissimæ emblematibus, et græco artificis nomine insignatæ, quæ extant Romæ in museo Victorio, explicatæ et illustratæ (Rome 1739)], published in Rome in recent years, was the first to accuse you of this, and it is to him that you should address your complaints, not to me, who merely reported what he said, being obliged to present an accurate analysis of his book. Moreover, I do not see how this could harm you’ (‘… Je n’ai nullement prétendu vous faire un reproche d’avoir mis le nom d’un ancien Grec sur vos gravures. C’est le chevalier Vettori qui, dans sa Dissertation sur l’art de graver en pierres fines, publiée à Rome ces années dernières, vous a le premier accusé de cela, et c’est à lui que vous devez adresser vos doléances, et non à moi, qui n’ai fait que rapporter ce qu’il a dit, étant obligé de présenter une analyse exacte de son livre. Au surplus, je ne vois pas en quoi cela pourrait vous nuire.’ Quoted in Giovanni Gaetano Bottari, Raccolta di lettere sulla pittura, scultura ed architettura, vol VI, Milan 1822, pp259–268, and in Jules Dumesnil, Histoire des plus célèbres amateurs français. Pierre-Jean Mariette, Paris 1856, p127). The engraver replied on the 26th of the month, without mentioning this issue. ↑
97. Francesco Maria Niccolò Gabburri, Vite di pittori (Ms. Palatino E.B.9.5 della Biblioteca Nazionale di Firenze), MS c1730–1742, vol IV, p1865. ↑
98. Mariette 1750, pp143–144. ↑
99. Johannes Cornelis De Jonge, Catalogue d’empreintes du cabinet des pierres gravées de S. M. le Roi des Pays-Bas, The Hague 1837, no. 1292: Leiden, National Museum of Antiquities, inv no. no. GS–10318. ↑
100. John Boardman, Diana Scarisbrick, Claudia Wagner and Erika Zwierlein-Diehl, The Marlborough gems formerly at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, Oxford 2009, p285, no. 684. ↑
101. Kagan 2010, p127. See also Julia Kagan and Oleg Neverov, ‘Lorenz Natter’s ‘Museum Britannicum’. Gem collecting in mid 18th-century England’, Apollo, vol CXX, no. 270 (August 1984), pp114–121 and Julia Kagan and Oleg Neverov, ‘Lorenz Natter’s “Museum Britannicum”. Gem collecting in mid 18th-century England. II’, Apollo, vol CXX, no. 271 (September 1984), pp162–169. ↑
102. Natter 1754, pXXXVII. ↑
103. Kagan Neverov 1984, p163, fig. 2. ↑
104. Nau 1966, p87, no. 54; Kagan 2010, p119. ↑
105. Diana Scarisbrick and Benjamin Zucker, Elihu Yale – Merchant, Collector & Patron, London 2014, p175, fig. 87. ↑
106. Hadrien J Rambach, ‘Collecting engraved gems’, GemGuide, vol 37, no. 2 (March–April 2018), pp13–18: p14. ↑
107. ‘The Forgotten Princesses of Thorn’, exhibition, 3 October 2021–3 April 2022, guest-curator Erik Schoonhoven, at the Limburgs Museum in Venlo (The Netherlands). ↑
108. Natter 1754, p XV. ↑
109. Franz Christoph von Scheyb, Orestrio von den drey Künsten der Zeichnung. Mit einem Anhang von der Art und Weise, Abdrücke in Schwefel, Gyps und Glass zu verfertigen auch in Edelsteine zu graben, Vienna 1774, vol II, p426 (the title-page of chapter LXIX on p413 is dated 1772): ‘Der berühmte Laurentius Natter, ein Schweizer, den Rom und London bewunderte, hatte für mich nichts Verborgenes. Ich konnte ihm halbe Tage zusehen, mit was für Geschicklichkeit er Diamanten und Rubine durch Einschneidung der Portraite weit kostbarer machte. Er trug das Bildnis des Kaisers Carolus VI. in Rubin gegraben am Finger. Das Porträt des Herzogs St. Aignan schnitt er in Diamant in meiner Gegenwart’ (quoted in Nau 1966, p23 and in Boardman Kagan Wagner 2017, p28). ↑
110. Kagan 1985, p13, pl.2 and pl 12; Kagan 2010, pl 23. The curator of the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg has also ascribed to Natter an anonymous copy of an ancient gem in blue chalcedony of Jupiter enthroned, carved in a Ceylon sapphire (Kagan 2010, pp405–406). In Florence there also is another unusual stone: a peridot (?) engraved with the bust of ‘Sextus Pompey’; published in Gennaioli 2007, p422, no. 656. Copy of the gem by Agathangelos which is now in the Berlin museum, Erika Zwierlein-Diehl, Antike Gemmen in deutschen Sammlungen. Band II, Staatliche Museen Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Antikenabteilung, Berlin, Munich 1969, pp158–159, no. 418. ↑
