Pregio e Bellezza: Cammei e intagli dei Medici is at the Museo degli Argenti in Florence through June 10.

From Firenze 2010, Un Anno ad Arte:

Presenting a select number of pieces of exceptional quality from the most important Italian and foreign museums, the exhibition will illustrate the complex history of this treasure, starting from its formation by Cosimo, Piero and, especially, Lorenzo de’ Medici who reserved a special place to cameos and intaglios in his art collections, and also purchased many prestigious specimens such as the so-called Seal of Nero, a splendid cornelian depicting Apollo and Marsyas, which was celebrated and admired by a host of men of letters and artists.

Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello and Sandro Botticelli are only three of the artists who found important creative suggestions in the diaphanous depictions of the Medici gems. This aspect will be documented by a great variety of works, illuminated codices, medals, drawings, paintings and sculptures, which show the great fortune enjoyed by the specimens that belonged to the Medici. In many cases, these are faithful translations of selected iconographic models, but there are also original specimens in which the elements drawn from the carved stones are enriched with totally new aspects, as we can find in several drawings by Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti who in the Medici gems not only found a heterogeneous repertory of forms but also an effective instrument for the recovery of the sense of balance and the measure of proportions characteristic of classical art.