The Victorian "Cameo Craze": Cameos, Femininity, and the Fashioning of Britain's Imperial Identity

In an 1871 essay entitled "On Cameos," the unnamed author describes the cameo as an "ornament more exquisite to a lover of art than glittering jewels" and, quoting Keats, a "'thing of beauty' that might be 'a joy forever'" (115). By esteeming the cameo as a "thing of beauty," redolent of Romantic poetry and treasured by the "lover of art," the writer distinguishes this accessory from other feminine ornaments boasting a more superficial, "glittering" appeal. The author then observes that contemporary British fashions have reinvigorated the taste for cameos, as "during the early part of the present century the art of cameo-cutting was again revived, and at no period was it brought to greater perfection" (114). Indeed, throughout the nineteenth century, the cameo's popularity grew steadily, owing in part to the newfound affordability and ease of travel to Italy, where the most sought-after cameos were made and sold. As greater numbers of middle-class Britons began to partake in the tradition of the "Grand Tour," the cameo became a prized souvenir of this experience. A coveted status symbol as well as a sentimental memento, the cameo visually affirmed its wearer's refined taste and purchasing power.

Victorian cameos also became progressively more personalized to match their consumers' specifications. British tourists started to bring photographs of themselves and their loved ones to Italian artisans to imitate, and, by the middle of the century, the cameo's traditional images of Cupid and Psyche threatened to be entirely supplanted by portraits of British women. These cameo portraits were essentially wearable miniature sculptures, individualized art objects that showcased recognizably British profiles delicately carved into a classical medium. Queen Victoria, perhaps the best-known cameo aficionado of the age, not only wore cameos bearing the profiles of her children and husband throughout her life but also endorsed the public circulation of her own likeness on cameos. Thus, as British portraits replaced classical subjects and Queen Victoria encouraged the further distribution of her image on various cameo objects, in some ways, the "ancient cameo" became an emblem of Victorian Britishness.

Building upon the work of other material culture scholars, such as Bill Brown and Elaine Freedgood,¹ this essay interrogates the cameo's cultural and material histories in order to recover the deeper motivations behind the Victorian "cameo craze."² In A Sense of Things, Brown challenges scholars to re-evaluate the ways in which "we use objects to make meaning, to make or re-make ourselves, to organize our anxieties and affections, to sublimate our fears and shape our fantasies" (4). Following Brown, I aim to identify the ideological as well as the material reasons that underpinned the cameo's mass appeal in nineteenth-century Britain, contemplating the cameo not only as a fashionable commodity but also as a classical relic, a proud marker of Britishness, and a personal memento.³ Moreover, approaching the cameo from this object-centred critical perspective highlights the ways in which the cameo resists absolute categorization, confusing the boundaries between art and jewellery, private sentiment and national patriotism, past and present empires.⁴

More specifically, I argue that the Victorian taste for cameos offers insight into Britain's process of fashioning an imperial identity, particularly Britain's widespread cultural efforts to align its rapidly expanding empire with that of imperial Rome. For the Victorians, ancient Rome provided a celebrated model of imperial rule, in contrast to the often-criticized contemporary empires of France and Russia. Flattering comparisons between Victorian Britain and ancient Rome often justified British imperialism as a civilizing mission that followed the standards of global expansion and domination set by Britain's classical predecessors.⁵ Yet the frequent parallels drawn between the British Empire and imperial Rome did give rise to some inevitable anxieties—namely, the possibility that Britain would follow the trajectory of Rome's decline and fall. Typically, these concerns were acknowledged and then assuaged by the argument that Britain was free of the vices that led to Rome's demise. British writers, historians, and politicians often promoted Britain as an improved...