EPHEMERA : RECENT MUSINGS ABOUT CLASSICAL ART AND RELEVANT TOPICS
One of my favorite academic titles of all time has long been Elizabeth Bartman’s ‘Hair and the Artifice of Roman Female Adornment’, referring to the ornate and often implausible hairstyles that women adopted when wishing to associate themselves with the ruling family. And for the past year or so I’ve been intrigued, fascinated and repulsed
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Yet another outrageous thing to find at the bottom of your wine cup! And not the worse place for an aging silenos at the end of his career… It’s a gorgeous but small medallion (silver, chased and gilt) that would have sat in the bottom of a drinking cup and rather small at 8.5 cm
I find greaves to be the least appreciated bits of ancient armour by us moderns. And sure, these shinguards were not necessarily the sexiest aspects of a warrior’s apparel, nor the most prominent (what can be more prominent than a big shiny be-plumed thing worn on the head, for instance?!). These are especially excellent examples,
‘Dread-yelping’ has to be my favorite ancient epithet (or translation of one). That’s how Homer describes Skylla, one of the nasties that heroic Odysseus encountered on his circuitous journey home from Troy. She lurked in a cave along the Straits of Messina (still a treacherous seeming waterway between Sicily and the mainland), tempting sailors with
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These feet are from Delphi, where they were found (along with other chryselephantine elements) in a pit beneath the sanctuary’s Sacred Way. Evidently they had been damaged by fire and, like the material from the Athenian Acropolis ritually collected and deposited after the Persian destruction, were intentionally (respectfully) taken out of commission. The jumble of
Small but astonishingly well crafted (note the silver eyes), emaciated yet powerfully expressive, this bronze statuette (H. 11.5 cm) remains quite a puzzle. This is no Alexandrine beggar. His neat cap of hair, thick mantle, relatively ornate stool (the sitting surface is latticed….hard to see here) indicate a young man of some social standing. Far
There’s a lot to commend this red-figure cup in Basel. It has all the high points of the early fifth century: finely variegated Athenian clay potted to perfection and fired into that signature orange and glossy black glaze. And the draughtsmanship is top notch. But in passing glance, the subject is not terribly exciting: flute
Big pyramidal hat, slim fit parachute pants (there must be a better term for these?), flowy cape, and bitchin’ wedge sandals: it’s not every day you see a chubby little 5 year old in such a get up! This bronze is a strange one and not so large (63 cm tall) and not to be
This is one of my favorite heads, although it is not terribly well known. She hails from Aphrodisias, a Roman city some 200 km from Izmir and a (somewhat unlikely) treasure trove of sculpture – wonderfully baroque in flavour and spanning over 400 years of local innovation. With glimmers of original polish and polychromy surviving
With that astonishing frank expression and unrelentingly frontal gaze, framed by those shocks of hair, there’s a lot to love about this Latin beauty. She likely hails from Lavinium (some 20 miles from Rome) and the 4th century B.C. Preserved to 74.8 cm, she would have been very nearly life-sized and is thought to have
With enormous Odyssean statue groups the grotto at Sperlonga is a treasure trove of splashy (pun intended) imperial sculpture commissioned by those with a penchant for Hellenistic flair. This beauty can get lost in the shuffle: she is Andromeda, the Aethiopian princess chained to a rocky promontory as a human sacrifice by her parents to
Everything is wrong with this picture! Rather than a draped symposiast, a nude woman reclines (spayed rather unbecomingly) on a striped pillow, her uplifted index finger hooked into the handle of an enormous skyphos (quite a different type of drinking cup than the shallow kylix this image decorates). She is apparently attempting ‘kottabos’, one of
Resplendent in gilded silver, Zeus at his regal best here. The appliqué is from a tomb in Pydna (Northern Greece, ancient Macedonia) and is thought to have once adorned a very fancy late 4th century B.C. larnax, a type of small coffin for cremation burials. Zeus exhibits a sort of regal languor. His thick cloak
This little ivory appliqué is a standout in the way the carver has absolutely reveled in the amount of patterns he could fit onto its small surface. The subject is, of course, a warrior whose rather haughty face (prissy pout, supercilious brow, aquiline nose, etc.) is surrounded by that glorious and quintessentially Mycenaean helmet. These
