The Munich numismatic museum houses a gemma with the image of Barbara Radziwillowna. It was made in Kraków by the Italian artist Gian Jacop Caraglia.

Cameo - appearance
The gemma (a precious or semi-precious stone decorated in relief) was made from sardonyx, a multicoloured, translucent variety of agate; which is characterised by alternating flat white and brown-red bands (bands) of varying thickness. This material was often used to make gemstones, which were then set into jewellery settings. The delicate colours of the stone gave the carved pieces a lightness and softness of modelling. On the oval cameo (a type of gemma, with convex relief), there is an image of a woman, shown up to her shoulders, in left profile, with her mouth slightly parted and her eyebrows raised high. Her hair pinned up in a net called "crinale" and her dress with a stand-up collar are accurately rendered in this miniature relief, measuring only 2.2 cm high and 1.7 cm wide. In the part of the neck chain, the gemma is inlaid with gold. It is worth mentioning that the procedure of inlaying the sardonyx with gold or silver was used by Caraglio in other cameos, such as the slightly later 'Cameo with the image of Bona' from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Around the effigy, the rim bears the inscription: BARBARA RA-REG POLONIAE, and the model's head splits the date: 15-05. On the reverse of the gemma is the signature: IOVANES IACOBVS / VERONEN / SIS / FECIT //. These inscriptions indicate exactly the identity of the model, the identity of the artist and the date of the work.

Barbara Radziwiłłówna and Sigismund II Augustus
. The inscription in the rim of the image BARBARA RA-REG POLONIAE points to Barbara Radziwiłłówna, Polish queen, Grand Duchess of Lithuania. Barbara Radziwiłłówna was born on 6 December 1520 in Vilnius as the daughter of Castellan, Great Hetman of Lithuania Jerzy Radziwiłł and Barbara Kolanka. Barbara's first husband was Stanislaw Gasztold (1507-1542), who was older than her, Voivode of Novgorod and Troki. After four years of marriage, Barbara was widowed. As the family was ending with Stanislaw Gasztold, the estate fell to the Grand Duke of Lithuania. In this situation, Barbara's brother, Mikolaj Rudy Radziwill, asked Queen Bona to allow his sister to use part of the estate. In order to settle the inheritance matters, Sigismund II Augustus came to Gieranojów, where Barbara was staying. It was then that a love affair began between the king and the voivode Barbara Radziwiłłówna, which lasted almost five years. Sigismund II Augustus and Barbara Radziwiłłówna did not marry until 1547, after the death of Elisabeth Habsburg, the king's first wife. The marriage was contracted out of love, in secret from the king's parents Sigismund the Old and Bona Sforzca. After the fact of the king's marriage to his subject was revealed, the magnates considered the union to be a misalliance, detrimental to the solemnity and stability of the state, and demanded its annulment. Sigismund II Augustus made efforts for several years to have his wife accepted at court and to be crowned. In the end, the coronation of Barbara Radziwiłłówna as Queen of Poland and Grand Duchess of Lithuania, Ruthenia, Prussia and Masovia took place on 7 December 1550. And it may have been on this occasion that the jewel in question was made, which bears the yearly date (the last two digits upside down). Less than six months after the coronation, on 8 May 1551, Barbara died and was buried in Vilnius Cathedral.

Gian Jacopo Caraglio
The signature on the back of the gemma indicates the identity of the artist, he is Gian Jacopo Caraglio (1500/1505-1565), known as 'Jacobus Parmensis' or 'Jacobus Veronensis', which indicated his place of birth: Parma or Verona. And it was the nickname VERONEN that the artist used on the cameo of Barbara Radziwill. Gian Jacopo Caraglio was a prominent Renaissance artist working in printmaking, goldsmithing and glyptic (carving in precious and semi-precious stones). He began his career in 1526 as a printmaker working in Rome, then in Venice, before arriving in Kraków in 1538 or 1539, at the court of the last Jagiellons. King Sigismund the Old appointed the talented Caraglia as court artist and he bore the title Sigismundi Augusti Regis Poloniae gemmarum incisor principalis, or chief jeweller to the Polish king. Commissioned by the Jagiellonians, Caraglio mainly made medals and gemmae with royal portraits. Definitely the gemmae that Caraglo made in Poland (Intaglio with an image of Bona Sforza, sapphire, circa 1530, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan; Cameo with an image of Sigismund II Augustus, syrdonyx, ca. 1550, Hermitage in St Petersburg; Cameo with an image of Sigismund II Augustus set into a ring, syrdonyx, ca. 1550, collection of Leo Merz in Bern; Cameo with an image of Bona Sforza, sardonyx, c. 1554, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York) attest to his unparalleled skills as a sculptor and portraitist. Thanks to his skills, he was able to render the authentic psychological features of his models on miniature works. Sigismund II Augustus, a lover of jewels, bestowed many honours on Caragli, as can be seen in the portrait of the artist painted by Paris Bordon around 1553 (now in the Wawel collection).

The fact that the cameo with the image of Barbara Radziwillowna is signed makes it one of only three signed gems by him in existence (these are: "Bow of the Three Kings" from the Médailles et Antiques de la Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris and the "Cameo with the effigy of Bona" from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The cameo with the likeness of Barbara Radziwiłłówna is formally linked by researchers to the cameo of Sigismund II Augustus from the Hermitage collection. According to Magdalena Piwocka, the jewel with the image of the king, depicted in right profile, like the profile portrait of his wife, is characterised by an inner animation. Caraglia's monographer Jerzy Wojciechowski even suggested that the two cameos could be a pair, i.e. the cameo of Barbara Radziwiłłówna (in left profile) is the pendant of the cameo of Zygmunt II August (in right profile), as the portraits face each other and the gemmae have almost identical dimensions. However, this view is an isolated one.

Gemma - further history
The exact provenance of the gem is quite difficult to reconstruct. The orderer of the camele with the likeness of Barbara Radziwiłłówna was probably Sigismund II Augustus, and the order, as already noted, was probably connected with the date of her coronation. Polish and foreign researchers (e.g. Ingrid Weber, Magdalena Piwocka and Jerzy Wojciechowski) point out that the jewel may have been brought to the Munich collection by the Radziwiłłs. Namely, Ludwika Karolina Radziwiłłówna (1667-1695), great-granddaughter of the aforementioned Mikołaj Rudy Radziwiłł, daughter of Bogusław Radzwiłł, early orphaned, as the sole heiress of the vast family estate and the last of the Calvinist Radziwiłł line, was the object of the efforts of many candidates vying for marriage with her. In 1681, at the age of 14, she was married off to Margrave Ludwig Leopold Hohenzollern, son of the Elector of Brandenburg Friedrich Wilhelm Hohenzollern, and left for Berlin. Immediately after the death of her first husband, there were numerous matrimonial proposals. Ludwika Karolina was even engaged to Jakub Sobieski, son of King John III Sobieski. She finally married secretly in 1687 to Charles III Philip Wittelsbach (1661-1742), Duke of the Palatinate of Neuburg, Jülich and Berg, Elector of the Palatinate of the Rhine. Perhaps on the occasion of this marriage, Ludwika Karolina brought a jewel with the image of her ancestor Barbara Radziwiłłówna to her husband's court. After Ludwika Karolina's death in 1695, the cameo was incorporated into the estate of the Wittelsbach family and is perhaps recorded in the 18th-century inventory of the family's collection.