or CAMAYEU, a word used to express a peculiar sort of onyx: also by some to express a stone, whereon are found various figures, and representations of landscapes, &c., formed by a kind of lusus nature, so as to exhibit pictures without painting. The word comes from camalhia, a name the Orientals give to the onyx, when they find, in preparing it, another colour; as who should say, a second stone. It is of these camaiieux Pliny is to be understood when he speaks of the manifold picture of gems, and the party-coloured spots of precious stones: Gemmarum pictura tam multiplex lapidumque tam discolores maculæ.

Camaieu is also applied by others to those precious stones, as onyxes, cornelians, and agates, whereon the lapidaries employ their art to aid nature, and perfect these representations. See CAMÆA.

Camaieu is also frequently applied to any kind of gem, whereon figures may be engraved: either indentedly or in relievo. In this sense the lapidaries of Paris are called in their statutes, cutters of camayeurs.

A society of learned men at Florence undertook to procure all the cameos or camayeurs and intaglios in the great duke's gallery to be engraven; and began to draw the heads of divers emperors in cameos.

Camaieu is also used for a painting, wherein there is only one colour; and where the lights and shadows are of gold, wrought on a golden or azure ground. When the ground is yellow, the French call it cirage; when gray, grissaille. This kind of work is chiefly used to represent basso relieves: the Greeks call pieces of this sort μεταμορφωσις.