ABSTRACT
Imperial women noticed the success of Livia’s cameos, which helped both her husband and her son become emperor. Following Livia’s example, Agrippina the Elder uses a large Imperial cameo to convince the emperor, Tiberius, to choose one of her three sons for succession. Agrippina the Elder would have known the Gemma Augustea, undoubtedly fluent with its Imperial message and its feminine function. Agrippina the Elder then commissioned a new, updated version, the Grand Camée de France, that responds to and is in constant dialogue with the Gemma Augustea. Though the Gemma Augustea and Grand Camée de France share many features, Agrippina the Elder’s gemstone represents a movement away from the inclusion of so many deities and personifications and a move further in the direction of the dynastic ideas of the Domus Augusta, with Imperial women celebrated for their unique role as wives and mothers of the emperors. In addition, the Grand Camée de France represents the third stage in the life cycle of iconography, when symbols are fully understood and become even more complex, enhancing on the Gemma Augustea and making the new gemstone even more Roman and bigger and better than anything that came before it.
