Gem with Venus and Anchises

Superbly engraved, the gem depicts a woman, mostly nude, with her hair bound in a sakkos, seated on a pile of stones, who gestures to a nude youth standing before her. He has drapery over one shoulder and carries a pedum (a hunter's throwing stick) visible near his shoulder. The identity of the pair has been the subject of scrutiny since the gem’s first publication in the eighteenth century, but they are likely the goddess Venus and her lover, the Trojan Anchises. The offspring of their union was Aeneas, the father of the Roman people. The gold and enamel mount appears to date to the 18th-century.