Cameo: Head of Diana (25 BCE - 100 CE): Art, History and Details

Cameo: Head of Diana (25 BCE - 100 CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This cameo depicts the Roman Goddess of the Hunt, Diana, known as Artemis to the Greeks. She faces left with her hair bound at the back of her head, her signature quiver of arrows visible over her shoulder. Roman cameo glass was made by fusing layers of different colored glass on top of one another, then carving down to reveal each different color. There are at least four layers of glass in this cameo: a dark layer for the hair, a whitish layer for the skin, middle tone for the background, and a dark purple for the base.

Object facts

• Title: Cameo: Head of Diana
• Date: 25 BCE - 100 CE
• Culture: Italy, Roman
• Type: Glass
• Technique: glass
• Dimensions: Overall: 3.7 x 3.3 cm (1 7/16 x 1 5/16 in.)
• Collection: GR - Roman
• Department: Greek and Roman Art
• Accession number: 1965.465

A detail from the museum

Ancient glass did not glitter; the iridescent film on this cameo developed over thousands of years.

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. J. J. Klejman

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “Golden Anniversary Acquisitions: September 10 through October 16.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 53, no. 7 (1966): 181–284.
• “Recent Important Acquisitions: MADE BY PUBLIC AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS IN THE UNITED STATES AND ABROAD.” Journal of Glass Studies 9 (1967): 133–43.
• Cooney, John D. “Intaglios, Cameos, and Related Works.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 55, no. 4 (1968): 113–19.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.