• Material : Lava, 9 k gold tested..
• Size: 1 1/2" by well over 1 5/32" excluding the bale that's 3/8".
• Date and Origin: Circa 1840 Italy, frame could be English .
• Conditions: Mint, cameos seems to be never worn. 

 

Museum Quality Lava Cameo depicting the Death. The unusual representation of the Death, the expressions of sadness, suffering, resignation almost merciful that you can read on his face and into his eyes, can be only the fruit of the creativity and skill of a great master carver who was able to give beauty and charm to this "very particular"  subject.. This one is a "MUST HAVE" cameo for any collector. A piece more unique than rare.

This is an incredible work of art, very detailed cameo and very desirable collectors piece.

A bit of history and "small" reflections:

Death is a very popular mythological figure, present in more or less different form in a lot of human cultures since the beginning of the oral tradition. The western iconography represents, generally, the death as a sinister harvester. A skeleton dressed in black habit that grasps a hay scythe. In such way it also is drawn on a tarot card and often appears in literature and in the figurative arts.

" ....we don't receive a brief lifetime, but such we make it: and we are not poor regarding the life,  but we waste it with prodigality" (from De Brevitate Vitae by Lucio Anneo Seneca 4 B.C./65 A.C.).

"... men waste theirs time in vain things and they realize that the time is precious only when they see the death on their head....

"...getting ready for the death does not implicate the renunciation to the life, it is that is foolish to fear the death, since it is the end of every human suffering...."  

"...death is a part of the life, in the sense that is a fundamental and absolute aspect of it. Death gives even meaning to the life, since a life without death would not be human or earthly. it would not belong even to the universe as in the universe everything has a beginning and an end..." 

Life and death are natural  aspects that would be naturally lived, according to the rules of the nature. Everything is transformation Life and death are part of a great process of transformation, of which we see neither the beginning nor the end. The awareness  of what represented should take us to minimize the personal matters, the subjective limitations. What that really counts is neither life nor death, but the dignity of the human being, the essence of his humanity, in his more or less brief way of life.