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
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
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
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’,
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
Although the subject is tried and true (boy meets girl, war-torn romance, the allure of the Amazons, yada yada yada) this relief is groundbreaking in all the best ways. The metope was one of a dozen relief panels (one of four that survive) that once wrapped around the Temple of Hera (Temple E) at Selinunte
With that troubled brow, sharp cat-like cheekbones, and slightly downturned eyes, this soulful portrait is most beguiling and attractive. It was excavated in 1861 near the Temple of Apollo in Cyrene (modern Libya), but most essential facts about his identity and dating continue to elude scholars. The casting, coldwork (check out those wispy chin hairs)
You might not have seen these before and if so might be at a loss about what exactly you’re looking at….I am to some extent, and would be out to sea without some good old archaeological context. Twenty-six life-sized smashed clay heads were found in an early 5th century B.C. tomb within the monumental necropolis
This is my favourite relief from the great monument built for the satrap Mausolos by his Greek-steeped, grief-stricken sister-wife Artemisia on his death at Halikarnassos (Bodrum for you modern hedonists). The monument was gigantic and a sensation, making most ancient ‘Seven Wonders of the World’ list, roughly rectangular in shape, with an imposing podium with
This fragmentary lady was unearthed near the citadel of Mycenae in the late 19th century (not by Schliemann, poor guy) and, although she is widely represented in art history textbooks, remains something of an an enigma, sometimes colloquially referred to as the ‘Woman in the Window’. Her fame is rightly deserved, with that stepped, wig-like
Plaited, twined, and knotted to pool over her brow, this young woman’s hairstyle is one of the most elaborate of the increasingly far-fetched hairy confections of the Roman Empire. Her identity is not known and that prim expression gives little away, but the quality of the carving sees to indicate she was from an aristocratic
This portrait came as something as a shock to me – I’m used to seeing shined up Severan portraits with stylised somnolent eyes, alarming hairdos, and an all together more graphic, surface-oriented approach to the carving (if that convoluted thought makes any kind of sense). Here, the heavy-lidded third century aspect is there, not exaggerated
This ivory statuette is both far out of my comfort zone (Classical art) and very much part of the Mediterranean story. She is a Buddhist yakshini (previously erroneously identified as Lakshmi), measuring just under twenty-five centimeters, certainly Indian in origin but found in Pompeii, evidently reaching that fabled city before its destruction in 79 A.D.
Livia is one of those characters I just can’t bring myself to like for reasons difficult to pin down, perhaps owing to her portrayal as meddlesome kingmaker in ancient literature and modern television series, and partly because of a personal aversion to the hairstyle she popularised (the odious ‘nodus’). But those are my issues (mea
The sheer bounty of material from ancient Olympia can be a little overwhelming – after all, for over five centuries it was arguably the most important sanctuary in the Greek world and this the site of its most conspicuous and competitive dedications. So it would be easy to overlook this terracotta group. And that would
A penchant for voyeurism flourished in the artistic climate of the Hellenistic period, and not surprisingly Aphrodite was front and center. (In mythological terms, the idea had been around for far longer: think Akteon and Artemis, Peleus and Thetis, Gyges and Nyssia, satyrs and maenads, etc.) The real innovation in the 4th century B.C. was
This little marble fellow in Athens is pretty special. He hails from Amorgos in the Cyclades, where during the third millennium B.C. figurines developed slightly differently to their brethren on other islands. He belongs to the so-called ‘Plastiras’ type – an early (and potentially short-lived) experimentation into rendering the human form, and one that veered
With that designer scruff of a beard and magnificent hat, there’s a lot to love about this portrait, but there is much more at play here than a manly fashion statement… Because that’s no ordinary hat: it is a kausia (the special northern cousin of the petasos, the Greek traveler’s hat) nestled on his head
I’ve been thinking about tritons lately, those marine hybrid creatures that so delightfully combine manly torsos with elaborate fishy tails. The essential flexibility of these imaginary bodies is their best selling point and their popularity flourished in the late Hellenistic period – bounded not by corporeal limits, only artistic flair. Their dramatic inclusion in sculptural