Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
This large polycandelon consists of a bronze ring with twenty-one round openings. Three loops, evenly distributed around the ring, would have originally been attached to suspension chains. The center of the polycandelon is decorated with a cross, which has five additional smaller openings, one in the center and one in each arm (1). Beeswax residue found on the surface during conservation confirms that candles were employed to light this device. But the openings may also at one time have held lamps. Glass or bronze beakers with thin stems could have been used with this polycandelon (2). A simple florette decorates the center of the cross. Corrosion patterns indicate that this piece was stacked with other, similar objects, perhaps in the storage room of a church or large household. An identical polycandelon in the Louvre, Paris, is said to be from Egypt (3), suggesting a possible provenience for this object.
Polycandela are lighting devices, usually made of metal, that hold multiple lamps or candles in order to illuminate spaces brightly (4). Until the eighth century CE, polycandela were widely used as household furnishings (5). The Christian iconography incorporated in the design of the two Harvard examples does not preclude their use in a home, but it certainly does make them appropriate implements for a church, where they could have served as votive offerings. Byzantine churches often displayed lavish illumination schemes (6). As purveyors of light in holy spaces, polycandela facilitated a relationship between functional and spiritual illumination, a connection expressed through their incorporation of sacred symbols (7).
NOTES:
1. Compare D. Bénazeth, L’art du métal au début de l’ère chrétienne (Paris, 1992) 166; and M. Xanthopoulou, Les lampes en bronze à l’époque paléochrétienne, Bibliothèque de l’Antiquité tardive 16 (Turnhout, 2010) no. LU 2.026, pl. 241.
2. Bénazeth 1992 (supra 1) 170-71; and L. Bouras and M. G. Parani, Lighting in Early Byzantium (Washington, DC, 2008) 13, fig. 15, and 100-101, no. 33.
3. Xanthopoulou 2010 (supra 1) no. LU 2.026, pl. 241.
4. Bouras and Parani 2008 (supra 2) 12-14.
5. E. D. Maguire, H. P. Maguire, and M. J. Duncan-Flowers, Art and Holy Powers in the Early Christian House, exh. cat., Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, University of Michigan (Urbana, 1989) 57; and D. M. Bailey, A Catalogue of Lamps in the British Museum 4: Lamps of Metal and Stone, and Lampstands (London, 1996) 107-108.
6. Such as that of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople; see Bouras and Parani 2008 (supra 2) 31-36.
7. G. Galavaris, “Some Aspects of Symbolic Use of Lights in the Eastern Church: Candles, Lamps, and Ostrich Eggs,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 4.1 (1978): 69-78, esp. 73-74.
Helle Sachse
