⁹⁄₁₆ in. (1.4 cm.) long

Ludovisi-Boncompagni collection, Rome, by 1840 (illustration of gem impression preserved on the Beazley Archive).
Paul Julius Arndt (1865-1937), Munich (no. A1410).
Giorgio Sangiorgi (1886-1965), Rome, acquired and brought to Switzerland, late 1930s; thence by continuous descent to the current owners.

M.-L. Vollenweider, Die Steinschneidekunst und ihre Künstler in spätrepublikanischer und augusteischer Zeit, Baden-Baden, 1966, pp. 39, 54 and 102, pl. 29,2.
E. Zwierlein-Diehl, Glaspasten im Martin-von-Wagner-Museum der Universität Würzburg, Munich, 1986, p. 207.
Beazley Archive Gem Database "Impronte gemmarie della collezione Boncompagni."

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Lot Essay

This fine portrait of a youthful Octavian (later Emperor Augustus) shows him wearing a mourning beard, indicating that it must have been sculpted shortly after the assassination of his maternal great-uncle Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. According to Caesar's will, Octavian was posthumously adopted. Together with Mark Antony and Marcus Lepidus, he formed the Second Triumvirate to defeat Caesar's assassins. On several related gems and on coins minted by Octavian after the assassination, he is frequently shown wearing the mourning beard (see for example the impression from a lost gem, no. 743 in J. Boardman, et al., The Marlborough Gems). The present gem is one of two nearly identical examples from the Sangiorgi collection. The Ludovisi-Boncompagni provenance for this one was indicated in Sangiorgi's notes, and confirmed by an impression illustrated in the Beazley Archive Gem Database. The later Arndt provenance is also confirmed from an impression in a box in the Sangiorgi collection identified as coming from Paul Arndt.