Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
The body of this trefoil oinochoe (wine pitcher with three mouths) is bulbous at the shoulder and tapers to the circular foot. The cylindrical neck flares out at the trefoil mouth, which has a thick edge (1). The juncture of the shoulder and neck is decorated with three incised concentric circles, and the underside of the foot bears raised concentric circles. On the interior of the back of the mouth, on the side where the handle would have attached, a maker’s mark has been stamped into the metal. The mark, a recessed arc with raised letters, seems to read COMMVNI or COMMVNE: (workshop) of Communis (2).
NOTES:
1. The vessel shape is relatively common; for examples with attached handles, see A. de Ridder, Les bronzes antiques du Louvre 2: Les instruments (Paris, 1915) 114, no. 2754, pl. 99; M. Comstock and C. C. Vermeule, Greek, Etruscan and Roman Bronzes in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Greenwich, CT, 1971) 313, no. 438; and J. Gorecki, “Metallgefässe und -objecte aus der Villa des N. Popidius Florus (Boscoreale) im J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, Kalifornien,” in Bronces y religion romana: Actas del XI congreso internacional de bronces antiguos, Madrid, 1990, eds. J. Arce and F. Burkhalter (Madrid, 1993) 229-46, esp. 232, no. A 10, pl. 4. Compare also L. Pirzio Biroli Stefanelli, ed., Il bronzo dei Romani: Arredo e suppellettile (Rome, 1990) 237 and 281, no. 110, fig. 222 (from Herculaneum); B. Borell, Statuetten, Gefässe und andere Gegenstände aus Metall, Katalog der Sammlung antiker Kleinkunst des Archäologischen Instituts der Universität Heidelberg 3.1 (Mainz, 1989) 116-17, no. 126, pl. 49; M. Garsson, ed., Une histoire d’alliage: Les bronzes antiques des réserves du Musée d’Archéologie Méditerranéenne, exh. cat. (Marseille, 2004) 44, no. 73; and S. Tassinari, Il vasellame bronzo di Pompei, Ministero per i beni culturali ed ambientali, Soprintendenza archeologica di Pompei 5 (Rome, 1993) 40-42, type D2300, pl. 157.5.
2. For a patera handle with the same stamp as the Harvard vessel, see A. Koster, The Bronze Vessels 2: Acquisitions 1954-1996, Collections in the Provincial Museum G. M. Kam at Nijmegen 13 (Gelderland, 1997) 59, no. 69. Koster indicates that the stamp is from a Gaulish workshop dated from the second half of the first century to the first quarter of the second century CE.
Lisa M. Anderson
