Glyptic

Jasper cylindrical seal and its stamping. Uruk, fourth millennium a. C.

The glyptic, a word from the Greek γλυπτός, is the art of engraving or carving precious stones or steel stamps to make coins and medals. In Antiquity, it has gone through three major phases:

1. In the first, they are limited to recording pictograms on more or less harsh stones to serve signs or seals to high dignitaries, priests or kings. This first period of the glyptic embraces the two greatest and oldest civilizations: that of Ancient Egypt and that of Sumeria. In the Sumerian art the glyptic was of great importance, through the cylinders-seals, which was a typical Mesopotamian art modality. It should be noted that they were used in Sumer from the beginning of their culture, they are pieces of limestone, marble, alabaster or precious stones, in cylindrical form, where they carry engravings on the outside. Each piece was different, i.e. there is a wide variety of reasons, used for commercial transactions as well in some cases served as amulet. However with the passage of time the iconography of the gliptines was evolving at the beginning the themes were geometric motifs, with scene domestic banquet, heroes or fantastic beings Giving place to religious rituals. Continuing with the motifs of the iconography we found a nude character and a long hair known as Gilgamesh, who was one of the main heroes of the submersical mythology, was usually represented dominating a lion that dragged him with his left arm while his right arm held the alarm. This figure had a great subsequent success in the world of Assyrian iconography.
2. In the beginning of the second period we find the Phoenicians, the Ancient Greece and the Etruscans. In these villages, the glyptic began to become true art.
3. The glyptic reached its peak in the third period in Greece in the century of Pericles and in Ancient Rome in the reign of Augustus. The Greeks sought above all the purity of form and contours as the beauty of the traits and lines while the Romans were more concerned with highlighting the colors and transparency of the fine stones, aspirations or tendencies both that characterized well the particular genius of those peoples: the one persecuting the ideal of Poesy; the other, seeking wealth and brightness as desideratum supreme art.

Among the stones thus engraved that History has bequeathed to us are:

• the Demosten, Tables, Perseus and Mercury of the engraver
• the Toro of Hilo
• the Achilles touching the lira Panophilum
• the Medusa of Solon
• the Minerva of Aspasio
• the known with the name of Julia of Evodo or Sello de Miguel Angel because of such use he served the immortal artist.

Ancient stones are classified with special names derived from some peculiarity of their shape or from the nature of the matters represented in them. This is how they are called:

• capricesthose whose figures are grouped comically
• chimeras, those that have objects of pure invention, result of all parts of different animals
• astrivialsthe stars.
• Beetles the Egyptian analogues that are considered the oldest

Other engraved stones are also known to contain the cult symbols of certain Gnostic sects. These stones were called abraxas, according to the word in Greek letters that can be read in all of them and according to others, basilidian stones, a name they receive because they are believed to be symbolic of the sect of Basilides.

The glyptic almost disappeared after the Roman Empire but reappeared in the 15th century in Italy. Two eminent artists cultivated it in Milan: Juan and Dominico better known as Juan el de las Carnelinas and Dominico el de los Cameos. This art was imported into France by Mateo del Vassaro who went to Paris following Francisco I. The collections in London, Munich, Vienna and Paris are notable and very interesting data on this subject can be found in the works of Vettori, Ratter, Millín and Mariette.