Antiquities Exhibits

Since antiquity, the rooster has been, and still is, a sacred animal in some cultures and deeply embedded within various religious belief systems and religious worship. In ancient Babylon the rooster was considered the bird form of the True Shepherd of Anu and was considered the ordained herald of the gods. Nergal, a deity whose name meant "dunghill cock" or fighting cock, was worshipped by the Assyrians, Babylonians, Phoenicians, and Persians.  The term "Persian bird" was given to the cock by the Greeks after Persian contact "because of his great importance and his religious use among the Persians." This stems from the sacred nature of the cock, attested to in the texts of Zoroastrianism,  during the legendary Kayanian Period from about 2000 BCE to about 700 BCE.  Perhaps because of their ancient association as a divine messenger, roosters played an important role in both Etruscan and Roman religion.  Observing a rooster's willingness to eat grain ker...

Mercury, the messenger of the gods, is typically depicted as a youth with wings on his hat or feet.  This monumental bronze statue, commissioned by Lorenzo Ridolfi in 1549 and completed in 1551, formerly stood at the center of the courtyard of the Palazzo Ridolfi in Florence. The inscription on the base states that the "Florentine friends Zanobi Lastricati and Ciano Compagni made the figure in order to learn." The latter was a perfume-maker employed by the duke of Florence, and, on the basis of an ancient marble sculpture of Mercury, he made a model which Lastricati then used for casting the bronze.  The inscription expresses the idea that the sculptures of antiquity represented an ideal worthy of imitation.  - The Walters Art Museum Image: Mercury, bronze, 1551, after a Roman Imperial Period original, by Zanobi Lastricati that I photographed at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland in 2015.