Published Catalogue Text: Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Bronzes at the Harvard Art Museums
The ram’s head is finely modeled, with curling horns whose projecting tips are placed in front of the ears, which also project outward. The horns are marked by faint diagonal grooves on the outer sides and the tops. The ram’s fleece consists of regular spiral curls modeled in relief, with each curl spiraling counterclockwise. Three rows of curls occur on the underside of the head between the horns. A modeled or incised line curves in front of the tips of the horns. The underside of the ram’s head is flat. The bridge of its nose, extending from the front row of curls to the nostrils, is convex in profile and deeply rounded. The modeling of the cheekbones consists of a convex triangular ridge that extends from underneath the eye to just behind the nostrils on both sides of the head. The eyes are oval, with pronounced eyelids and eyebrows. The mouth and nostrils are outlined by deep grooves. The nostrils extend diagonally backward from the tip of the muzzle. Two lateral, parallel grooves extend across the front edge of the bridge of the nose. The ram’s head is solid with a shallow circular depression at the back, which may have been served as a socket for the insertion of a cylindrical handle.
This head’s fine modeling in relief, almost all rendered in the wax model, makes it highly likely that this object was cast in the second half of the fifth or the first half of the fourth century BCE. It seems likely that this ram’s head served as the terminal for the handle of a shallow basin or patera intended for washing hands, usually used with a trefoil oinochoe. This type of handled patera, usually made of bronze, persists for centuries, extending well into the middle Roman Imperial Period (1).
NOTES:
1. D. Dunham, “Two Pieces of Furniture from the Egyptian Sudan,” Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston 46 (December 1948): 98-101, esp. 100-101, figs. 5-9; and M. Comstock and C. C. Vermeule, Greek, Etruscan and Roman Bronzes in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Greenwich, CT, 1971) 457, no. 668, there called “Graeco-Roman.” See also A. P. Kozloff, Animals in Ancient Art from the Leo Mildenberg Collection, Cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland, 1981) 183-84, no. 168, dated to the first and second centuries CE with extensive comparative literature; S. Boucher and S. Tassinari, Bronzes antiques du Musée de la Civilisation Gallo-Romaine a Lyon 1: Inscriptions, statuaire, vaisselle (Lyon, 1976) 124-25, nos. 140-42; and M. Castoldi, “Recipienti in bronzo dal territorio dell’antica Brixia tra età tardorepubblicana ed età augustea,” in The Antique Bronzes: Typology, Chronology, Authenticity, ed. C. Muşeţeanu (Bucharest, 2004) 85-95, esp. 91, fig. 8 (from Vergina, in silver).
David G. Mitten
