Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
This lively, youthful figure of a dancing Lar is shown with his right leg forward and slightly bent, with the ball of the foot holding his weight, and his left leg slightly behind it. He wears a short-sleeved tunic held by a fibula on each shoulder and bound by a cinctus (sash) twisted at his back and drawn through two loops at the waist. Mappae (waist scarves) billow wing-like to either side of his short tunic, which has pleats on both sides of the legs in the front and falls in scalloped curves in the back. His back is somewhat flat and is covered by the folds of the garment. His high, open-toed boots reach mid-calf and are decorated with a rosette. They are laced up the front and the laces are looped at the top and fall in a triangle down each side of the ankle. The left arm is raised, and the missing hand would have held aloft a rhyton (a drinking horn often ending in the protome of an animal, such as a ram). The right arm is bent and the missing hand would have extended a patera (offering dish) or a situla (bucket), positioned as if to receive wine poured from the rhyton (1).
His head is raised, looking up and to the viewer's right, with the mouth partially open. His upturned eyes are outlined; the pupils are not punched. His hair is combed in rays at the back that terminate in a circlet of stiff curls around the face, rising vertically in the front (the top curl is broken or abraded at the peak) and arranged horizontally on the sides of the head.
When the figure was restored, metal was added under the right foot to provide stability. The toes of the left foot barely touch the ground, which suggests the original was not intended to stand alone but was supported at the opening under the kilt (1.35 x 0.87 cm) behind the right leg.
The Lar was the premier protective divinity of the Roman household. He resided in a shrine, or lararium, most often placed in the atrium or near the kitchen, usually with other divinities. When the emperor Augustus reorganized the cult in 7 BCE, the dancing figure was associated with the lares compitales who were worshipped at altars at the crossroads within each district of the city (2). The altars depicted the togate figure of the divine Augustus making a sacrifice, an image fundamental to the Imperial cult. Early Imperial reliefs of these ceremonial processions depicted small statuettes of Lares attached to bases being carried by participants (3). By the mid-first century CE the dancing Lar appears in domestic shrines in Italy and spreads soon thereafter into the provinces. The image of the emperor comes to represent the spirit (genius) of the father of the family, the pater familias (4). Two Lares often appear as paired mirror images flanking the genius or other divinity both in painted lararia and in bronze groups. Lararia appear in paintings in the fourth style of Pompeiian interior decoration, which is generally thought to have come into use when houses were redecorated after the earthquake of 62 CE (5).
The Harvard Lar closely resembles bronze Lares found at Pompeii and others represented in painting. The pyramidal hairdo with the stiff curls is especially similar to that of the bronze Lares from the House of the Wine Merchants, as well as to a pair of painted Lares and the single Lar statuette from the House of Lollius Synhodus, which is dated to the Neronian or Flavian period (6). G. M. A. Hanfmann favored a Flavian or Trajanic date for the Harvard example (7).
Exact dating for bronze Lares has proven elusive, as the types remained constant throughout the life of the cult, which was practiced throughout the empire from the first to the end of the fourth centuries CE (8).
NOTES:
1. See Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae Lar, Lares nos. 33-61, esp. nos. 47-61.
2. See V. Tran Tam Tinh, “Lar, Lares,” in LIMC 6.1: 205-12, esp. 211.
3. See LIMC Lar, Lares nos. 93 and 94; P. Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor, 1990) 126-135, figs. 108-109; and D. Kleiner, Roman Sculpture (New Haven, 1992) 147-48, figs. 121-22 (Claudian).
4. See, for example, 2012.1.129. For the Lares familiares and Lares that have other protective functions, see Tran Tam Tinh (supra 2) 205 and 211-12.
5. See T. Fröhlich, Lararien- und Fassadenbilder in den Vesuvstädten, Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung 32 (Mainz, 1991) 110-29.
6. For the House of the Wine Merchants, see A. Kaufmann-Heinimann, Götter und Lararien aus Augusta Raurica: Herstellung, Fundzusammenhänge und sakrale Funktion figürlicher Bronzen in einer römischen Stadt, Forschungen in Augst 26 (Augst, 1998) 219, fig. 164, which interestingly were found with statuettes of Harpocrates (in silver), Anubis, and Isis. For the painted Lares, see Fröhlich 1991 (supra 5) 292, no. L98, pl. 10.2. For the House of Lollius Synhodus, see C. Cicirelli, “Dancing Lar,” in Rediscovering Pompeii, eds. B. Conticello, A. Varone, and L. F. dell’Orto, exh. cat., IBM Gallery of Science and Art, New York; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Rooseum Center for Contemporary Art, Malmö (Rome, 1990) 141-43, no. 6; and Kaufmann-Heinimann 1998 (supra) 214, fig. 153.
7. See D. G. Mitten and S. F. Doeringer, Master Bronzes from the Classical World, exh. cat., The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University; City Art Museum of St. Louis; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Mainz, 1967) no. 254, with earlier literature.
8. See Tran Tam Tinh (supra 2). For the problems of identifying workshops and dating, see Kaufmann-Heinimann 1998 (supra 5) 56-58; B. Barr-Sharrar, “The Private Use of Small Bronze Sculpture,” in The Fire of Hephaistos: Large Classical Bronzes from North American Collections, ed. C. Mattusch, exh. cat., Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, 1996) 104-21, esp. 112-15, with extensive references to types of lararia; S. Boucher and H. Oggiano-Bitar, “Les Lares des Provinces romaines: Essai de datation,” in Acta of the 12th International Congress on Ancient Bronzes, Nijmegen, 1-4 June, 1992, eds. S. T. A. M. Mols, T. A. M. Mols, R. M. van Heeringen, A. M. Gerhartl-Witteveen, and H. Kars, eds., Nederlandse Archeologische Rapporten 18 (Nijmegen, 1995) 231-40, esp. 233-36; and J. Herrmann, in The Gods Delight: The Human Figure in Classical Bronze, eds. A. Kozloff and D. G. Mitten, exh. cat., The Cleveland Museum of Art; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Cleveland, 1988) 275-77, 282, and 284. For the bronze Lares: pairs from the House of the Red Walls and from the House of the Armorini in Pompeii, see Barr-Sharrar 1996 (supra) 113, fig. 19; and Kaufmann-Heinimann 1998 (supra 6) 184-86, 220, and 223, figs. 165-66 and 169.
Jane Ayer Scott
