The head of the young male is treated like the stomach of the eagle, whose legs, wings, and head extend past the boy's face. The boy is believed to be Ganymede, with the gem visually depicting the capture of Ganymede.
The content in the Cornell Collection of Antiquities: Gems Collection (in part the White Collection of Historical Medallions, #8420, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections) is believed to be in the public domain by virtue of the age of the underlying material, and is presented by Cornell University Library under the Guidelines for Using Text, Images, Audio, and Video from Cornell University Library Collections [http://hdl.handle.net/1813.001/CULCopyright]. This collection was digitized by Cornell University Library in 2013 from original materials, with funding from a Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences Grant to Caitlin Barrett and Verity Platt. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item. Please contact rareref@cornell.edu for more information about this collection, or to request permission to use these images.