111. Information given in a letter from Natter dated 4 February 1746, preserved in a Russian translation. Moscow 61603, f°1–2. Quoted in Boardman Kagan Wagner 2017, p20. ↑
112. Leonard Forrer, Biographical Dictionary of Medallists, Coin-, Gem-, and Seal- engravers, Mint-masters, &c., Ancient and Modern, with references to their works. BC 500–AD 1900, vol III, London 1907, p214. ↑
113. Natter 1754, pXXXI. ↑
114. Natter 1754, pXII. In reality, topazes (8 on the Mohs scale) are harder than emeralds (which are beryls of 7.5 to 8 on the Mohs scale), onyxes are agates (6.5 on the Mohs scale) whilst carnelians are chalcedonies (7 on the Mohs scale) and amethysts are quartzes (also 7 on the Mohs scale). ↑
115. Natter 1754, pXIII. ↑
116. Burke’s Peerage & Baronetage, London 2003, vol 1, p1127. ↑
117. David Hosford, ‘Cavendish, William, first duke of Devonshire’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online, Oxford 2004. ↑
118. Ellen G D’Oench, The Conversation Piece: Arthur Devis & his contemporaries, New Haven 1980, p4 and p67, no. 45, fig. 1; Scarisbrick Zucker 2014, pp54–55, fig.18. ↑
119. Stuart Handley, ‘Cavendish, William, second duke of Devonshire’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online, Oxford 2008. His wealth was great, with an estimated income of £10,000 per annum in 1707. ↑
120. Boardman Kagan Wagner 2017, p206, no. 492: ‘Une Vase, orné avec un basreliève, un lion marchant & une Pegase, très bien gravé, dans une Cornaline’ (in the collection of Benjamin Franklin, 1706–1790). Boardman Kagan Wagner 2017, p174, no. 397: ‘Vase. dans un Onix 5 couleurs’ (in the collection of Pieter Van Damme, 1727–1806). Natter 1754, pl VII (in the collection of Charlotte-Sophie von Aldenburg Bentinck, 1715–1800). Boardman Kagan Wagner 2017, p135, no.276: ‘a satyr seated on rocks pouring from a wine amphora into an amphora, and holding a thyrsus; before him a phallic herm on a column, and a calyx crater on a stand’. Boardman Kagan Wagner 2017, p179, no.414: ‘a man crouching on a block before a vase, decorated with a griffin, on which he is working with hammer and chisel’. ↑
121. Natter 1754, pXV. ↑
122. A vase is ‘a usually round vessel of greater depth than width used chiefly as an ornament or for holding flowers’, while an urn is ‘a vessel that is typically an ornamental vase on a pedestal and that is used for various purposes (such as preserving the ashes of the dead after cremation)’ according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary online. ↑
123. Kagan 2010, p119. ↑
124. London, British Museum, inv no. no. 1923,0607.11, acquired though Spink & Son at Sotheby’s, London, 9–11 May 1923, lot 173, auction of the collections of brothers Max Rosenheim (1849–1911) and Sir Maurice Rosenheim (1852–1922) on whom see Mosheh Oved, Visions and Jewels, London 1952, pp172–174. The gem had been cast, and published in Raspe 1791, p738, no. 14138. There is a mistaken reference to it in James David Draper, Cameo appearances. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, vol LXXV, no. 4 (Spring 2008), p35: ‘A companion cameo dated 1750 of Ponsonby’s wife, Lady Caroline, née Cavendish, was auctioned at Christie’s in London in 1923 but has left no subsequent trace’ (my italics). It may be the same year that Natter engraved the cameo portrait of her husband, William Ponsonby (1704–1793), then Lord Duncannon but better known as the future 2nd Earl of Bessborough: New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv no. 39.22.52. The appearance of this gem was known even before its appearance in the Milton Weil collection, presented to the MET by his widow Ethel Weil Worgelt in 1938 (Raspe 1791, p738, no.14137; Ernst Kris, Catalogue of Postclassical Cameos in the Milton Weil Collection, Vienna 1932, p30, pl XXVI, fig.69). A lengthy notice on a 1754 pastel portrait of Lord Duncannon by Jean-Etienne Liotard can be found in Lowell Libson Ltd, British Art. Recent Acquisitions, London Autumn 2017, pp14–17. ↑
