EPHEMERA : RECENT MUSINGS ABOUT CLASSICAL ART AND RELEVANT TOPICS
Inlaid glass eyes, when they survive, have a way of enlivening ancient sculpture – set into a portrait, these ones have weathered in such a way to give this man a peculiarly jaundiced aspect. Patently unfair and if you can look past the artificial intimations of cirrhosis, the portrait itself is a marvelous survival, and
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Well it’s the season of ‘la battue’ in the forests behind my house in Eastern France, with weekends full of hopeful orange roly-poly men harassing the local dwindling population of puny wild boar. And impinging upon my meditative walks. Not a fan. But I am intrigued by this late 4th century B.C. sarcophagus from the
This is one fascinating gentleman, in several respects. He is a plaster Roman overcast of one of the most famous sculptural groups from Classical Athens: the Tyrannicides. The original bronze group hailed from 477 B.C. Athens, sculpted by the greats Kritios and Nesiotes to commemorate an important (and likely fictionalized and pretty juicy) moment in
Ah, Persephone and Hades…the unhappiest of divine couples, but one of the most important. Perhaps you know the myth: Hades (god of the underworld) spied the nubile maiden frolicking in a blooming meadow with her friends, and took it upon himself to forcibly abduct her to his frigid domain. Demeter (Persephone’s goddess mother) fell into
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Nero’s portraits are awfully fun if you (like me) allow yourself to indulge in his (maybe mostly apocryphal) biography and bask in all the really nasty things that were written about him… Much of what we think we know about the emperor comes from takedowns written by viper-tongued detractors (Suetonius I’m looking at you). Nero
Ok, I’ll admit it…I have a tendency to poopoo South Italian vase painting, dismissing it as the sloppy, derivative cousin of Attic. But when it’s good it’s really good and this is an absolute treasure – the fragment of a large skyphos attributed to the Palermo Painter. Zeus is at his most regal here, seated
Naked as a jaybird apart from a choker necklace and baldric over one shoulder, this mirror handle is an utter oddity of the late 6th century B.C. – bucking the convention of demurely draped females that persisted until famous sculptural innovations two centuries later. She holds a pomegranate in one hand, but perhaps more telling
Elegant in shape and all too delicate in construction, this perfume bottle (unguentarium) shows boudoir scenes executed in cameo glass – the exceptionally fancy technique thought to date to the Augustan period. Here the festoons, bedding, and two amorous pairs of different flavours (the homoerotic one is shown here) are crisply carved into a milky
While it might not be the most thrilling fragment aesthetically (the surface is a bit worn and the painter not necessarily top tier), I love this black-figure survivor because it shows the very best of the frequently weird Greek mythological birth stories. Zeus’ extramarital proclivities are well known, and his dalliance with Metis (a nymph
Dozens of these terracotta figurines were found in 1898 during excavations of the sanctuary of Demeter in Priene, leading to consternation on the part of German archaeologists there and some fun theories as to their cultic function…. Worshipful belly dancing, anyone? This one was found in Samos (not so far away) because although fragmentary I
Although much of the face is long gone, there’s something fixating (and strikingly symmetrical) about this most troubled brow…appropriate for the Hellenistic age, when any dynast worth his salt had a serious target on his back and a lot in his mind. He’s a big boy – well larger than life-sized at over 20 centimeters
Captured in this sliver of a cup’s tondo is an athletically inclined gentleman in an ungainly squat. I say athletically not for his admirable bendiness, but because of that floppy stippled thing near his left knee. It’s certainly a sponge, one of the three basic accoutrements of post-athletic male hygiene, but shown far less than
A lot is written about the interplay between Hellenistic ruler portraits (with their over the top heroic dynamism and supple youth) and those of hollow-cheeked Roman aristocrats during the second and first centuries B.C. It’s a fun thing to think about…how to select a mode of self-representation and how to make it resonate within a
If you have been to Villa Giulia (Museo Nazionale Etrusco di Villa Giulia) in Rome, you have likely encountered this glorious, slightly under life-sized terracotta head. She hails from about an hour northwest of Rome from Pyrgi (Cerveteri’s port), and was once part of the pedimental sculpture of one of the small 4th century temples
This little Aphrodite was found as part of salvage excavations in 1960 around the ancient site of Baalbek in Lebanon. It is Roman in date (1st-2nd cent. A.D.) and very much part of the hugely popular Late Classical tradition showing the goddess emerging from the sea, wringing the water from her long tresses. And she
This is perhaps my favourite vase (largely fragmentary, only about 20% of the big krater remains) and unfortunately one I’ve never seen in person. Euphronios’ special way of rendering the body and lining up a successful composition is clear, even in this extreme close up of the ne’er-do-well Kyknos as he lies dying on the
