This cameo is one of the masterpieces of the Roman gem cutter Giuseppe Cerbara, whom he himself marked with his name in widely spaced capitals. Cerbara chose the motif of the so-called 'Medusa Rondanini', an ancient type of Medusa head, for this gemstone. The eponymous and best-preserved high relief of this type was originally in the Palazzo Rondanini in Rome (now the Glyptothek in Munich) and was acquired in 1811 by the later Bavarian King Ludwig I through his art agent Johann Martin von Wagner and the artist Bertel Thorvaldsen.
While the head of the Gorgo Medusa, which turned everyone to stone at the sight of it, was still depicted as an ugly grimace in archaic art, by the classical period its iconography had changed to a face with pleasant human features. The 'Medusa Rondanini' is considered the most famous of this type of representation, of which even Johann Wolfgang von Goethe had a plaster cast.The originally unmounted cameo was framed at Cartier in Paris in 1901. (AVS)
Former collection Harry Dittrich Hellebronth von Tiszabeö, Hanover
