Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
This handle fragment originally belonged to a large and elaborately decorated bronze hydria; only a wide-eyed female head placed atop a horned gorgon is preserved. The handle is broken off horizontally just above the female head. The back of the attachment is concave, and the base of the handle is recessed.
The woman’s face is oval, dominated by large eyes framed by curving eyelids and larger eyebrows. Her small nose sits high between the eyes. Her mouth curves downward farther at the proper right side than the proper left. Three curving waves of hair, arranged symmetrically on her forehead, project in relief from beneath her hair band. At the base of her neck, the upper hem of a garment is incised with tiny vertical grooves.
The massive squarish Gorgon face has huge oval eyes, framed by relief eyelids and larger ridge-like eyebrows. A triangular nose with parallel, incised wrinkles extends upward to the bridge of the nose. The grinning mouth displays well-modeled teeth, a protruding tongue, and overlapping pairs of canines. Above each ear, a stumpy horn projects diagonally outward on either side of a row of spirals representing hair or a snake. A large relief spiral or volute, the upper end of which is smooth, projects on the proper left side of the gorgoneion. There is no corresponding spiral on the proper right side. A close parallel is the female head at the base of the vertical handle of a fragmentary bronze hydria in Mainz, identified by its inscription as a dedication by Telesstas (1). A closely similar vertical handle with a kore protome is in Olympia (2). The gorgoneion belongs to a group of horned Gorgons (3), but the juxtaposition of a female bust and a gorgoneion is unique. The curling spiral at one side suggests that the handle was originally intended to be cast with two reclining animals, perhaps rams, projecting outward to serve as side brackets with which to secure the handle to the vessel, in a fashion similar to an intact hydria handle at Harvard (4). The unfinished state of the outer side of the handle and the break at the top suggest that the casting of this handle was unsuccessful.
The attribution of this remarkable fragment to a Lakonian workshop seems certain. Its date was originally placed around 550 BCE, despite the almost “Daedalic”-looking curls of the woman’s head. However, C. Stibbe has recently pushed its date back to the first quarter of the sixth century BCE.
NOTES:
1. W. Gauer, Die Bronzegefässe von Olympia: Mit Ausnahme der geometrischen Dreifüsse und der Kessel des orientalisierenden Stils, Olympische Forschungen 20 (Berlin, 1991) 99-103; C. M. Stibbe, The Sons of Hephaistos: Aspects of the Archaic Greek Bronze Industry (Rome, 2000) 76 nn. 83-86; id., “Archaic Bronze Hydriai,” Bulletin antieke beschaving: Annual Papers on Classical Archaeology 67 (1992): 1-62, esp. 12-15, figs. 17-18; id., “The Goddess at the Handle: A Survey of Laconian Bronze Hydriae,” Bulletin antieke beschaving. Annual Papers on Classical Archaeology 79 (2004): 1-40; and G. Hafner, “Die Hydria des Telestas,” in Charites: Studien zur Altertumswissenshaft, ed. K. Schauenburg (Bonn, 1957) 119-26, esp. 120-26, pl. 17.1.
2. Gauer 1991 (supra 1) 258, no. HY12, pl. 86.1 (inv. no. B175).
3. Identified as Lakonian; see T. G. Karagiorga, “Λακoνικά γoργóνεια” [Lakonika Gorgoneia], Aρχαιoλoγικóν Δελτίoν = Archaiologikon Deltion 19 (1964): 116-22 [in Greek]. For additional examples, see Stibbe 2000 (supra 1) 72-76, with comparanda in bronze and ceramic; and C. Rolley, ed., La tombe princière de Vix (Paris, 2003) 1: 134 and 136, fig. 92.1.
4. See 1987.131; D. G. Mitten and S. F. Doeringer, Master Bronzes from the Classical World, exh. cat., The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; City Art Museum of St. Louis; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Mainz, 1967) 75, no. 70.
David G. Mitten
