Camée Pollux

Camée Pollux is the twin onyx cameo associated with the Castelmont family, paired with Camée Castor and depicting the mythological Pollux. Its history turns a small engraved stone into a problem of inheritance and proof: the pair can be recognized in art-historical records, but their separation, changing claims of ownership, and uncertain authenticity leave their journey only partly recoverable. When the two are finally displayed together, their reunion brings no secure resolution; it precedes a catastrophe in which both disappear again.

Form and Identification

The pair’s identity is established through its workmanship and iconography as well as its name. Each Dioscurus stands facing the other, holding a horse by the reins and a spear, and wearing an oval cap topped by a star. The exhibition description identifies the material as five-layer onyx with a dark upper layer. These repeated features make the two stones legible as a pair, while their distinct figures distinguish one from the other.

The physical condition of the related family cameo complicates identification. An old scratch obscures part of its engraved figure, so examination under a magnifying glass yields only partial clues: traces of mythological attributes, a suggestion of clothing, and the style and period of the carving. The damage makes the cameo both a material object and an incomplete sign. A resemblance can suggest a match, but it cannot by itself establish which twin is present or prove a stone’s history.

The Pair’s Earlier History

Régis began investigating the family cameo in the 1940s. He concluded that it was European and likely connected to an aristocratic family, but its route to the Founder remained unknown: it might have stayed with its first owner, passed through several hands, or reached its later possessor by sale or theft. To investigate, Régis studied lapidary engraving and consulted European experts while presenting himself as an enthusiast of gems rather than revealing the family connection. He became convinced that the carving was Italian and dated at least to the eighteenth century, perhaps the seventeenth, and that it represented one of the mythological twins. The logic of the image led him to suspect that the stone belonged to a pair.

In the 1960s, Régis consulted a brief eighteenth-century catalogue at the National Library of France. It recorded a pair representing Castor and Pollux in the collection of the Duke of Orléans, later Regent, but did not trace what happened to them afterward. The royal inventory made after the French Revolution did not list the cameos. Régis considered whether the brothers of Louis XVI might have taken them into exile, or whether they had been given or entrusted to another prince or émigré family in Germany or England. These remained possibilities, not a documented chain of custody.

A later Paris exhibition organized by Christie’s with private collections and museums supplied a stronger link. Among photographs of lost aristocratic cameos, Régis recognized one that resembled the family stone; beside it was an old engraving of the cameo said to have disappeared, shown without its scratch. The exhibition record stated that the pair had belonged to the Regent’s collection and had been separated after the Revolution. One cameo, Pollux, was held in the private collection of an unnamed family of the old French aristocracy; the other, Castor, had disappeared in unknown circumstances, probably during the revolutionary upheaval. The display gave Régis a documented origin for the family object, but it did not close the gap between its disappearance and its later appearance.

Inheritance, Claims, and Doubt

The account of the Castelmont twins supplies a family history for the separation. Shortly before her arrest, the Countess of Castelmont entrusted one cameo to each son, sewing the stones into their clothes and requiring them never to part with them. Louis received Camée Castor; Charles received Camée Pollux. The boys escaped separately, and after their mother was guillotined, Louis fled to England and eventually made his way to America, while Charles reached the émigrés in Germany. This division attaches the paired objects to the brothers’ opposing lines of descent, even as the brothers’ own history is marked by hatred and separation.

Much later, Charles de Castelmont treated the Pollux cameo as the proof that could support his claim to the other stone. He believed Pollux had never left his family’s vault and sent its photograph to New York as evidence when claiming the cameo recovered there. The evidence of the photograph mattered to him because the paired image could make his claim appear authoritative. But a family-held twin could establish resemblance and a connection to the pair without proving that the recovered stone was genuine or establishing exactly how it had travelled.

That distinction becomes important when the claims surrounding the New York recovery unravel. Charles examines photographs of the cameo sent to the D’Anjous and recognizes the same recent imitation of an old scratch as on the stone he had received. He concludes that New York sent two counterfeit versions of Camée Castor to the rival claimants. The episode does not establish that Camée Pollux itself was counterfeit; instead, it leaves the relationship between the family-held stone, the Founder’s cameo, and the returned objects unresolved. The twin’s evidentiary force is therefore double-edged: it helps identify the missing counterpart, but it cannot settle authenticity on its own.

Reunion and Disappearance

At the celebration Charles de Castelmont held at Barzac, the two cameos were presented together under spotlights in an armored display case. The festivities included a sound-and-light show about the château and estate, a string orchestra and jazz group, and guests moving through a carefully staged spectacle. The setting cast the stones as recovered treasures and as a public confirmation of Charles’s success. Yet the display’s security could not protect the estate: a powerful explosion and fire destroyed the château before the night was over.

The disaster left the paired stones’ fate uncertain. Like the collapse at the World Trade Center, the destruction at Barzac made it impossible to know whether the cameos remained intact beneath the rubble or had been crushed or destroyed. Loïc speculates that the stones’ reunion may have released a destructive force, imagining their accumulated violence as energy stored like that in batteries and returned with overwhelming force. This is his interpretation, not a proven explanation of the fire. The possibility that the cameo might survive even this catastrophe remains open: Loïc recalls that a stone seemingly able to emerge intact from the collapse of the towers might rise again from the ashes. Camée Pollux thus ends not as a securely recovered heirloom, but as one half of a pair whose reunion intensifies the mystery of what the stones are and what their history can prove.