MEDALLION PORTEAITS. 329 



should please to encourage this design, they will not only procure 

 for themselves everlasting portraits, but have the pleasure of giving 

 life and vigour to the arts of modelling and engraving. ' The art of 

 making durable copies at a small expense will thus promote the art 

 of making originals, and future ages may view the productions of 

 the age of GEOEGE THE THIED with the same veneration that we 

 now behold those of Alexander and Augustus. 



" Nothing can contribute more effectually to diffuse a good taste 

 through the arts than the power of multiplying copies of fine things 

 in materials fit to be applied for ornaments, by which means the 

 public eye is instructed, good and bad works are nicely discriminated, 

 and all arts receive improvement. Nor can there be a surer way of 

 rendering any exquisite piece possessed by an individual famous, 

 without diminishing the value of the original ; for the more copies 

 there are of any works, as of the Venus de Medicis, for instance, the 

 more celebrated the original will be, and the more honour derived 

 to the possessor. Everybody wishes to see the original of a beautiful 

 copy. 



" A model of a portrait in wax, when it is of a proper size for a 

 seal, ring, or bracelet, will cost about three guineas, and of a portrait 

 from three to six inches in diameter, three, four, or five guineas. 

 Any number of copies of cameos for rings, in jasper, with coloured 

 grounds, not fewer than ten, are made at 5. each. Any number 

 of cameos for bracelets in the jasper, with coloured grounds, at 

 7s. 6d. each. Any number of portraits in the same material, from 

 three to six inches diameter, not fewer than ten, at 105. 6d. each." 



Examples of these medallion portraits have already been 

 given. 



The SECOND CLASS into which Josiah Wedgwood divided 

 Ms productions was " bas-reliefs, medallions, tablets," &c. ; 

 and of these he produced about three hundred distinct 

 designs of groups, &c., many of them of the most exquisite 

 character, and of faultless workmanship. 



" The articles of this class," says Wedgwood, " have employed 

 some of the best artists in Europe, and it has been a work of much 

 time and attention, as well as expense, to bring it to its present 

 state. It is still receiving continual additions, not only from artists 

 in our own and other countries, but likewise from the amateurs and 

 patrons of the arts. I have lately been enabled to enrich it with 



