• Material: Sardonyx Shell, 15 k gold tested.
• Size: 2 1/2" by 2 1/8", cameo itself is 2" by 1 6/8"
• Date and Origin: Circa 1860 Italy.
• Conditions: A couple of hair lines not visible from the front, visible when cameo is backlit.

A more than Excellent Quality cameo brooch and pendant mounted in high carat gold with gold granulation decoration, circa 1860, depicting the Triumph of Galatea after Raphael. The carving is fine, conveying a sense of movement in Galatea's flowing hair and robes. A enough high relieved carving. This subject is taken from one of most famous painting by Raphael, "The Triumph of Galatea", the painting is shown below. The Triumph of Galatea is a fresco completed around 1512 by the Italian painter Raphael for the Villa Farnesina in Rome. In Greek mythology, the beautiful Nereid Galatea had fallen in love with the peasant shepherd Acis. Her consort, one-eyed giant Polyphemus, after chancing upon the two lovers together, lobbed an enormous pillar and killed Acis   In the painting her head is turned to the left and her arms turned to the right, she's driving a clam shell chariot led by two dolphins, the carver reproduced exactly the center of the scene on the cameo. The pictures really don't give any justice to this cameo and it really is better when seen in person. All the details are really amazing like her sculpted and sensual body, her flowing robe that floats and coils around her beautiful long legs, and her hair, her lovely face. Her minuscule hands who keep the reins of the dolphing are masterfully carved. The cherub is feeding one of the dolphins with an octopus. The frame is another beauty, Etruscan style and massive. There is a glass locket on the back, used probably to store a picture.  This is a true masterpiece for any collector.       

A bit of history:


 
Galathea or Galatea (Ancient Greek: Γαλ?τεια; "she who is milk-white"), the "glorious" and "comely" daughter of the 'Old Man of the Sea' Nereus and the Oceanid Doris, was a sea-nymph anciently attested in the work of both Homer and Hesiod, where she is described as the fairest and most beloved of the 50 Nereids. She lived in the sea and aroused the love of a most improbable suitor, the Sicilian Cyclops Polyphemus.
In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Galatea appears as the beloved of Acis, the son of Faunus and the river-nymph Symaethis, daughter of the River Symaethus. One day, when Galatea was lying beside the sea with her lover, Polyphemus saw them. The latter, in his jealousy, tore an enormous boulder out of the side of Mt. Etna and hurled it at the young man. Although Acis tried to flee, the huge rock crushed him beneath to death. Galatea then turned his blood into sparkling waters as it trickled from under the rock, so creating the stream on Etna that bore his name, the Sicilian River Acis. She turned her lover himself into the horned god of the stream. He retained his original features except that he was larger and his face was now a deep blue.
This version of the tale now occurs nowhere earlier than in Ovid's work and might perhaps have been a fiction invented by the poet, "suggested by the manner in which the little river springs forth from under a rock". But according to the Greek scholar Athenaeus, the story was first concocted by Philoxenus of Cythera as a political satire against the Sicilian tyrant Dionysius I of Syracuse, whose favourite concubine, Galatea, shared her name with the nymph. Others claim that the story was invented to explain the presence of a shrine dedicated to Galatea on Mount Etna.
According to a later tradition Galatea eventually yielded to Polyphemus' embraces. Their son, Galas or Galates, became the ancestor of the Gauls. The Hellenistic historian Timaeus, who was of Sicilian birth, described Galates as a son of Polyphemos and Galateia.
Galatea together with Doto and Panope, escorted her sister Thetis out of the sea to her wedding with Peleus.[12] In Homer's Iliad, Galatea and her other sisters appear to Thetis when she cries out in sympathy for the grief of Achilles at the slaying of his friend Patroclus.