When thinking of high points of architectural decoration in terracotta, my mind usually veers West to Sicily and Southern Italy. Big mistake, bozo! Consider this spectacular wing hailing from Delphi… In keeping with the logical tradition of having flying divinities and creatures alighting on the roofs of sacred buildings, the wing belongs to an acroterion
Party tricks and drinking games on drinking cups continue to amuse and delight me as they surely did an ancient audience. This gentleman is deep into an evening of carousing as he shows off to his companions, balancing on his left hand and right foot while bringing his left leg up and over and managing
A fine bit of photographical trickery perhaps (what is amber without some illumination?), but I find this pendant absolutely bewitching. It is Etruscan, large of kind (7 cm long), and quite early (mid 6th century B.C.) with the boar’s musculature lightly incised, with a curlicue forming his unlikely shoulder and bicep and the porcine hoof
There were a lot of colorful characters in the heady days of the Roman Republic, when military might was beginning to be vigorously flexed during excursions into the fading Hellenistic domains to the East. Titus Quinctius Flamininus was somewhat of a wunderkind – a precociously talented military strategist and diplomat of sorts who set his
The portraiture of Caracalla is some of the most striking to have survived from Imperial Rome. At its metropolitan best, the emperor’s portraiture features a dynamic turn of the head, a not unbecoming glower (with furrows upon his brow forming a sort of X at the center) and tightly cropped military haircut and stubble. It’s
While not ancient art, this favorite by Goya so perfectly illustrates the myth of Kronos eating his sons I really just couldn’t resist. This primordial myth is a weird one, but somehow still strikes a chord (or so a dear friend with teenage sons tells me…). Kronos, leader of the Titans, came to fear being
A lot has been written about this little (under half life-sized) lady from Pompeii, in terms of how Roman consumers digested Greek sculptural types and harnessed them into interior decor during the waning years of the Republic and early decades of the Empire. But mostly she has attracted attention because of her extraordinary golden ‘bikini’,
This unusual little aryballos (a vase for scented oil) was deposited near the temple of Apollo at Corinth in the early 6th century B.C. The inscription running jaggedly around its body reads ‘Pyrvias leading the dance / to him an olpa’, which is usually interpreted as referencing (and illustrating) competitive dance that might have taken
I’m frequently guilty of leaving off the dimensions of artworks posted here, and in this infernal grid it can be tricky to get a sense of scale. And I would argue never more tricky than for little treasures like this one in Basel. Head turned sharply, with tousled hair about her head, breathless parted lips,
Perhaps you’re familiar with the ‘Artemesion Zeus/Poseidon’ – a highlight among many at the Athens’ National Archaeological Museum and a masterpiece of Early Classical bronze casting. Nude, powerful, lifesized and bearded he tends to inspire some debate thanks to his missing attributes. Did his trident go astray (in which case he’s Poseidon) or was it
File away the interior of this famous silver cup under ‘cool things to find at the bottom of your wineglass’…because while it is a masterpiece of late Hellenistic silver work, 1st century aegyptomania and perhaps even dynastic propaganda, at its core (if you allow me to be even more banal than usual) it is very
nless you’re a devout Sicily enthusiast you might not know this statue from Megara Hyblaea, which was one of the earliest of the Greek colonies founded on that island (ca. 728 B.C.) and today far less visited than nearby Syracuse or its daughter colony, Selinunte, owing to ancient city’s catastrophic state of preservation (…no pretty
Faience is a lovely thing – a type of non-clay ceramic composed mostly of silica, it could be fired with this appealing turquoise glaze and was a specialty of Egyptian artisans used widely for thousands of years there. This vase is Greek in shape (it’s an oinochoe, the spout of which is missing) and of
Pulled some 120 years ago from the treacherous maritime straits near the island of Antikythera, this shaggy fellow is one of the finest Hellenistic bronzes to survive. With that engulfing moustache and beard, tousled coiffure, and penetrating gaze (hard to resist a good pair of inlaid eyes), it’s an extraordinarily powerful sculpture. Generally accepted as
Hailing from the wilds of 8th century Boeotia, meet my new favorite centaur, with all of the confused mingling of equine and human body parts one would hope for. Shown is just a section of the shoulder of the big Theban amphora it decorated. I like in particular how experimental the earlier artists were in
Theseus, Athens’ favorite son, had his nastier moments and this fresco from Pompeii shows him in the midst of his least noble exploit…. His adolescence was a glorious whirlwind: after a triumphant return to Athens (his birthright), the prodigal son volunteered himself on a suicide mission to Crete to face down the Minotaur who had
