Harvard Art Museums > 1975.78: Fragment of architectural plaque: horses (from frieze depicting chariot race) Sculpture Collections Search Exit Deep Zoom Mode Zoom Out Zoom In Reset Zoom Full Screen Add to Collection Order Image Copy Link Copy Citation Citation"Fragment of architectural plaque: horses (from frieze depicting chariot race) , 1975.78,” Harvard Art Museums collections online, May 03, 2024, https://hvrd.art/o/288151. Reuse via IIIF Toggle Deep Zoom Mode Download This object does not yet have a description. Identification and Creation Object Number 1975.78 Title Fragment of architectural plaque: horses (from frieze depicting chariot race) Other Titles Title: Fragmentary Relief with a Horse Classification Sculpture Work Type sculpture Date c. 520 BCE Places Creation Place: Ancient & Byzantine World, Europe, Rome (Latium) Find Spot: Europe, Italy, Lazio Period Archaic period Culture Italic Persistent Link https://hvrd.art/o/288151 Physical Descriptions Medium Terracotta Technique Mold-made Dimensions H. 16.7 × W. 12 × D. 3.5 cm (6 9/16 × 4 3/4 × 1 3/8 in.) Provenance Recorded Ownership History Caprifico di Torrecchia, near Cisterna di Latina, Italy. Norbert Schimmel (by 1975), gift; to the Harvard Art Museums. Acquisition and Rights Credit Line Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of Norbert Schimmel Accession Year 1975 Object Number 1975.78 Division Asian and Mediterranean Art Contact am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu Permissions The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request. Descriptions Description Fragment of a molded terracotta plaque, broken on all sides. Flat on the back. A great deal of brown dirt or accretion in the crevices. Two overlapping horses, facing right. The frontmost horse has a hogged mane; its right ear is upright. The break cuts across its apparently open mouth. A bridle is faintly discernable; more visible is a harness across the horse’s neck, reins (taking the form of four ridges) that stretch to the left; and a rope harness (as a thin rounded ridge) that hangs from the harness on the horse’s back down to behind the forelegs; a loop hangs about one-third of the way down. Below the horse’s belly is a shape truncated by the break. Comparison with the fuller scene indicates that this is the ears and upper part of the head of a dog. A tapering horizontal element intersects the horse’s chest: comparison to fuller scenes from this mold suggest that this is the tail of a horse further to the right in the scene. The second, further-away horse is discernible from its eye (above and to the right of the frontmost horse) and its chest (to the right of that of the frontmost horse), from which its legs spring to the right but are truncated by the break. Above, a horizontal band (square in section) with a thin, rounded vertical ridge projecting upwards. Commentary This fragment comes from a terracotta frieze used to decorate a temple roof (dating to around 520 BCE) in Latium, an ancient region in central Italy, at a site now called Caprifico di Torrecchia, near Cisterna di Latina, Italy. Some scholars have identified this site with the ancient city of Pometia, but this identification remains unconfirmed. The whole scene, which was repeated to line roofing elements, showed two chariots racing to the right: leftmost was a single charioteer driving a biga, a two-horse chariot, with a dog running underneath the horses; rightmost was a single charioteer driving a triga, a three-horse chariot, with a hare running underneath the horses. This fragment shows a portion of the horses pulling the biga. The bar above the horse is the lower border of a pattern of concave tongues. It was made with what Patricia S. Lulof has described as “Mould 1” and “Mould 5a” in her reconstruction of the terracotta roofing elements.[1] This fragment was once part of a raking sima, the decorative edge of the gutter lining the slope of the roof. Architectural terracottas made with the same molds were also used for several temple roofs in the city of Rome; these are called the “Rome-Caprifico decorative system” for roofs. They were likely products of a workshop (or related workshops) that also made terracotta roofing elements for temples that have been found at Rome, Velletri, and Veii. The Caprifico temple belongs to an uptick in public (including temple) building in central Italy (Latium and Etruria) in the final thirty years of the 6th century BCE and the first decades of the 5th century BCE. Some scholars have sought to connect this flurry of building and the iconography of the roof decorations to the expansionary activities of the last king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus (traditional dates of reign: 534-509 BCE). According to Lulof’s reconstruction of the Caprifico roof’s elements, the pediment’s slopes were decorated with raking simas and revetment plaques, while the eaves were decorated with lateral simas, spouts, and antefixes, under which were additional revetment plaques. Four frieze scenes (mold 1: chariot race to the right; mold 2: riders to the left; mold 3: procession to the right; mold 4: procession to the left) used for the raking simas and accompanying revetment plaques; rows of concave tongues (molds 5a and 5b) were also used for raking simas, lateral simas (along the eaves), and revetment plaques; a frieze of a cross meander with stars and birds (mold 6) was used for revetment plaques; and lion-headed spouts (mold 7) and female-headed (mold 8) antefixes were used for the lateral simas. [1] Patricia S. Lulof. 2010. "Manufacture and Reconstruction". In Il tempio arcaico di Caprifico di Torrecchia (Cisterna di Latina): i materiali e il contesto, edited by D. Palombi, 79-111. Roma: Quasar. P. 82, 90. For a full account of the temple roof (including a catalog of known fragments), see especially the edited volume Domenico Palombi, ed. 2010. Il tempio arcaico di Caprifico di Torrecchia (Cisterna di Latina): i materiali e il contesto. Roma: Quasar. Publication History "Four New Objects for Ancient Art Collection", Fogg Art Museum Newsletter (Spring 1976), p. 5, 7. Patricia S. Lulof, Marielle de Reuver, and Loes Opgenhaffen, The Architectural Terracottas from Caprifico, Il tempio arcaico di Caprifico di Torrecchia (Cisterna di Latina): i materiali e il contesto, ed. Domenico Palombi, Quasar (Rome, 2010), 25-78, Possibly: p. 47, Appendix no. 3 Related Works 1976.6 Fragment of architectural frieze plaque: armed riders (from frieze depicting procession of armed riders) Sculpture Verification Level This record was created from historic documentation and may not have been reviewed by a curator; it may be inaccurate or incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art at am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu
