THE MARLBOROUGH GEMS

THis link takes you to the text of a lecture (with illusatrations) delivered by John Boardman in April 2008 at the Ioannou School for Classical and Byzantine Studies, Oxford. 'What I want to describe to you is a research project of the Beazley Archive [...], the goal of which was a book for the Press, now delivered. It has a local appeal since it deals with a collection of some 800 gems, ancient to 18th-century, once at Blenheim Palace, sold piecemeal in 1899, and which we have been reassembling at least in paper or in facsimile.