Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 29.djvu/139

 Z)t xlrrljatological .Journal JUNE, 1872. ANCIENT PORTRAITURES OF OUR LORD. AFTEK THE TYPE OF THE EMEKALD VEKNICLE GIVEN BY BAJAZET 11. TO POPE INNOCENT Till. Notice Supplementary to a Memoir by Mr. C. W. KING, Archaeological Joumiil, vol. xxvii. p. 181.) The investigation of the earliest types of sacred portraiture, and especially of those of the Saviour, presents a subject of such pre-eminent interest in the History of Christian Art, that any details connected with it cannot fail to prove accept- able to readers of this Journal. In a previous volume we were indebted to the tasteful erudition of Mr. King for a valu- able dissertation on " the Emerald Vcrniclc of the Vatican," that inestimable relic of earl}'- art, now unhappily lost almost beyond all hope of recovery, and of which no tradition even seems to have survived, beyond the garbled inscriptions on certain paintings of the sixteenth century, which, from time to time, have been brought under the notice of the Institute by the examples exhibited at our meetings. It appeared to me desii-able to bring together any available evidence connected with the highly interesting tradition of this portraiture, which, as might be anticipated from the glyptic nature of its prototype — a cameo probably on plasma — is not, like the other early portraits of our Lord most familiar to us, in full face, but in profile. It has, moreover, not been noticed in various dissertations on the subject. We seek for it in vain in Pcignot's elaborate work, — " Ilecherchcs sur la Personne de Jesus Christ," — in Ileaphy's " Examination into the Antiquity of the Likeness of Our Blessed Lord," ^ — and even in the exhaustive researches by the writer of " Portraits of Christ," in the Quarterly Review. ^ Keither ' Art Journal, Series iv., vol. vii., 1801. - Vol. cxxiii. p. 490.