Blacas Cameo

The Blacas Cameo is an unusually large Ancient Roman cameo, 12.8 cm (5.0 in) high, carved from a piece of sardonyx with four alternating layers of white and brown. It shows the profile head of the Roman emperor Augustus and probably dates from shortly after his death in AD 14, perhaps from AD 20-50. It has been in the British Museum since 1867, when the museum acquired the famous collection of antiquities that Louis, Duke of Blacas had inherited from his father, also including the Esquiline Treasure. Normally it is on display in Room 70.

It is one of a group of spectacular imperial engraved gems, sometimes called "State Cameos", that presumably originated in the inner court circle of Augustus, as they show him with divine attributes that were still politically sensitive, and in some cases have sexual aspects that would not have been exposed to a wider audience. These include the Gemma Augustea in Vienna (which also has the Gemma Claudia showing the Emperor Claudius and his brother with their wives) and the Great Cameo of France in Paris.

Augustus is depicted as always as a fairly young man, whose appearance is greatly idealized when compared with descriptions of him in literature. Within the very controlled conventions of his portraits, this image indicates his old age; the face has been described as "strained, ailing, yet ideal and noble", and having "a distanced air of ageless majesty". Here he is seen from behind, but with his head turned in profile, considerably over-large for the body. He has thrown the aegis, an attribute of Jupiter, over his shoulder; much of this is in the upper brown layer of the stone. The aegis is here imagined as a kind of decorated goatskin cloak with a hole for the head, which appears (improbably small) at Augustus' shoulder.

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