Gemma Constantiniana

"Intricately carved agate set within a glittering frame, the Gemma Constantiniana displays a victorious tableau enriched with polished rubies and emeralds. This awe-inspiring cameo is thought to have been made in the 4th century, and since then has found itself in the possession of merchants, mutineers and royalty. This unique object was featured within the Western Australian Museum exhibition, Travellers and Traders in the Indian Ocean World."

The tale of the Gemma Constantiniana

http://museum.wa.gov.au/explore/articles/tale-gemma-constantiniana

"Per un incredibile coincidenza del fato, la Gemma riemerge dall’oblio nel 1622, entrando nella collezione di uno dei più grandi pittori di sempre, Rubens. Nel 1628, ad Anversa, Theodoor Rogiersz aggiunge al cameo una cornice di gemme, probabilmente su richiesta del nuovo proprietario Gaspar Boudaen, che ha intenzione di venderla al sovrano dell’Impero Moghul. Il mezzo scelto per trasportarla? La Batavia. Per alcuni mesi, resta quindi nelle mani dello psicopatico Jeronimus Cornelisz e degli altri ammutinati."

https://zweilawyer.com/2018/01/04/il-naufragio-della-batavia/
La storia dei naufraghi del Batavia è orribile.


https://www.joscares.com/blog/archives/52-The-incredible-but-true-story-of-the-Gemma-Constantiniana.html

315 - Rome  Cameo made in honour of Constantine’s victory over his rival Maxentius in AD 312.
330? - Constantinople
1204 - Constantinople - sack of Constantinople.
1204-1622 - France?
1622 - Antwerp.  Cameo in possession of Peter-Paul Rubens.
1628 - Antwerp. Frame with gems added by Theodoor Rogiersz in Antwerp.
1628, Oct - Amsterdam - Gaspar Boudaen, to be sold to the Great Mogul of India.
1628, Oct 28 - Texel - The Batavia under command of Francisco Pelsaert leaves Texel with the Great cameo.
1629, Jun 4 - Abrolhos Islands, off the coast of Western Austalia. Shipwreck of Batavia.
1629, Jun 4 – Sep 17 - Cameo in possession of the mutineers.
1629, Oct 2 - Cameo retrieved from mutineers.
1629, Dec - Batavia (Jakarta)
1632 - Suratte, India. Cameo taken  to Suratte, India for sale.. No deal.
1633 - Batavia - Cameo returns to Batavia.
1634, Aug - Batavia. Cameo stays in Batavia.
1636? - Gamron, Persia. Cameo sent to Gamron in Persia. No deal.
1637, Jun - Batavia. Cameo returns to Batavia.
1637, Dec - Achin, Sumatra.
1638, Feb 24. Achin, Sumatra. King of Atjeh refuses to buy the cameo.
1640, Suratte, India. Cameo for sale to governor Mirmousa. No deal.
1641, Apr - Batavia. Cameo returns to Batavia aboard the warship Nieuw-Zeeland.
1641 - 1647 - Batavia - Cameo in store
1647 - Suratte, India. Gaspar Boudaen's son takes cameo to Suratte, but he fails to sell it.
1653-1656 - The Netherlands - Cameo returns to the heirs of Gaspar Boudaen in the Netherlands
1656-1756 - The Netherlands, Unknown
1756, Sep 11 - Amsterdam, Cameo is auctioned, probably to Jacob Hop.
1808 - Paris.  Cameo is almost sold to Napoleon for ff 110.000. Events in 1813 preclude a deal.
1823 - Leiden. King Willem I buys the cameo for fl 50.000 from Jacob Hop’s grandson.
2007, May 24 - Utrecht. Money museum in Utrecht
2014, Jan 15 - Leiden. Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden

Morphing of a bust of Julius Caesar at the National Museum of Antiquities, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden.

Morphing of a bust of Julius Caesar at the National Museum of Antiquities, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden.: Here we show some morphing of a marble head of Julius Caesar which is today on display in the National Museum of Antiquities, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden. For the morphing we will use the marble head of Caesar of the Centrale Montemartini, Roma, the Caesar’s head of the Camposanto Monumentale in Pisa, the Chiaramonti Caesar, and the Tusculum bust. Two lifelike reconstructions will also be proposed.

A figure from the article

Leiden bust of Caesar (Rijksmuseum van Oudheden) Morphing with Tusculum bust.

This is a morphing of the Leiden bust of Julius Caesar. From the left: Leiden bust, 2/3 Leiden and 1/3 Tusculum bust, 1/3 Leiden and 2/3 Tusculum, the face of Tusculum on the Leiden head.

Lifelike rendering of the morphing

On d’Hollosy reconstruction of Caesar - continued

In the post of June 26, 2018
http://stretchingtheboundaries.blogspot.com/2018/06/on-maja-dhollosy-reconstruction-of.html

I discussed the reconstruction of Caesar's head made by Maja d'Hollosy, proposed in http://www.rmo.nl/reconstructiecaesar. She used data from a Leiden bust and the Tusculum bust. So I measured two rectangles to compare the face of Tusculum bust and the face of d'Hollosy reconstruction. Here the result.

