Excerpt from The Waddesdon Bequest: The Collection of Jewels, Plate, and Other Works of Art, Bequeathed to the British Museum by Baron Ferdinand Rothschild, M. P., A Trustee of the Museum

Baron Ferdinand also bequeath ed to the Museum a number of fine manuscripts, but these not being subject to the same conditions as the rest of the bequest, are preserved in the Department of Manuscripts, and will be on exhibition in the Manuscript Saloon on the ground floor of the Museum.

The collection, which is briefly catalogued in the following pages, is of exceptional richness, and of a kind that is only to be obtained by those who possess the amplest resources. In nearly all the classes of works of art of which it is composed there are pieces of the highest quality. The prevailing tone of richness and splendour of colour evidences a taste rather for the fully developed productions of the later Renaissance than for the more severe Gothic or quattro-cento styles, where the artist is fettered by the conventions of an immature art. The Classical period is represented by four examples only, but of these, two beautiful heads in high relief may well claim to be in the first rank, and their refined style shows that they date from the period when art had reached its highest point (no. 1, Pl. I). The serene beauty of these heads places them in quite a different category from the great proportion of the rest of the collection; the only other pieces that are at all comparable with them, though far removed in date, are the two busts which have been fancifully called Charles the Bold and his wife (n o.

The series of cups and vases of rock crystal and other hard stones is of a kind for the appreciation of which no special training is required. The brilliancy of the colours, the diffi culties surmounted in the laborious hollowing of the intractable materials, and the richness and beauty of the enamelled mountings, are readily understood. Among these one piece stands pre-eminent - the mottled agate vase N o. 68 (pl. IV), of which the body is an example of ancient Roman cameo work while the mounts are in the most elaborate style of the Italian Renaissance, and the whole is in the most perfect state of preservation. The skill of the ancient Roman lapidary was fully equal to that of his later collaborator, though the nature of his material exacted a broader treatment. It is somewhatrare to find an ancient vase of hard stone so symmetrical and graceful in outline, and it is probably this quality that led the goldsmith of the Renaissance to bestow his skill upon it. Others of these cups claim a classical origin, and it may be that one or two of them are of Roman times, and like this one with enrich ments of a much later date, but none has such superlative qualities. Of the other vases, in which the cutting of the stones and the ornamental settings are more or less contemporary, several will repay a close examination, and one at least (n o. 79) is notable for bearing the name of Akbar, the great Indian emperor, and was no doubt a gift to him from some European prince.

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