Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
This thick disc is decorated with a relief showing three women standing on an uneven groundline. The central woman is nude and stands frontally, with her body in a slight S-curve, left leg forward, head turned slightly to her right, and both arms extended to rest on the shoulders of the women flanking her. The woman on the left has her back to the viewer, while the woman on the right stands in profile facing left. Both wear only bandeau bikini tops (1); they touch the central woman at her shoulders. All three women wear their hair pulled back; the flanking women may also be wearing diadems (a simple one on the left, and a more raised, stephane-type on the right). The back is flat and featureless.
While at first glance it might seem that the medallion depicts the three Graces, it is more likely that the two flanking women are attending the central woman, perhaps in the process of bathing (2).
The round, relief-decorated discs in this group (2001.179.1 through 2001.192, along with 2002.281) may not all have had the same use, and it is difficult to know what the exact function of each object was (3). Medallions of this type could have been used as matrixes to create thin, metal, particularly gold and silver, repoussé appliques as elements of decoration and jewelry, or they could have been used as decorative elements themselves (4). Some could have been decorative elements of furniture fittings (5). Others could have decorated horse harnesses or provided the matrix to create decoration for horse harnesses (6). Other potential uses are as decorative elements or models for decorative elements worn by individuals as part of jewelry or belt decorations, as seen in sculptural depictions (7). Some might have been devotional or votive objects in their own right (8).
NOTES:
1. Similar bikini-like tops are seen in paintings from Pompeii and mosaics at the Piazza Armerina, Sicily; see A. Carandini, A. Ricci, and M. de Vos, eds., Filosofiana la villa di Piazza Armerina: Immagine di un aristocratico romano al tempo di Constantino (Palermo, 1982) 154 and 156, figs. 73-75 and 77. Compare also depictions from Pompeii with women wearing similar tops and engaged in sexual intercourse; see, for example, A. Varone, Eroticism in Pompeii (Los Angeles, 2001) figs. 32, 46-47, and 84.
2. In depictions of the three Graces, the central figure usually has her back to the viewer, while the flanking figures are frontal, and all three are typically nude; see, for example, Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae Charites/Gratiae nos. 8, 54, and 75.
3. Similar medallions are known in other museum collections, including a medallion with a bust of Aphrodite in the Princeton University Art Museum, inv. no. y605, said to be from Syria; a medallion with a bust of Artemis in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. no. 74.51.5537, from Cyprus; a medallion with the bust of a woman flanked by a child in the British Museum, London, inv. no. 1975,0316.23. For bust medallions of various sizes (from 1.5 to 13 cm) and levels of relief, see E. Babelon and J.-A. Blanchet, Catalogue des bronzes antiques de la Bibliothéque Nationale (Paris, 1895) 12-13, 55, 65-66, 110, 132, 178, 193, 214, 264, 316-17, 359-60, 369, and 445; nos. 25, 28, 120, 143-44, 253, 301, 400, 434, 491, 622, 712, 715, 827, 844, and 1022.
4. See M. Y. Treister, Hammering Techniques in Greek and Roman Jewellery and Toreutics, Colloquia Pontica 8 (Leiden, 2001) esp. “The Galjûb Hoard,” 253-73, and “Bronze Matrices in the Museums of Athens and Karlsruhe,” 362-71.
5. There are many surviving examples of this type, often with an animal, often a leopard, placing one or both forepaws on top of the medallion. Compare various examples in the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, inv. nos. 31630 and Fr. 1552 g 6-8; Babelon and Blanchet 1895 (supra 3) 474, no. 1133; and in the British Museum, London, inv. nos. 1856,1226.867 and 1872,1214.1.
6. See G. Greco, Bronzi dorati da Cartoceto: Un restauro, exh. cat., Museo Archaeologico, Florence (Florence, 1987) pls. 1-3 and 10-13. The horse heads had small round medallions decorated with busts in relief on the mouth, temples, and forehead of the harnesses. See also the gilt bronze horse head in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, inv. no. 54.759, which bears two medallions with busts, similar to this group in C. C. Mattusch, ed., The Fire of Hephaistos: Large Classical Bronzes from North American Collections, exh. cat., Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University; Toledo Museum of Art; Tampa Museum of Art (Cambridge, 1996) 216-19, no. 20.
7. See the representation of an Archigallus (high priest) of Cybele, wearing a wreath decorated by circular medallions with busts in LIMC Kybele no. 130. Marcus Caelius, a member of one of the three legions destroyed in the battle of the Teutoburger Forest in 9 CE, is represented in a cenotaph wearing various military awards, including phalerae in the form of medallions with heads, including one representing a gorgoneion, on his cuirass; see G. Webster, The Roman Imperial Army of the First and Second Centuries A.D., 3rd edn. (Norman, 1998) 132, pl. 6. For examples of relief bust medallions decorating belts, see F. Safar and M. A. Mustafa, Hatra: The City of the Sun God (Baghdad, 1974) 62, 64, and 210-11, nos. 3, 5, and 198 [in Arabic].
8. For example, 2001.189 and 2002.281; compare 1993.233.
Lisa M. Anderson
