• Material : Cornelian Shell
• Size: 2 1/2" by 2 2/8".
• Date and Origin: Circa 1840/1850 Italy, frame is English, 15 K gold tested.
• Conditions: Mint.
• Original Box.

Museum Quality Cameo depicting The Madonna of the Chair. This is an incredible work of art, very detailed cameo, carved by an artist. The frame is spectacular too, two snakes with ruby and emerald eyes around the cameo, to symbolize the victory of the well on the dark forces. Frame is  15K gold tested. Very important, cameo is in its ORIGINAL box, very rare to find a piece with its own box. Rarest cameo very desirable collectors' piece.
A bit of history:
The Madonna of the Chair is an oil painting on wood table of the diameter of cm 71 realized between 1513 and the 1514 from the Italian painter Raffaello. and currently conserved in the Palatina gallery of Pitti Palace in Florence after being belonged to the Medici family then like Napoleonic plunders,  then conserved in the Louvre Museum, then in the apartment of the Empress Josephine in Saint Cloud Castle and then returned back to Florence. It is one of the most famous Raffaello's works that herealized on probable commission of the PopeLeone X. Typical painting of the renaissance era, depicts the Madonna holding the Child Jesus in one's arm, sat on a chair that is typical of that era,  and the young Saint John on the side who will make as the "precursor". Raffaello inserts the figures inside a circle in order to render the space full of the sweet embraces between mother and son, prototype of the love and the motherly sweetness. The master carver has reproduced the Raffaello's work respecting the nineteenth-century taste, with the brightness in the look of  child Jesus,  the sweetness of the face of the Madonna and the prayer pose of the young Saint John, with an intense carving of expressive suggestion. If to this it comes added the beautiful and unusual frame with two snakes that interlace themselves around the cameo, to evidence the victory of the Good, of the Love on the evil, still in its original fitted box, one has the perception of being in front to a cameo of true museum quality and of great value not only of symbolic one. The original fitted box still brings today the name of the jeweller, above the name there is a crown, this normally means that that jeweller was one of the favourite of the Queen, in this case probably of the Queen Victoria.