Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
This handle curves upward and terminates in a female theatrical mask (4.4 cm high) set off by a ridge. The piece is broken just under the high point of the curve. The handle width tapers from 2.2 cm to 1.22 cm above the mask. The figure wears a horizontal cap with a roll of hair below it. Two ringlets fall on either side of the face, and under the chin there is a palmette, the tip of which is missing. On the underside is a hollow rectangular depression with rounded corners (1.14 x 1.87 cm).
The execution is summary, as though the piece were made from a much-used and worn model or mold. Although this type is well known in the first century BCE, the piece could have been made as late as the mid third century CE (1).
Lamp handles 1965.26 and 1969.177.25 represent a type that is well known from finds at Pompeii and Herculaneum and was popular throughout the Roman Empire from the late first century BCE into the third century CE (2). The bodies of the intact lamps are pear-shaped with a central fill hole and a rounded or splayed and fluked nozzle. The handles curve upward from the point of attachment on the side of the reservoir with the terminus over the center of the reservoir. The lamps were made to sit on a stand or tripod, to be suspended from chains, or to be held by the handle, which was usually cast separately from the body and attached with lead solder. The handles are D-shaped in section, and the undersides are very smooth.
NOTES:
1. The mask is closest to one on the handle of a complete lamp from Pompeii; see N. Valenza Mele, Catalogo delle lucerne in bronzo: Museo Nazionale Archeologico di Napoli (Rome, 1981) 93-95, no. 245. See also N. Franken, “Die antiken Bronzen im Römisch-Germanischen Museum Köln: Die Fragmente von Grossbronzen und die figürlichen Bronzegeräte,” Kölner Jahrbücher 29 (1996): 7-203, esp. 83-85, for an extensive list of mask handles, especially in the western part of the empire; J. W. Hayes, Greek, Roman, and Related Metalware in the Royal Ontario Museum: A Catalogue (Toronto, 1984) 135-36, no. 211 (which may not be ancient); and P. V. C. Baur, The Excavations at Dura-Europus, Final Report 4.3: The Lamps (New Haven, 1947) 78, no. 448, dated to the mid-second century CE; and Valenza Mele 1981 (supra) 105, nos. 244-45. For a possible Alexandrian origin and diffusion of the type, see M. Conticello de’ Spagnolis and E. De Carolis, Le lucerne di bronzo di Ercolano e Pompei (Rome, 1988) 138, no. 83, with a Phrygian cap. For terracotta examples, see A. Heimerl, Die römischen Lampen aus Pergamon vom Beginn der Kaiserzeit bis zum Ende des 4. Jhs. n. Chr., Pergamenische Forschungen 13 (Berlin, 2001) 52 and 109, nos. 143-46, pl. 4, dated to the first to second centuries CE. For a fragmentary hollowed stone mask in the Harvard collection and bibliography for similar masks in architecture, see C. C. Vermeule and A. Brauer, Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman, and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 1990) 106, no. 93.
2. For the type, see Conticello de’ Spagnolis and De Carolis 1988 (supra 1) 137-40, with extensive references; and C. C. Vermeule, M. Comstock et al., Sculpture in Stone and Bronze in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: Additions to the Collections of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Art 1971-1988 (Boston, 1988) 89, no. 112. For terracotta examples from Gerasa, see R. Rosenthal and R. Sivan, Ancient Lamps in the Schloessinger Collection, Qedem 8 (Jersualem, 1978) 90-91, nos. 368-72; and Baur 1947 (supra 1) 74, no. 422, pl. 14 (Yale University Art Gallery, inv. no. 1932.1378), dated to the mid-second century CE. For other animal heads, see D. M. Bailey, A Catalogue of Lamps in the British Museum 4: Lamps of Metal and Stone, and Lampstands (London, 1996) 39-40, pls. 48-50 and 55. See A. P. Kozloff, D. G. Mitten, and M. Sguaitamatti, More Animals in Ancient Art from the Leo Mildenberg Collection (Mainz, 1986) no. 152, for a complete lamp with a horse head, as well as literature on the type. For a discussion of the type’s dissemination to the vici of the northern provinces through the army, see R. Noll, Das Inventar des Dolichenusheiligtums von Mauer an der Url (Noricum), Der Römische Limes in Österreich 30 (Vienna, 1980) 18-20, pls. 1 and 35.
Jane Ayer Scott
