Worsley, Richard [Sammler] [Editor]: Museum Worsleyanum: or, a collection of antique basso-relievos, bustos, statues, and gems ; with views of places in the Levant ; taken on the spot in the years MDCCLXXXV. VI. and VII. (Band 1) (London, 1824)

VENUS AND CUPIDS.

Leonardo Agostini has published a description of this cameo in the second volume
of his Gems.9 He had seen it in the collection of D. Flavio Orsini, Duke of Brac-
ciano, and calls it an antique, contrary to the opinion of the best judges, who esteem it
the work of Alessandro Cesari, an eminent artist in the sixteenth century, styled il Greco,
from the resemblance of his works to the antique.

DIOMEDES AND THE PALLADIUM.

The fable of Diomedes carrying off the Palladium is known to persons initiated in the
knowledge of Mythology. No subject has been more frequently repeated in antique
gems, and seldom better treated than in the present intaglio. Pausanias,10 in his
description of Athens, informs us that, on the left of the Propylasa, there was an edifice
adorned with paintings, the work of Polygnotus. Though some of them are effaced
by time, there still remained Diomedes carrying off the Palladium from Troy. This
gem, which was formerly in the Medici Collection, may eventually be a copy of the
picture of Polygnotus.

119