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Identification and Creation

Object Number
1963.25
Title
Trefoil Oinochoe Handle
Classification
Vessels
Work Type
handle
Date
second quarter 6th century BCE
Places
Creation Place: Ancient & Byzantine World, Europe, Laconia
Period
Archaic period
Culture
Greek
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/304227

Physical Descriptions

Medium
Leaded bronze
Technique
Cast, lost-wax process
Dimensions
17.15 x 12.7 cm (6 3/4 x 5 in.)
Technical Details

Chemical Composition: ICP-MS/AAA data from sample, Leaded Bronze:
Cu, 75.42; Sn, 8.73; Pb, 15.19; Zn, 0.005; Fe, 0.35; Ni, 0.08; Ag, 0.04; Sb, less than 0.05; As, 0.18; Bi, less than 0.025; Co, 0.023; Au, less than 0.01; Cd, less than 0.001
J. Riederer

Technical Observations: The patina of the handle is gray, green, and brown. The patina of the oinochoe fragment is dull gray. The handle is intact, although with poorly preserved surface detail. A fragment of the oinochoe rim remains attached to the handle. Mechanical attachments consisting of pins and rivets remain intact. Burial dirt or core mold material remains inside the hollow palmette terminals.

This solid handle, with partially hollow sections, was fabricated by lost-wax casting with most surface design done in the wax model. The oinochoe fragment appears to have been fabricated by hammering in order to shape the rim. Mechanical attachments were used to secure the handle to the vessel.


Carol Snow (submitted 2002)

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of Joseph H. Martino
Accession Year
1963
Object Number
1963.25
Division
Asian and Mediterranean Art
Contact
am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Descriptions

Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
This bronze handle belonged to a trefoil oinochoe, and a considerable remnant of the rim remains attached to the slot in the upper part of the handle. The handle consists of a vertical section, flat on the underside, convex on the outside, and marked by two parallel ridges running down the center. The top of the handle ends in a lion head that would have looked into the mouth of the vessel. It is flanked by two smaller, reclining lions whose bodies curve antithetically outward above the rim. They are carefully modeled in the round. Their curving tails, rendered in relief and ending in oval tufts, are placed symmetrically on either side of the back of the main lion head. The base plate consists of a large palmette of nine petals that grows out of a central space bounded by a curving ridge. On either side, serpents with their tails curled into volutes extend their heads upward and outward to fit the convex curve of the vessel’s shoulder. Two rivets, each placed through the snake’s back at a point just before the head projects from the handle, are preserved on the back of the handle. There appears to be a third rivet projecting from the underside of the left snake’s head. The snakes’ eyes are modeled in relief. The underside of each is marked by a shallow curving channel that extends almost to the tip of the head. The upper end of the base plate consists of a low convex band of beads or tongues, each separated by narrow ridges to form a transitional element from which the handle proper rises (1).

C. Stibbe has dated this handle to the second quarter of the sixth century BCE. The palmette type belongs to his “Ripe Style” (2). He cites a close parallel in a Lakonian black-figure vase in the Archäologisches Institut, University of Zurich, which he dates to c. 560 BCE (3). Therefore, this handle was probably produced by a Lakonian workshop active during the latter part of the first half of the sixth century BCE, or one at Tarantum, Sparta’s only colonial foundation in the west.

NOTES:

1. Similar in some respects is a handle in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (inv. no. 99.461); see M. Comstock and C. C. Vermeule, Greek, Etruscan and Roman Bronzes in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Greenwich, CT, 1971) 291, no. 416 (19.7 cm high). Here, however, the central lion’s head is missing and the volutes from which the lower palmette springs in smaller, upward-curving volutes rather than in snake heads.

2. For palmettes on Greek vase handles, see C. M. Stibbe, “Archaic Greek Bronze Palmettes,” Bulletin antieke beschaving: Annual Papers on Classical Archaeology 72 (1997): 37-64.

3. Id., “Eine archaische Bronzekanne in Basel,” Antike Kunst 37 (1994): 108-20, esp. 117, fig. 2. Stibbe believes Weber’s dating of the piece to the second half of the sixth century is too late; see T. Weber, Bronzekannen: Studien zu ausgewahlten archaischen und klassischen Oinochoenformen aus Metall in Griechenland und Etrurien (Frankfurt, 1983) 249, no. I.B.12, pl. 4.


David G. Mitten

Publication History

  • Thomas Weber, Bronzekannen: Studien zu ausgewählten archaischen und klassischen Oinochoenformen aus Metall in Griechenland und Etrurien, Verlag Peter Lang (Frankfurt, 1983), p. 249, no. I.B.12, pl. 4.
  • Conrad M. Stibbe, Agalmata: Studien zur griechisch-archaischen Bronzekunst, Peeters (Dudley, MA, 2006), p. 117-18, figs. 28-29.
  • Magali Ramon Ribaud, "Une œnochoé corinthienne...entre terre et métal", Quand on a la terre sous l'ongle, ed. Hélène Aurigny and Laura Rohaut (Provence, 2022), p. 118, fig. 8

Subjects and Contexts

  • Ancient Bronzes

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be 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