Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
This figure of an offerand or priest holds a pyxis in his left hand. His left arm is bent at the elbow. The right arm, which is missing from just above the elbow, was extended outward and would have held a patera in its hand. His large head is turned to his right. The hair is depicted as sausage-like lumps above the forehead and at the sides of the face; the effect is reminiscent of Hellenistic art derived from portraits of Alexander. He wears a six-pointed foliate crown tied by a ribbon at the back of the head. The facial features are summarily indicated, with large eyes that are not detailed by punches or lines. His weight was on his left leg, which is missing from above the knee. The right leg, which is missing below the garment, would have been slightly behind the left leg. He wears a knee-length cloak draped over his left shoulder and diagonally across the back, secured in a roll around his waist and looped over his left arm, leaving the upper torso and right side of his back bare. The remains of gilding on the back of the cloak are unlikely to be original (1). The figure is very slender, with little modeling other than what can be seen on the right arm and left buttocks.
This type derives from examples said to have been found at Lake Nemi, such as the votive statuettes representing sacrificing youths in the British Museum, London, who hold an incense box in their left hands, pour a libation from a patera in their outstretched right hands, and wear the same draped toga (2). There are other Hellenistic examples from Etruria and Latium. Many have been found among dedications at sanctuaries. The leafy headdress found on some examples, which may have connected the pieces to a Dionysian cult, has been simplified to a six-pointed crown on the Harvard piece. In addition to the Dionysian association, the discovery of two similar pieces in the excavation of a private house at Vetulonia suggests they were also associated with a domestic cult (3).
The Harvard priest is one of the many mass-produced examples of male and female votives dedicated at sanctuaries mainly in central Italy but also in Gaul and Germany. In spite of the cursory execution, the figure’s hairstyle and animated face are representative of a central Italian style that fused late Etruscan, Hellenistic, and Roman art (4).
NOTES:
1. See W. Oddy et al., “The Gilding of Bronze Sculpture in the Classical World,” in Small Bronze Sculpture from the Ancient World (Malibu, 1990) 103-24.
2. Inv. nos. 1921.0512.1 and 1955.0501.1. Seven male and female offerands were found with a larger statuette of a female figure; the group was dispersed on the art market soon after discovery. For the entire group prior to dispersal, see S. Reinach, “Bronzes du lac de Némi,” Revue Archéologique 14 (1909) 177-87; S. Haynes, “The Bronze Priests and Priestesses from Nemi,” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung 67 (1960) 34-45, esp. 41-42 nn.16-17, which provides a long list of statuettes of the same type as the Harvard piece; and M. Bentz, Etruskische Votivbronzen des Hellenismus (Florence, 1992) 58-63, 119-29, 148-49, 160-64, and 173-75; Groups 32-33; figs. 235-61; pls. 42-45, which also covers comparable pieces. For mass production starting in the third century BCE, see Bentz 1992 (supra) 142-43. For workshops and method of manufacture, see also M. C. Galestin, Etruscan and Italic Bronze Statuettes (Ph.D. diss., Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 1987) 167-70 and 175-76, who believes they were made near the sanctuaries where they were dedicated.
3. See Bentz 1992 (supra 2) 82-84, pls. 105-108. Both Bentz and Haynes 1960 (supra 2) date the Nemi group to the second half of second century BCE.
4. As observed by M. Comstock and C. C. Vermeule, Greek, Etruscan and Roman Bronzes in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Greenwich, CT, 1971) 134-36, no. 155, which they date from 50 BCE to 50 CE.
Jane Ayer Scott
