The Louvre has launched a fundraising campaign to acquire an exquisitely carved Italian Renaissance agate cameo of Venus and Cupid that once belonged to Louis XIV. If the campaign succeeds, the cameo will be reunited with its original carved stone and silver-gilt cup for the first time since it disappeared into private collections after the French Revolution.

Carved in meticulous detail from a single agate stone from Graubünden, Germany, the cameo depicts Venus at languid rest on a shell (the one she was born in, perhaps) with her son Cupid curled up next to her holding her hand. The carving takes full advantage of the natural color variations and swirls of the agate to set Venus’ pearlescent pale skin against the rich ochres of the shell underneath her. The cameo is rimmed with a silver-gilt border and a gilt swan, neck elegantly curved, wings outstretched, overlooks the loving scene of mother and babe.

It was made in the early 17th century by Giovanni Ambrogio Miseroni, scion of a Milanese family of hardstone carvers whose works were prized among the aristocracy and nobility of Europe for hundreds of years. (Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II was so pleased with their work he ennobled Giovanni and his brothers around the same time this cameo was carved.) Miseroni mounted the cameo as a lid onto a carved agate cup which was a hardstone masterpiece in its own right.

The cameo first appears on the historical record in 1661 in the inventory of the massive collection of Cardinal Jules Mazarin after his death. The inventory listing describes the vessel  thus:

A large shell-shaped cup carved from a single piece of German agate, upheld by a silver-gilt dolphin placed on a shell that is also of silver gilt, with another large German shell as its lid, also shell-shaped, carved with a nude Venus lying on a drapery next to a small Cupid and decorated with a silver-gilt rim.

It was one of the three most valuable vessels in the Mazarin collection, and Louis XIV acquired all three of them after the Cardinal’s death. They were in the royal collection until 1796 when they fell victim to a shortsighted (to put it mildly) scheme by the Revolutionary government to pay off creditors in kind with objects from the onetime royal collection. The Miseroni cup disappeared into a private collection, untraced and unpublished, for almost 200 years.

During that time, the cameo was detached from the cup. The cup emerged at auction on its own in 1968 and was acquired the Louvre. It has been on display with other masterpieces of hardstone art in the Galerie d’Apollon ever since.

Because the cameo disappeared without a trace long before it could be photographed, it was only known from written descriptions. When the lost cameo was included in a 2001 catalogue of the hardstone vessels in the royal collection, the owner recognized it from the description. It was sold at auction in London in 2011 and the Louvre tried but failed to buy it then. Now it has another bite at the apple, and the museum is aiming high so it doesn’t get outsold this time. The total price is 2.6 million euros. The public fundraising goal is at least one million euros before February 25th. Click here to contribute.

A previously unpublished bust of Renaissance firebrand friar Girolamo Savonarola has gone on public display for the first time at the convent of San Marco where Savonarola was once prior. It dates to the late 15th or early 16th century and is also the only surviving in-the-round sculpture of Savonarola known to have been made in the Renaissance.

The polychrome terracotta bust is a departure from the classic representation of Savonarola in profile, black hood pulled low on his forehead, originally created by Dominican painter Fra Bartolomeo. The frontal portrait bust captures the severe expression and hooked nose seen in the Bartolomeo painting, but with piercing light blue eyes.

What’s more, it was made by someone who knew him personally. The sculptor was Marco della Robbia, aka Fra Mattia, son of Andrea della Robbia and fervent follower of Girolamo Savonarola. Mattia was one of the friars who took up arms to fight the authorities when they arrested Savonarola at San Marco on April 8th, 1498.

The bust is on long-term loan to the Museum of San Marco from lawyer and collector Alessandro Kiniger. It has been installed in the room where, according to tradition, Savonarola lived when he was prior. It is on display alongside the famous profile portrait by Fra Bartolomeo, another work by Bartolomeo depicting St. Peter with the face of Savonarola, and autograph manuscripts of sermons written and delivered by Savonarola.

A carved wooden falcon that sold at auction in 2019 for  £75 ($100) has been identified as a 16th century heraldic badge of Anne Boleyn that once adorned Hampton Court Palace. With this updated provenance, the oak falcon’s market value has skyrocketed to an estimated £200,000 ($270,000).

The falcon was one of the new architectural features King Henry VIII ordered be added to Hampton Court Palace before his marriage to Anne. The white falcon was on the crest of the Butler family who had held the title of Earls of Ormond. Anne’s father Thomas Boleyn was related to the Butlers through his mother, and in 1529 Henry browbeat the legitimate Butler claimant to the Ormond earldom to settle for another title so he could give this one to the father of his inamorata.

Anne took the white falcon as the centerpiece of her own heraldic emblem shortly before her wedding. It stands on a tree stump (representing Henry’s Plantagenet ancestry) from which red and white roses grow. These aren’t Tudor roses with red petals on the outside and white ones on the inside, but individual red roses alternating with white roses, symbolic of Henry’s dual claim to the throne through his Lancastrian father, Henry of Richmond, and his mother Elizabeth of York.

The bird wears an imperial crown and carries a heavy scepter in its talon, an unmistakable message Henry was sending that his power was absolute inside his realm, even overriding that of the pope, and that Anne would be his queen. Three years, one tumultuous marriage, several spurious charges of adultery and a decapitation later, Henry ordered all traces of Anne Boleyn obliterated from his palaces as a kind of Tudor damnatio memoriae.

Today there are two royal falcons surviving on the ceiling of Hampton Court’s Great Hall. This example was in a more accessible location, likely in her private apartments, and may have been salvaged by a supporter who wanted to preserve the memory Henry sought to eradicate.

Tudor historian and curator for Historic Royal Palaces Tracy Borman says:

“What’s really interesting about it is that – unlike the Great Hall examples – this one wears an imperial crown. That was an absolute nod to the fact that Henry by now had got imperial ambitions. He was trying to supplant the pope’s authority, promoting himself as some kind of emperor rather than just a king. There are other crowned falcons that we know about, that were used for example at Anne’s coronation in the pageant. But there’s no mention of imperial crowns, so this is very much Henry and Anne doing their very best for a kind of PR stunt. The decoration of Hampton Court was all about their ambitions and their defiance of the pope.”

The falcon was acquired by Paul Fitzsimmons, founder of Marhamchurch Antiques, which specializes in oak furniture from the 15th through 17th centuries. It was described in the auction catalogue as a “antique carved wood bird,” but Fitzimmons recognized its quality and its likely connection to royalty given the crown and scepter, but didn’t initially realize it was one of Anne Boleyn’s badges. After careful restoration removed the coating of black soot, the falcon was revealed to be in impeccable condition, complete with original gilding and polychrome paint.

Fitzsimmons has arranged a long-term loan of the falcon to Hampton Court Palace so the antique carved wood bird will come home to roost.