125. Tijl Vanneste, Global Trade and Commercial Networks: Eighteenth-century Diamond Merchants, London 2011, p50; Marcia Pointon, Rocks, ice and dirty stones. Diamond histories, London 2017, p209 n11. ↑
126. From these Brazilian finds, twenty percent were crown property, which explains the wealth of king João V of Portugal (1689–1750), and his interest in engraved diamonds; cf Pointon 2017, p35. ↑
127. Pointon 2017, p83. ↑
128. Although some of them (including the Nero) were stolen in 1860, several are still in Florence, at Palazzo Pitti; cf Charles William King, Handbook of engraved gems, 2nd edn, London 1885, p168). ↑
129. Publicity in the Daily Post on 1 March 1722 for The last sale for this season… , by Christopher Cock, in London on 8 March 1722 (the diamond ring: p13, lot 240). ↑
130. Alec Bain Tonnochy, ‘Engraved gems and jewels at Windsor Castle’, The Connoisseur. Coronation Book, London 1953, pp54–60: p60; Charles Oman, British Rings 800–1914, London 1974, p108, no. 51A; Diana Scarisbrick, Les bagues, symboles de richesse, de pouvoir et d’amour, Paris 1993, p104. This stone of 8 x 9 mm is now in the collection of His Majesty King Charles III (inv no. no. 65409). ↑
131. Marriage settlement preserved in Aylesbury, Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, 6 July 1708, d/ch/a/800. ↑
132. IB Watson, ‘Yale, Elihu’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online, Oxford 2004. ↑
133. David (1684–1687); Katherine (1685–1715), who married the son of Sir Dudley North; Anne (1687–1734), who married the son of the Duke of Devonshire; and Ursula (c1689–1721), who remained a spinster. ↑
134. Charles (1690–1712). ↑
135. Romita Ray, ‘Going Global, Staying Local: Elihu Yale the Art Collector’, Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin (2012), pp34–51. Thomas Pitt was the grand-father and great-grandfather of the homonymous Prime Ministers William Pitt (in office 1766–1768 and 1783–1801). The cutting of this diamond was finished in 1706, and several secondary stones were produced and sold to the Russian tsar Peter the Great. Acquired in 1717 by the French prince regent, Philippe d’Orléans (1674–1723), ‘the Regent’ was then the most precious of all known diamonds in the western world, and it remains one of the finest known today. ↑
136. The same can be said of the diamonds engraved by Juda Joel Dreese (1821–1906) and Moses Cohen de Vries Jr (1807–1883), about whom see Erik Schoonhoven, ‘Late Nineteenth-Century Portraits Engraved on Diamond’, The Journal of Gemmology, vol 38, no. 6 (2023), pp616–620. ↑
137. Natter 1754, ppXXV–XXVI. ↑
138. The author is currently working on a study of ‘Engraving on diamonds: a study of diamond intaglios’. ↑
139. Natter doubted the attribution to Costanzi ‘for he scarce knows how to engrave a Sardonyx’ (Natter 1754, ppXIV–XV). ↑
140. Christie’s, New York, 13 December 2011, lot 56, sold for $8,818,500. ↑
141. Diana Scarisbrick, ‘Gem connoisseurship – the 4th Earl of Carlisle’s correspondence with Francesco de Ficoroni and Antonio Maria Zanetti’, The Burlington Magazine, vol CXXIX, (February 1987), pp90–104, p90. ↑
142. Hadrien J Rambach, ‘Apollo and Marsyas on engraved gems and medals’, Jahrbuch für Numismatik und Geldgeschichte, vol 61 (2011), pp131–157: p131. ↑
143. Natter 1754, p XV. ↑
144. Leonard Forrer, Biographical Dictionary of Medallists, Coin-, Gem-, and Seal- engravers, Mint-masters, &c., Ancient and Modern, with references to their works. BC 500 – AD 1900, vol IV, London 1909, pp230–231. ↑