As for the second method, the alteration of the form and subject of a _plaquette_, the fancy displayed by the makers borders upon the grotesque. To begin with a mild form of metamorphosis, let us follow the subject of Apollo and Marsyas in its transformation from the original cameo that was in the collection of Lorenzo il Magnifico and, according to Muntz, is now in the Naples Museum, together with many others from the same collection. In this cameo the god is on the right, playing the lyre held in his left hand, Marsyas to the left has his hands tied behind him, between the two figures kneels Olympus (a pupil of Marsyas) interceding for his doomed master. The supposed original in the Naples Museum bears but one inscription, “LAVR MED.,” evidently standing for Lorenzo Medici, but Ghiberti tells us that on this cornelian “around the said figures were _antique_ letters spelling the name of Nero.” There is nothing strange in this, nor in the presupposition that the cameo had been Nero’s private seal, as one knows he was fond of playing the lyre, but what casts some doubt on the authenticity of the Naples cornelian stone is the fact that the Berlin Museum possesses a bronze _plaquette_, evidently a reproduction from some antique cameo, with the inscription to which Ghiberti alludes, “NERO-AVGVSTVS-GERMANICVS-P-M-TR-P-IMP-PP-.” The cornelian stone kept in the Naples Museum has no inscription and for this reason is supposed by some to be a reproduction from the original ordered by Lorenzo Medici. The _plaquette_ of the Berlin collection is thought to be cast from the original Greek cornelian stone, though there are other reproductions in various museums, one for instance in the Louvre very similar to the one of Berlin, another in the collection of Courajod, with the inscription, “PRUDENTIA. PURITAS. TERTIOM. QVOD. IGNORO.” Mr. Courajod also owned two more copies of this subject, one similar to the one of the Louvre with the addition of a border, the other of larger dimensions with the figure resting on a ground in the form of a crescent. A bas-relief of this subject, used as an ornament of the pommel of a sword hilt and very similar to the other _plaquettes_ was in the Davillier collection. N. Schlifer and Giovanni Boldu (1457) treated the favourite subject with a certain plagiarism of the Greek model. In Boldu’s bas-relief Apollo is in the usual attitude, but the other figure has disappeared. There are many other _plaquettes_, with small variations, in private collections. There is also a _plaquette_ of this subject in the Dreyfus collection, in which Apollo has become a woman and Marsyas is playing the flute.