What is an intaglio, you may ask? To understand intaglios, we need to travel back in time to the ca 150 years spanning the Neo-Classical revival: the 17th- to the mid 19th Century. This was a time when the European aristocracy would travel around Europe (Paris, Venice, Rome, Florence, Naples, Sicilly...) with a view to becoming Classically educated. The period coincides with the rise in enthusiasm for collecting, with Grand Tourists helping themselves to statues ("marbles"), paintings and all sorts of artifacts, filling their coffers as they travelled along. Intaglios, plaster medallions depicting scenes from Greek and Roman Antiquity, became the standard tourist-shop item to take home.
