Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
10 Etruscan
Sphinx from a Tomb
The center of the body, from next to the start of the major part of the wing, is restored. The surfaces are chipped and pitted, and there are other damages, such as to the nose, which are visible in photographs. Almost all of the legs, save the start of the forelegs, are missing, as is the base that supported the paws.
The sphinx's head is turned at right angles to her body. Her hair is parted in the center, and four heavy tresses fall onto her neck and right side from behind her ears. Strong, round fillet moldings delineate the divisions of head and neck, body, and the conventional curving East Greek wings.
This statue represents the elegance of high Ionian sculpture translated into an Etruscan material and Etruscan forms of expression. Like all of these monumental sculptures from Archaic Etruscan tombs, this sphinx was carved to be viewed from the direction to which the head is turned and to which the body runs at right angles. The other side (left and back of the head) was finished with much less detail, suggesting that such statues were set in pairs along the dromos or over the lintel of a tomb.
While the Etruscan lions and sphinxes with heads facing ahead are free-standing entities, probably set facing each other at the entrances to the tombs, the start of the dromoi, leopards, panthers, hippocamps, and certain other real or mythological creatures share the qualities of paired mirror reversals seen in the sphinxes with heads to right or left. Size determines which surviving sphinx might have been the pendant to the Kelekian-Robinson-Phinney-Fogg statue. One possibility in scale and style is the fragmentary sphinx exhibited on several occasions in the possession of Munzen and Medaillen A. G., Basel, and Andre Emmerich Gallery, Inc., 1970, no. 35; Andre Emmerich Gallery, Inc., 1975, no. 37).
Among the comparable Etruscan nenfro sculptures in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the two sphinxes had their faces straight ahead, while the three leopards with head turned right (one) and left (two) were clearly designed to be set on lintels or within the confines of pediments.
Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer
