Agemina

AGEMINA (Da Agiam = Persia, in Arabic). - It is a synonym for "damascene" work and indicates a technique of metal inlay, in which the metal is hollowed out following a design and filled with wires or thin sheets of another metal hammered cold; it is often confused, but improperly, with niello (v.). Already known to Egyptian and Cretan-Mycenaean art, it was very widespread in antiquity; its great fortune in Byzantine and Muslim civilization is due to the progressive decline of plastic taste, replaced by that for color which this technique can satisfy with refined preciousness of effects and materials. It was often used together with niello for church furnishings (candlesticks, coffers) and also for the partial cladding of sacred buildings (church of the Apostles and oratory of the Savior in Byzantium); it found wide use in bronze doors. Those of the Lateran Baptistery in Rome with silver crosses (5th century) are perhaps of Eastern manufacture; and those of Salerno, Amalfi, Monte S. Angelo and the others, richer, for the Roman basilica of St. Paul, all from the late 11th century, were imported directly from Byzantium through the Pantaleoni of Amalfi. Our artists, following the example of the Byzantines, later executed the doors for the tomb of Bohemond at Canosa and the two of the cathedral of Troia (1119-21). Later the a. was used predominantly for weapons and secular objects; among the sacred ones, a "pax" (v.) in the Poldi Pezzoli museum in Milan (16th century) is notable. - See Pl. XXXI.

Guglielmo Matthiae