Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
A sturdy, draped man stands frontally, his feet placed squarely beside each other. His right hand reaches downward diagonally, clasping a slender staff through his perforated fist. His left arm, slightly bent, is covered by the long cloak or himation that he wears over that shoulder. Its edge is fringed with short diagonal incisions, as is the upper hem of the garment, and the fringe extends around under his right arm. His garment hangs to just below his ankles. His face is broad, with a large mouth and pronounced lower lip, and has enlarged oval eyes with incised pupils. The right nipple is marked by a small circle similar to those that form his pupils. The featureless feet suggest that he is wearing boots or low shoes.
His hair falls in a mass below his shoulders down his back. Two narrow strands, marked by short diagonal incised grooves, fall down his shoulders to his chest. His short beard is defined by vertical incisions. His forehead is bordered by a rounded mass of hair with diagonal incisions on either side of a central part. The crown of his head is defined by incisions radiating outward that seem to pass under a raised convex hairband or fillet, marked by tiny notches or punctate marks. When seen in profile, the hair and the fillet flow directly into each other, which might suggest that the bronze caster who finished this statuette originally intended the man to wear a low leather cap, or pilos, which he then changed into the hair and fillet combination seen now.
This statuette is one of the finest, most individualized of a group of bronze statuettes found in and around the sanctuary of Zeus on Mount Lykaion in western Arcadia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (1). Most of these statuettes, with their heavy overcoats, laced boots, and high conical caps, probably represent shepherds. The Harvard statuette is unusual for its costume, coiffure, and staff. These traits raise interesting questions about whether it was meant to represent a priest, a magistrate, or even a god. Whatever its identity, its monumental stillness and inner spirit reveal it as the work of an original Late Archaic master sculptor.
NOTES:
1. For a general discussion, see F. Felten, “Archaische arkadische Bronzestatuetten,” in Griechische und römische Statuetten und Grossbronzen: Akten der 9. Tagung über antike Bronzen in Wein 21.-25. April 1986, eds. K. Gschwantler and A. Bernhard-Walcher (Vienna, 1988) 237-43; and M. Jost, “Statuettes de bronze archaïques provenant de Lykosoura,” Bulletin de correspondance hellénique 99 (1975): 339-64, esp. 339-45 (shepherds). See also the famous Arcadian bronze “Warren Herm” now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the form and incision of whose hair and beard is closely reminiscent of the same features in the Harvard figure, in M. Comstock and C. C. Vermeule, Greek, Etruscan and Roman Bronzes in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Greenwich, CT, 1971) 27, no. 24. See also D. G. Mitten, “Man in Cloak,” in Classical Bronzes, Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art (Providence, 1975) 41-45, no. 12.
David G. Mitten
