Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
This peplos-wearing female mirror caryatid is missing her feet, although the stump of the right ankle is preserved. Her outstretched right hand is missing, as are the ends of the triangular bracket that rises from the woman’s head. The modeling of the drapery is summary; the peplos hangs in a raised V-shape at the neck. The high breasts are placed very close to each other. Her left arm hangs down beside the body and clutches the fold of the drapery in the typical Archaic gesture. There is a trace of an incised circular button or brooch at the top of the right shoulder. The modeling on the reverse is very summary. The left hand blends into the drapery that it grasps; there is no definition of the fingers. The figure’s head sits on a slender neck. Her eyes are closely set; her nose is short with rounded tip, beneath which a small, pursed mouth is summarily rendered. Her hair is gathered in a convex roll over the forehead, bunching above the ears. The back of the hair continues in a roll marked with indistinct vertical incisions. Horizontal incisions define the roll of hair over the forehead. Behind it, vertical incisions reach to the bottom of the spreading bracket that rises from the head. There is no clear demarcation between the top of the head and the bottom of the mirror-support bracket.
When seen from the side, the lower part of the figure is virtually linear, with no marked modeling of the abdomen and legs. On the back of the head, the bracket rises from the hair mass with no separation or definition.
This caryatid is typical of the more summarily modeled small mirror caryatids of the early Classical style (1). The modeling of the head, the peplos, and the overall proportions suggest a date of c. 460 BCE. It seems likely that this figure and the mirror that it supported were made in Corinth, Argos, or another nearby workshop in the northeastern Peloponnesus.
NOTES:
1. For parallels, see L. O. K. Congdon, Caryatid Mirrors of Ancient Greece (Mainz, 1981) 156, 167, and 182; nos. 40.a, 54.a-c, and 72.a-d; pls. 36, 50, and 66; 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) 90-91, no. 87; M. Comstock and C. C. Vermeule, Greek, Etruscan and Roman Bronzes in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Greenwich, CT, 1971) 245-46, no. 355; and Egyptian, Classical, and Western Asiatic Antiquities and Islamic Works of Art, Sotheby’s (New York) February 8-9, 1985, lot 87. See also G. Ortiz, In Pursuit of the Absolute: Art of the Ancient World, The George Ortiz Collection (Bern, 1996) no. 141, with extensive parallels and bibliography.
David G. Mitten
