Cartouche-shaped, gold and lapis lazuli snuff box with tapering sides and oval agate base. The lid is formed from alternate panels of lapis and gold, chased with scrolls, fruit, flowers, birds, cornucopia and animals. The hinged lid is inset with an onyx cameo depicting the Birth of Venus. In the centre, the goddess stands on a dolphin and holds a length of billowing drapery. She is flanked by two putti riding a hippocamp and a dolphin, and an ark-like ship sails on the horizon.

Although it is not known where the snuffbox was made or by whom, boxes incorporating semi-precious hard stones within gold mounts are usually associated with German makers in the eighteenth century, in particular the lapidaries and goldsmiths of Dresden.

Such snuffboxes often incorporated earlier ‘precious’ elements such as cameos, intaglios, enamels and ivories and this cameo is a late sixteenth-century, North Italian cameo with a subject popular during the Renaissance.