Left Hand Resting Against a Tambourine (?)

Identification and Creation

Object Number: 1920.44.180
Title: Left Hand Resting Against a Tambourine (?)
Classification: Sculpture
Work Type: sculpture
Date: 100 BCE or later
Period: Hellenistic period, Late
Culture: Greek
Persistent Link: https://hvrd.art/o/292368

Physical Descriptions

Medium: Marble from Greek island
Dimensions: 5.3 cm (2 1/16 in.)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History: Miss Elizabeth Gaskell Norton, Boston, MA and Miss Margaret Norton, Cambridge, MA (by 1920), gift; to the Fogg Museum, 1920.

Note: The Misses Norton were daughters of Charles Elliot Norton (1827-1908).

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line: Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of the Misses Norton
Accession Year: 1920
Object Number: 1920.44.180
Division: Asian and Mediterranean Art
Contact: am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu
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Descriptions

Published Catalogue Text: Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums , written 1990
76

Left Hand Resting Against a Tambourine (?)

The hand is broken away at the wrist, and the edges of the round object have suffered.

This rather delicate female hand might come from a small statue of Cybele or a Muse or even a personified province such as Phrygia. The colossal figure of Parian marble in the Ince Blundell Hall collection at Liverpool stands with her left hand on a tambourine or tympanum and has been identified as Phrygia, Bithynia, or Cappadocia, one of a series of provinces from Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli (Toynbee, 1984, pp. 67-69, pl. XXIV, 4). This fragment could have come from a small statue of this type.

Cornelius Vermeule and Amy Brauer

Publication History

Cornelius C. Vermeule III and Amy Brauer, Stone Sculptures: The Greek, Roman and Etruscan Collections of the Harvard University Art Museums, Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 1990), p. 91, no. 76

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art at am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu

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1920.44.180: Left Hand Resting Against a Tambourine (?)