The art of engraving gemstones can be traced back to ancient Greece in the 8th century BC and earlier. Techniques passed down to the Egyptians and then to the Romans. There were major revivals of interest in engraved gems in Europe during the Byantine era, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and again in the 18th and 19th centuries. At each stage cameos and intaglios, these skillful carvings on a minute scale, were much prized and collected, sometimes as symbols of power mounted in jewelled settings, sometimes as small objects for private devotion or enjoyment.

This gem is in the neo-classical style popular in the late 1700s and early 1800s, when taste in the arts echoed the subject matter and style of the Greek and Roman masters. Thousands of gems were made in this style in Italy and brought back by British Grand Tourists, who went there to visit the newly-discovered classical antiquities and archaeological sites. The figure represented in the carved sardonyx intaglio is that of Paris, one of the protagonists of the Trojan War, whose kidnap of the beautiful Helen was the starting point of Homer's Iliad. The sculptor Antonio Canova (1757-1822) carved a bust of Paris wearing a bonnet similar to the one in this ring and in a similar pose. The sardonyx intaglio has been attibuted to the gem carver Luigi Pichler (1773-1854).

The ring was part of the collection of Edmund Waterton. Waterton spent a considerable amount of time living in Rome and may have acquired this ring there.