• Material: Sardonyx shell, 9k and 14k gold tested. Frame, bracelet and bracelet back device are 14k, pin and both bracelet clasps are 9k.
• Size:  2 5/8" by 2 2/8", cameo itself is 2 2/8" by 1 7/8". Length of the bracelet when detached 6 2/8", width 1 3/8". Wearable length 7 1/8".
• Weight: 67 grams. Gold weight is approximately 55/57 grams.
• Date and Origin: Circa 1860 Italy.
• Conditions:  Excellent, a few slight natural shell lines,only visible when cameo is backlit. Scratch signed on the back by the carver.

Museum Quality and large cameo depicting a rarest subject never seen before, a young girl, identified as Rousseau’s heroine, Julie, in a sale catalogue of 1792, carves the initial of her lover on the bark of a tree, while observed by her pet spaniel, the symbol of her fidelity. Jean Honorè Fragonard painted that subject, circa 1776/1778, inspired by that Rousseau novel. The pictures really don't give any justice to this more than wonderful cameo. The carving is crisp and very superbly sharpened, a three-dimensional one, this subject is hard to photograph so I have put some black and white pictures to show better the quality of the carving. This one, as I previously said, is a rarest subject, never seen before now. It is a bucolic and romantic scene where the girl dressed in a wonderful gown, is carving the initial of her lover on the three. There are so many details in this cameo that is hard to see them all and each one is wonderfully carved. The carver perfectly reproduced the original painting in every detail. Look at the girl and at her dress, numerous folds make it just real, even the small bow on her decollete is carved just you can see it in the painting. The tree where she's carving is something of really spectacular, the tree branches jump out of the background, the tree bark is so well made that appears to be true while a garland of ivy runs on the trunk. The tree foliage is simply stunning and seems that you realy can pick any leaf from it. The bench where the little dog is sat is perfect and even the blanket on it is masterly carved. The little dog is another wonderful detail of this cameo, superbly made. There is also a letter on the ground just like in the painting, so far we can see a small house which is not present in the original painting, it is an addition from the carver. The proportions of the whole scene are simply fantastic. This cameo can be worn in three different ways, as bracelet, as brooch and as a pendant. The frame is superbly worked and the detachable bracelet, probably addedd some year later, is beaded worked and each gold hollow bead is worked by hand, each bead can round on itself.  Everything in this cameo leaves me speechless, for the quality of the carving, for the elegance of the subject and for its rarity. A finest and unique cameo, a real Museum Quality one. To not to be missed.    

A Little of History:


Jean-Honoré Fragonard  4 April 1732– 22 August 1806) was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific artists active in the last decades of the Ancien Régime, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings (not counting drawings and etchings), of which only five are dated. Among his most popular works are genre paintings conveying an atmosphere of intimacy and veiled eroticism. Jean-Honoré Fragonard was born at Grasse, Alpes-Maritimes, the son of François Fragonard, a glover, and Françoise Petit. Fragonard was articled to a Paris notary when his father's circumstances became strained through unsuccessful speculations, but showed such talent and inclination for art that he was taken at the age of eighteen to François Boucher. Boucher recognized the youth's rare gifts but, disinclined to waste his time with one so inexperienced, sent him to Chardin's atelier. Fragonard studied for six months under the great luminist, then returned more fully equipped to Boucher, whose style he soon acquired so completely that the master entrusted him with the execution of replicas of his paintings. Though not yet a pupil of the Academy, Fragonard gained the Prix de Rome in 1752 with a painting  of Jeroboam Sacrificing to the Golden Calf, but before proceeding to Rome he continued to study for three years under Charles-André van Loo. In the year preceding his departure he painted the Christ washing the Feet of the Apostles now at Grasse Cathedral. On 17 September 1756, he took up his abode at the French Academy in Rome, then presided over by Charles-Joseph Natoire.
While at Rome, Fragonard contracted a friendship with a fellow painter, Hubert Robert. In 1760, they toured Italy together, executing numerous sketches of local scenery. It was in these romantic gardens, with their fountains, grottos, temples and terraces, that Fragonard conceived the dreams which he was subsequently to render in his art. He also learned to admire the masters of the Dutch and Flemish schools (Rubens, Hals, Rembrandt, Ruisdael), imitating their loose and vigorous brushstrokes. Added to this influence was the deep impression made upon his mind by the florid sumptuousness of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, whose works he had an opportunity to study in Venice before he returned to Paris in 1761.
In 1765 his Coresus et Callirhoe secured his admission to the Academy. It was made the subject of a pompous (though not wholly serious) eulogy by Diderot, and was bought by the king, who had it reproduced at the  Gobelins factory. Hitherto Fragonard had hesitated between religious, classic and other subjects; but now the demand of the wealthy art patrons of Louis XV's pleasure-loving and licentious court turned him definitely towards those scenes of love and voluptuousness with which his name will ever be associated, and which are only made acceptable by the tender beauty of his color and the virtuosity of his facile brushwork. Famous are his decoration for the apartments of Mme. Du Barry. The French Revolution deprived Fragonard of his private patrons: they were either guillotined or exiled. The neglected painter deemed it prudent to leave Paris in 1790 and found shelter in the house of his cousin Alexandre Maubert at Grasse, which he decorated with the series of decorative panels known as the Les progrès de l'amour dans le cœur d'une jeune fille, originally painted for Château du Barry. Fragonard returned to Paris early in the nineteenth century, where he died in 1806.

About the painting "Le Souvenir": 

In the artwork, Fragonard depicts a young woman wearing a luminous pink gown carving her lover's initials into a tree. The scene was based on Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 1761 novel Julie, in which the character has an illicit love affair with her former tutor. Fragonard's image of a lovestruck Julie D’Etange  She is the young heroine of a romantic novel that once rocked the whole of France and she is also the star of a charming portrait housed at London’s Wallace Collection. His picture shows a young woman in a luxurious pink satin dress carving her lover’s initials into a tree, in a scene drawn from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 1761 book Julie. Written in letter form, the story charts the path of her illicit love for Saint-Preux, a former lover and tutor, reintroduced into her life by her unsuspecting husband.