Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
This female statuette stands with her weight on her right leg and her left leg bent. Her right arm is bent at the elbow, with her hand on her hip and her palm facing backwards. Her left arm is also bent at the elbow, but with her forearm extended outward. With her palm up and her wrist bent slightly downward, she holds an object, which is only partially preserved and appears to have been a scroll.
The figure wears a chiton that forms a V-shaped fold below the neck. She wears a belt beneath her breasts. Over the chiton is a himation that veils the head and drapes slightly over the right shoulder, before coming around the right side of the body, sweeping diagonally upwards, and finally draping over the left arm. Few details of the himation appear on the back of the statuette. The face is considerably abraded. The figure wears a headdress from which two large feathers project.
The two feathers and the scroll suggest that the figure depicts a Muse, one of the nine Greek goddesses of literary inspiration and intellectual endeavor. The feathers refer to the Muses’ victory over the Sirens—mythical sisters with the bodies of women and the wings of birds who lured sailors into shipwrecks with their beautiful voices—in a singing contest. Although the Muses were regularly shown with feather headdresses in wall painting, on sarcophagi, and in mosaic, this Muse is one of the few surviving free-standing statuettes to include this feature (1). The rigid, standing pose of the figure and its style of drapery also resemble depictions of Muses in other media (2). The precise identity of the Muse depicted here cannot be determined, because scrolls could serve as attributes of several Muses, especially Calliope and Clio, the Muses of epic poetry and history, respectively (3). The use of bronze is also noteworthy, as most preserved three-dimensional representations of Muses are marble, while terracotta and occasionally ivory are also known. The Harvard Muse is one of the few examples in bronze surviving from antiquity.
Although neither the context nor the findspot of the statuette are known, one can speculate about its original use. Perhaps it was a decorative piece displayed in a Roman villa in the late Republican or early Imperial periods, conveying the learned qualities of the villa’s owner (4). Alternatively, the statuette might have served as a dedication in a sacred setting, such as a sanctuary or temple of the Muses, perhaps in Greece or Asia Minor. It might also have served a funerary function.
NOTES:
1. Another free-standing Muse statue with a feather headdress is in the Vatican, inv. no. 743, although the head does not belong to the body. See G. Spinola, Il Museo Pio-Clementino 2: La Galleria delle statue, Guide cataloghi dei Musei Vaticani (Vatican, 1999) 45, no. 53, fig. 8.
2. Compare, for instance, a Muse on a mosaic from the Maison des Océans in Sfax, Tunisia published in K. M. D. Dunbabin, The Mosaics of Roman North Africa: Studies in Iconography and Patronage (Oxford, 1978) 132, fig. 132, pl. 52. See also Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae Mousa, Mousai no. 107.
3. On this general point, see E. D. Reeder, Hellenistic Art in the Walters Art Gallery (Baltimore, 1988) 97. Also see D. Pinkwart, Das Relief des Archelaos von Priene und die “Musen des Philiskos” (Kallmünz, 1965) 78.
4. See Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares 7.23.2.
Natalie Taback Hansen