In terms of fantastical hybrid beasts, griffins are an intriguing breed. Half lion, half raptor, winged, there are so many body parts for ancient artists to elaborate upon, and any ideas about those blossom-like knobs ever-present on their foreheads? And this is a most remarkable 7th century example from Olympia – the very best century
This mosaic is all about luck and covering one’s bases, and if you allow yourself a little unscholarly, unprovable cross-millennia Mediterranean flights of fancy perhaps some fun superstitious syncretism. It’s a biggish pavement, from a domestic context – the vestibule of a house to be precise – in ancient Antioch (ancient Syria, present-day Turkey) and
Well I’ve been nose to the grindstone working on a deadline, and not coming up for air much to post – one must wait for inspiration to strike, after all. Well, when poring through the supremely useful “Last Statues of Antiquity” database out of Oxford (Bert Smith’s brainchild…alas, I don’t own the most excellent book
This fleshy fellow is Ptolemy III Euergetes (pharaoh of Egypt from 246-222) and the portrait on this massive coin (an octadrachm) sees him positively bristling with royal and divine attributes. The radiate crown evokes Helios, and the scaly aegis recalls Zeus, Athena and the divinized Alexander. The trident slung over his shoulder is a clear
This is quite a face, colossal in scale (clocking in at 64 cm) and unusual in many aspects. Based on comparison with coin portraits, it likely depicts Ptolemy IX (reigning late 2nd – 1st century B.C.). For these later Ptolemies, the weird bulging eyed hypothyroidic-‘second sight’ look and fleshiness has given way to heavy-browed brooding
Packed within a coughdrop sized carnelian oval is all of the heartbreak of Troy’s last day. Things have officially gone bad here for Cassandra, Priam’s daughter and priestess of Apollo, gifted with second sight but doomed to have her prophecies dismissed and ignored: a Trojan princess abused by marauding Greek warriors, taken as concubine by
Couldn’t tear myself away from watching the macabre spectacle in the frigid swamp of D.C. just now, which made me think this was a sort of appropriately depressing artwork for the day. It’s a white ground lekythos, one of the specialized vases with almost exclusively funerary overtones and typically matching imagery. This scene is hard
For all the rich hues glass could take in Antiquity, sometimes the colorless, translucent variety is the most impressive. This astonishing amphora from the 2nd century B.C. Is perhaps the most impressive of all. It’s a whopper at well over half a meter tall, and its size and lack of color were innovative flexes making
Beautiful and terrible, this fragment is a standout in every way. It is the preserved part of a large cup’s interior, and the dramatic arc of the woman’s shoulders would have followed the contours of circular tondo. She is a wonder, with the fine pleats of her chiton simultaneously swinging independent of her body while
When faced with iconographical remnants divorced from any context that could give a hint at original narrative meaning, classicists face a conundrum: to play the ‘fit that myth’ game, or accept our frustratingly fragmentary understanding of the ancient world. Case in point: this weird ivory plaque (13.6 cm tall) dating to the late 7th century
Chances are you’ve seen this brooding fellow before – he’s the ‘Blonde Boy’ from the Athenian Akropolis, with the nickname stemming from an ephemeral yellow pigment in his hair when he was excavated in late 19th century. The head had been buried in one of the pits of sculptural debris (Perserschutt!) left over from the
Kylikes – those broad, shallow, stemmed drinking cups – were a great boon for vase painters, in that the broad expanse of their exterior walls provided a convenient canvas for complicated narrative scenes. Inside, however, with its limited flat space at the center of those concave walls, the tondo presented a dastardly little challenge. And
This fragment (the interior of a mighty drinking cup attributed to Douris) has it all, but you have to peer at it closely… Front and center is a fierce warrior, striking in the way his face is drawn in three-quarters, framed by an ornate Chalcidian helmet (a thing of beauty: gleaming nose-piece, scaled culotte, checkered
Well it’s a day of feasting and overindulging in the US, as my compatriots celebrate ‘Thanksgiving’. Which brings to mind a different sort of party atmosphere during the ‘lagynophoria’ of Alexandria, and a closer look at one of its most famous celebrants…This is the Drunken Old Woman (‘Die trunkene Alte’) now in Munich – a
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
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
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