The rectangles of the Tusculum bust (left). Rectangles of a frontal view of Maja d’Hollosy’s 3D reconstruction (Courtesy: elu24.postimees.ee Kuvatõmmis/Youtube,  Let me stress that the image on the right is here used for scientific and cultural purposes). The sizes are in pixels.

To the reader, the exercise to evaluate the ratios. Differences are of about 10%.

However, a reader could tell me that I have not investigated the other bust used for the reconstruction, that which is in Leiden. Actually, the bust is in bad condition, so I "restored" digitally its image. And the result is the following. 

For comparison, I rotated a little the image. Here the result and comparison.

The rectangles of the Tusculum bust (left), of a frontal view of Maja d’Hollosy’s 3D reconstruction (middle) and Leiden head (right). The numbers (in pixels) are given to the reader, in such a manner that  any measurement and ratio can be easily evaluated. 

The most evident defect of the 3D  reconstruction is in the fact that it has the head which has a square as its frame, whereas the two busts have rectangles.  

On Maja d’Hollosy reconstruction of Caesar's head

As we have previously told in [1], on 22 June 2018 an article has been published by the National Museum of Antiquities (Rijksmuseum van Oudheden) of Leiden [2], showing a new 3D reconstruction of Julius Caesar’s head based on a bust of the museum. 

Ref.3 is telling that this 3D reconstruction is "including the bizarre proportions of his [Caesar’s] cranium." To this conclusion given in [3] we answered in [1], telling the following. Suetonius, in De vita Caesarum [4], is not mentioning any bizarre proportion. And, to the author’s knowledge, no witty remark exists on Caesar’s head, besides his baldness of course.

 In fact, Suetonius tells that Caesar “was tall, of a fair complexion, round limbed, rather full faced, with eyes black and piercing”; only his baldness “gave him much uneasiness, having often found himself on that account exposed to the jibes of his enemies.” 

 In spite of Suetonius’ words, the result of the 3D reconstruction made by Maja d’Hollosy and given in [2], is the following: “Julius Caesar's head reconstructed with 3D technology - and it reveals something odd about his birth. The legendary Roman emperor has a 'crazy bulge' on his head, according to one expert”, as told in [5]. And also, the head reconstruction proposed in [2], is rendering Julius Caesar basically like E.T. [6]. 

 In [2], it is told that Maja d’Hollosy used a bust in Leiden (that shown by the web page) and the bust of Tusculum [7], today exhibited at the Museo Archeologico of Torino [8]. The Leiden bust shown in [2] is in bad conditions.  

Actually, at the web page https://elu24.postimees.ee/4509811/video-3d-busti-kohaselt-ei-olnud-julius-caesar-just-ilus-mees, we have a front view of Maja d’Hollosy reconstruction. So we can use it for comparison (let me stress that the image from the above-mentioned web site is here used for scientific and cultural purposes). In the Figure, the Tusculum bust is given on the left and the so-called 3D reconstruction on the right. The reader can easily note the different proportions of faces’ features. From the comparison, the differences are so evident that we can make easily some measurements. For instance, we could measure the distances between eyes and so on: but, I stress once more, differences are so evident that we can simply use two frames, for instance, two rectangles (red and purple). In the image, the numbers of pixels represent the size of the sides.

On the left, the Tusculum bust. On the right a frontal view of Maja d’Hollosy’s 3D reconstruction (Courtesy: elu24.postimees.ee Kuvatõmmis/Youtube). Let me stress that the image on the right is here used for scientific and cultural purposes. The rectangles are showing the quantitative differences. 

As we can see from the Figure, we have  ratios 113/170 and 235/270 for the Tusculum head and 115/156 and 255/260 for the Maja d'Hollosy's reconstruction. That is: 0.66 and 0.87 (Tusculum), 0.73 and 0.98 (3D d'Hollosy). As a conclusion we can tell that the proportions of the Tusculum bust had not been respected in the 3D reconstruction. But the main defect of  d'Hollosy reconstruction is in the fact that the purple frame is a SQUARE, whereas that of the Tusculum is a RECTANGLE. The square enhances the effect of a rendering based on small and too close eyes, deliberately chosen by d'Hollosy.


References
[1] Sparavigna, A. C. (2018, June 24). Julius Caesar in a 3D rendering from a 2D picture. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1297051
[2] http://www.rmo.nl/reconstructiecaesar
[3] https://www.rt.com/news/430659-caesar-head-reconstructed-rome/
[4] Suetonius, Divus Julius, Alexander Thomson. Available at www.perseus.tufts.edu/
[5] https://www.mirror.co.uk/science/julius-caesars-head-reconstructed-3d-12794457
[6] https://metro.co.uk/2018/06/25/new-3d-reconstruction-reveals-julius-caesar-basically-looked-like-e-t-7658540/
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tusculum_portrait
[8] http://museoarcheologico.piemonte.beniculturali.it/index.php/9-uncategorised/129-museo-di-antichita-di-torino