1928.182.1: Wall Painting from Nuzi, with accompanying watercolor drawing

Identification and Creation

Object Number

1928.182.1

Title

Wall Painting from Nuzi, with accompanying watercolor drawing

Classification

Paintings

Work Type

painting

Date

1500-1350 BCE

Places

Creation Place: Ancient & Byzantine World, Asia, Nuzi (Mesopotamia)

Period

Mitannian period

Culture

Hurrian

Persistent Link

https://hvrd.art/o/311394

Physical Descriptions

Medium

Painted mud-plaster embedded in modern concrete and wood frame

Dimensions

framed: 31.8 x 73.6 cm (12 1/2 x 29 in.)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History

Excavated from Yorghan Tepe, Iraq

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line

Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of the Harvard-Baghdad Expedition to Kirkuk

Accession Year

1928

Object Number

1928.182.1

Division

Asian and Mediterranean Art

Contact

am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu

Permissions

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Descriptions

Description

Original black, red, and white colors, although extremely faint, are still visible. The original image included geometric designs, flowers, bovines, and anthropomorphic figures (see accompanying drawing for modern color reconstruction).

Commentary

Traces of color on the fragments suggested that many rooms of the Palace of Nuzi had been painted. Although most of the wall painting was of only a solid color, a few elaborately decorated fragments survived and were still vibrant enough to be photographed and drawn in situ. The excavators cut out and packaged a substantial portion of the mudbrick wall upon which the elaborate wall painting was executed. The hope was to carefully extract and preserve the design under more controlled laboratory conditions, but the fragments did not survive shipping intact.

Luckily, the designs had been copied by the excavation's architect Emmanuel Wilensky while still in situ, and these drawings represented the ruined wall paintings in exhibits for both the Fogg and Semitic Museums. Wilensky's original field copies have since been lost; although the Semitic Museum has photographs of these drawings taken soon after completion. Before the loss of Wilensky's drawings, however, Edward Forbes, director of the Fogg Museum, had new color copies made for the Fogg Museum.

Helen Gilman and Lucille Chabot, members of the Fogg Museum staff, created the watercolor copies of Wilensky's drawings between 1941 and 1943, using the original mudbrick fragments for color reference. The Gilman/Chabot Nuzi wall painting reproductions were framed and displayed in the Fogg Museum and other Harvard buildings between 1943 and 1992.

Verification Level