This fellow was found in a pit, during 1958 archaeological investigations in the Sanctuary of Hera at Samos. He is fairly small (just over 14 cm tall) but the ivory is beautifully preserved in the island’s boggy soil, preserving beguiling traces that are not terribly easy to pinpoint on any one culture. The style seems
Throw a stone (metaphorically!) in the Met’s Greek and Roman galleries and you’re sure to hit an antiquity procured for the museum in the early 20th century by John Marshall. Although not terribly well known today, his impact in the antiquities market is difficult to overstate. And this photo of the man himself, at his
After the Bacchic frenzy comes the crash, apparently. The sleeping woman here is beautiful in her slumber – her face a study of strong, peaceful features (rounded chin, straight nose, and best of all those carefully outlined lips) beneath fanned out curls. Her weary head rests on a pile of fancy cushions – a sure
Europe is gripped in a late-summer heatwave, and the air is alive with the sounds of amorous insects. Which brought to mind this extraordinary gem now at the Getty, showing a grasshopper balancing on a blade of grass. The stone is a striking mottled jasper, with those golden splotches somehow evocative of sun-drenched days. The
I’ve long admired this statue – a feat of large scale lost-wax casting giving a sense of the scale possible (infinite!), but also the surface subtleties achievable. Now headless, this standing gentleman has the distinct comportment and garments of an orator or magistrate – a statue mode used in the post-Classical period for honorifics set
During the century after the death of Alexander the Great, the Seleucid dynasty dominated most of Near East from Asia Minor to Pakistan. Their royal courts also became booming artistic centers, and adept at transforming the vast wealth suddenly available to them into exceptionally fine tableware. These three cups (I’ve shown the profile of one
Two of my favorite mythological rogues come together in this biggish terracotta statuette (or at 40 centimeters, is it rather a smallish statue?) in Boston. Herakles has passed out drunk somewhere (again), and the precocious prankster Eros has taken the opportunity to play dress-up with the hero’s signature lion-skin. With one hand resting on his
The photo might be less than thrilling (vases are hard!) but this is a seriously cool little lekythos in Taranto, with the sole decoration consisting of a woman gazing out from a window, her head and face nearly completely veiled (apart from some unruly blond curls). Veiling in Classical Greece and the extent to which
I’ve been thinking a bit about two forms of Roman block buster entertainment: gladiatorial matches (munera) and chariot races (ludi circenses). Their popularity relied on suspense and the frisson of potential bodily harm – a very good time for the throngs of frenzied fans in the audience. And this is a pretty terrific object –
Victory wings in here, her peplos pressed against her body with skirts fluttering in the wind. She is only 7.3 centimeters tall, but the amount of detail rendered in that hard, shiny chalcedony is staggering – a Roman inheritance in miniature of earlier monumental Nikai in Olympia, Samothrace and beyond. Chalcedony (and other hard, shiny
This is a most extraordinary scene in hammered bronze sheet showing a warrior stepping into his chariot en route to the battlefield. He turns to gaze back at the woman and young child on her shoulders. I can’t resist (a little self-indulgent) ‘reading’ the scene as a condensed illustration Hector’s famous farewell in book 6
The propitiously preserved part of a tall, slender grave stele, this head at the Met is one of my favorites. The relief is very low, but somehow the sculptor has managed to really nail the sense of volume: the planes of the cheeks and brow, the ornate ear and that terrific hair. I’m particularly interested
Fragments of two separate cups in white-ground were found in the grand sanctuary to Demeter at Eleusis and this one is small but it’s a stunner. With that jutting beard and imperious bearing, the man painted in the interior could be any number of gods or heroes save for the scales that begin under his
Misleading photo alert! Because what I woke up thinking of left precious few archaeological traces, of which these dozens of assorted bronze figurines and remnants of vessels are tangible exceptions….And that is the monumental ash altar (active and growing for centuries) standing near the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. Olympia was a crucially important religious
Straight pins (this is an especially sumptuous Hellenistic example) were functional (primarily for securing swathes of cloth: think the feminine peplos) and frequently very beautiful. But when ogling them a few Greek vignettes highlighting their dangerous stabbing potential inevitably creep into my mind… Herodotus recounts a typical spat between city-states during which the Athenians launched
I’d wager you haven’t seen this wild-man in nature…it’s the disembodied half-life-sized (14.5 cm) head of a centaur, identifiable by his profusion of curls and two rows of visible teeth, here inlaid in silver (exposed teeth were markers of heroes, hybrid beasts, and the odd god – centaurs in particular had a penchant for biting).
