Ivory, rectangular, in a gilt-metal mount, unframed, 13.5cm.
The word sibyl, meaning prophetess, derives from the Ancient Greek. There were many sibyls throughout the Ancient world.
The Cumean Sibyl, was the most famous of those in the Roman world, appearing in Virgil’s Aeneid IV.
The painting by Domenichino, from which the miniature is taken, is in the Capitoline Museum in Rome.
