Poniatowski gems

[3] He augmented this collection with over 2,600[4] forgeries by contemporary carvers, in a florid classicizing style and in most cases signed with ancient names,[2][3][5] while claiming publicly that the works were genuine antiquities.

[6] Other carvers include Giovanni Calandrelli – nearly 300 of whose preliminary drawings for the gems are in the collection of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin[7] – Giuseppe Girometti [it], Niccolò Cerbara [it], Tommaso Cades, and Antonio Odelli.

[13] In 1842 Ogle anonymously published a version of his essay in the British and Foreign Review, to which Tyrrell responded, in an angry letter, that "it is not probable that a nobleman of [Poniatowski's] high character and honour would have asserted that which he did not believe to be true.

[2][5] Oxford University's Classical Art Research Centre, formerly the Beazley Archive, has gathered a comprehensive online database of the available provenance and images of gems from the Poniatowski collection.

[17] The Victoria and Albert Museum holds several pieces from the Poniatowski collection, depicting Socrates, Apollo and Daphne, Venus and Aeneas, Pluto and Peleus, Bacchus and Ino, Theseus, Erechtheus, and several scenes from the Trojan War.

[20] The Royal Society bought 5 gems at the 1839 auction, representing Euclid, Thales, Archimedes, Aristides and Priam, for prices ranging from £1 10s to £4 4s each, and still holds them today.

[11] An engraved amethyst ring signed ΓΝΑΙΟϹ (Gnaios), showing Mark Antony in profile, was in 1968 published and praised by gem expert John Boardman,[22] and was subsequently widely reproduced in books as an ancient Roman masterpiece.

One of them, in agate, depicts Hebe as a young woman wearing a chiton with her hair in a bun, pouring wine or nectar from a jug into a cup held by Jupiter, as a half-undressed old man, set in scenery of clouds.

It appears to be a crude copy of a sardonyx piece whose plaster cast is held at the University of Oxford, missing its forged signature ("Chromios") and some details in the carving.

Another piece in the museum, also likely a copy of a Poniatowski gem, consists of a red jasper stone, carved with a snake with a lion's head and the lettering "vot sol cer", set in a bronze ring.