This portrait at Boston’s MFA is one of the finest and most challenging I’ve come across, and I somewhat doubt that a pithy caption will do it justice… It is a most handsome face, with high cheekbones cheekbones, squared jaw, and pouty chin. The full lips are very slightly parted as if in mid-exhale, and
Some things get better with age, and if you enjoy the surface of this delectable little (3.7 x 3.3 cm) gem in Cleveland perhaps you’d agree Roman glass is one of them. Vessels and gems made in the cameo glass technique were in vogue only for about half a century beginning in Augustus’ reign. More
Odysseus was at his bravest and most wily when orchestrating his comrades’ grand escape from the cave of the dread Cyclops Polyphemus. After knocking him out with strong wine (a dirty trick) and blinding him with a heated and pointy branch, he tied the giant’s fleecy sheep together in threes with a Greek strapped to
Stark and stylized and utterly exposed, this little marble plaque is something of an oddity, but an oddity with a fun find-spot and somewhat helpful inscription. Female nether parts are shown – what’s the delicate term these days? Maybe one should stick to the Latin ‘pudenda’ (‘shameful parts’), but it seems a bit judgy. It
This portrait has all the best things: basanite (the hard dark stone is perhaps my favorite), a dab hand at defacement (of the zealous Late Antique kind), and the (fabricated?) features of the Gens Julii shining through the shined up face of its adoptive son Germanicus. Promising young Germanicus might have been Augustus’ top pick
This is not the easiest vase to photograph or glimpse in nature (it is in the Hermitage’s permanent collection), but you might have been lucky enough to see it as I did in the glorious “Worshipping Women” exhibition some 15 years ago at the Onassis Cultural Center in midtown Manhattan. At 38 cm tall it’s
Dancing with what is sometimes referred to as ‘orgiastic’ abandon (I do so love when dour early 20th century German scholars sprinkle their descriptions with such unexpected gems) this ecstatic marble maenad in Dresden (acquired by the Albertinum in 1901), has attracted a great deal of attention for centuries if not millennia. She is usually
Unusual in many respects, this bronze bust represents Ptolemy of Mauretania, last of his name and the very last Hellenistic ruler who could track his lineage back to Alexander the Great’s general. This lineage was through his maternal grandmother, Kleopatra VII of Egypt. It is tempting to read the boy’s concerned, rather pinched expression as
Flounced and tiered skirts, bare bosoms, and the wonderful Dr. Seussian botanical flourishes (lilies!) are all hallmarks of Minoan art, executed in miniature on the bezel (L. 2.25 cm) of this gold ring. The ring itself was excavated in Knossos by none other than Arthur Evans, and since then has attracted scholarly attention and admiration.
There’s not much better than High Classical relief sculpture, and this Athenian grave stele carved in the decades after the famed Parthenon frieze is second to none. Languid in her chair a young woman is gorgeously draped, with the crinkly fabric of her chiton dripping over her breasts to puddle in her lap and delicate
Plopped among the stringy necks of Republican worthies, Julio-Claudian chiseled cheekbones, and Vespasian’s cultivated crag, this portrait in Copenhagen is a big fat outlier. The fleshy marble giant is usually thought to represent Vitellius, famous for his diminutive reign and outsized appetites, with its unusual corpulence a nod to the emperor’s physical reality. If ancient
If you don’t like people and do like pots (specifically white ground lekythoi), head to the gorgeous and distressingly under-visited Kerameikos Museum. ‘Kerameikos’ refers to Athens’ potters quarter just to the northwest of the city. Refining and firing mass quantities of clay was stinky, smoky business best relegated just outside the city walls. The name
Normally indolent pranksters, ever-rascally erotes have been pressed into service here, miniature figures shown gamely toiling within a black band running around the ruby red walls of a Pompeian dining room. They work in a wine storeroom surrounded by imposing transport amphorae, sell sundries, work gold, and count the proceeds of a lively trade There’s
Is there any profile more lovely than that of Antinöos, that beautiful rustic beloved by Hadrian? I think not, and of the all the surviving portraits of him, this one in slightly translucent black chalcedony is by far my favorite. Born in Bithynia (the northern Black Sea coastline of Asia Minor), the comely youth caught
The tortured love affair between Eros and Psyche was explored with gusto in the Hellenistic world and into the Roman. Particularly popular were vignettes where Psyche was shown as a butterfly, helpless in the hands of Aphrodite’s precocious, capricious (sociopathic?) sidekick who is occasionally shown holding over a flame by the wings… This composition has
I admit to having a certain preference for the red-figure vases, with their elegant swooping lines, bodacious orange bodies, and fine drapery, and a special fondness great Athenian masters who pioneered and perfected the new technique. Shameful, I’m sure you would agree after taking a gander at this stunner! It’s from the tondo of a
Chances are you have glimpsed a ‘Fayoum portrait’ in one of the world’s great museums or reproduced online. They tend to leave an impression, so effectively capturing fleeting Roman likenesses for the ages. At the risk of being too grandiose (guilty, usually), I would venture to proclaim them one of the best remaining glimmers of
Diabolically difficult to quarry and carve and imported at great expense from Egypt’s Eastern desert, by the 2nd century A.D. porphyry was inextricably linked with imperial grandeur with that purplish color becoming synonymous with royalty. So much so that when Septimius Severus died on campaign in Britain his cremated remains were allegedly brought home in