Young Peter Paul Rubens, then in the employ of the Mantuan Duke, admired the Gonzaga cameo as the finest in existence. During the War of the Mantuan Succession it was carried off by the imperial troops to Vienna and was preserved in the Prague Castle treasury through the Thirty Years' War. At the end of the conflict the Swedes marched into Prague and looted the imperial treasury. Several years later the cameo resurfaced in the collection of Queen Christina of Sweden. There is little record of its subsequent history. It is assumed that the Queen took it with her to Italy, bequeathing it to her favourite, Cardinal Decio Azzolini. It was subsequently acquired, with the rest of Christina's art collection, by Livio Odescalchi, Duke of Bracciano and nephew of Innocent XI. In 1794 the cameo was part of Pius VI's collection in Vatican. The invading French took it with them to Paris where it entered the collection of Napoleon and Empress Joséphine. After Napoleon's downfall, Alexander I of Russia paid a visit to the Château de Malmaison and offered Joséphine every assistance in his power. As a sign of gratitude she presented the cameo to the Tsar. Since then, the so-called Malmaison cameo has been kept in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. In Vienna there is a rival Hellenistic cameo, of lesser quality, which the Habsburgs also described as the "Gonzaga cameo", probably on assumption that it had not been stolen by the Swedes in 1648. This results in considerable confusion between the two.
Subject
The cameo shows the profiles of a man and a woman which conceivably possess family likeness. This capita jugata type of portrait, showing two superimposed profiles, is known from the coins issued by Ptolemy II Philadelphus in Hellenistic Egypt. Such portraits show Ptolemy with his sister and wife, Arsinoe II. Ptolemy was the first Hellenistic ruler to marry his sister; and it was at his court that the image of the twin deities, theoi adelphoi, gained currency. To shore up the identification, it has been argued that the woman's head on the cameo is covered with a sort of bridal veil. J. J. Pollitt of Yale University believes that it is the Vienna cameo that represents Ptolemy and Arsinoe. As for the Saint Petersburg cameo, Pollitt argues that the sharply defined quality of the "neoclassical" workmanship indicates a later date than is commonly recognized. He identifies the figures as Tiberius and Livia represented "in very generalized form so that they would simultaneously evoke the imagery of a Ptolemaic cameo and, through it, the imagery of Alexander".
