Antiquities Exhibits

 The Romans favored bronze and marble above all else for their finest work and loved miniatures.  By the mid-1st century CE, Roman sculptors began to move away from emulating their Etruscan and Greek predecessors and sought to capture and create optical effects of light and shade for greater realism.  This trend may well have developed from the tradition of keeping realistic wax funeral masks of deceased family members in the ancestral home.  Although few bronze examples have survived due to a high demand for reuse of the alloy, those that did, like this poignant figurine, portrayed a people who were realistically scarred, wrinkled, or plump, like this healthy-appearing little girl. Sadly (from my viewpoint anyway), towards the end of the Empire, the influence of art from the eastern Mediterranean resulted in figural sculpture with enlarged heads, vacantly staring eyes, and out-of-proportion torsos and limbs such as those seen in works portraying the emperor Constant...

Little wood survives from ancient Greek and Roman furniture, although ancient texts tell us woods used for such purpose were maple, oak, beech, yew, and willow. Pieces were assembled using mortise-and-tenon joinery, held together with lashings, pegs, metal nails, and glue. Wood was shaped by carving, steam treatment, and the lathe, and furniture is known to have been decorated with ivory, tortoise shell, glass, gold, or bronze attachments similar to this example.  Furniture was also veneered with expensive types of wood in order to make the object appear more costly, although not as elaborate as palatial furnishings in the Near East. The sella, or stool or chair, was the most common type of seating in the Roman period, probably because of its easy portability. Although those of the poor were surely plain, the wealthy had access to precious woods, ornamented with inlay, metal fittings, ivory, and silver and gold leaf. Bronze sellae from Herculaneum were square in form and had straig...

This panoply comprises a matching ensemble of helmet, cuirass, and greave (shin guard), which are rare Etruscan works exemplifying the finest qualities of the form and decoration that characterize the greatest armors made in Etruria during the Classical period. In addition to exhibiting originality of design and exceptional workmanship, this ensemble occupies an important place in the historical development of Etruscan armor. It includes one of the finest Etruscan cuirasses known to survive and a helmet that has no parallels in the Ancient World. Very few Etruscan panoplies appear to have ever included anatomical cuirasses, and among the few specimen known to remain, many are extensively damaged or restored, unlike this example. The helmet, with its delicate embossed, chased, and engraved ornament, and its striking bronze and silver appliqués, is one of the most luxurious examples of a type found only in Etruria, and by far the best preserved representative of this exclusive group. It ...

This finial, which originally decorated the top of a tall candelabrum, is an excellent example of Early Classical sculpture. A bearded warrior wearing a full panoply of armor assists his younger, beardless comrade, who has sustained a wound to his left leg or foot and is supported by the spear he once held in his right hand and by his friend's shoulder. - Metropolitan Museum of Art. Etruscan culture was influenced by ancient Greek culture, beginning around 750 BCE, during the last phase of the Villanovan period, when the Greeks, who were at this time in their Archaic Orientalizing period, started founding colonies in southern Italy.  It continued during the Classical period from the 5th to the 4th centuries BCE, even though the political balance of power in the region began to shift to the rising Roman Republic after 500 BCE. The bearded warrior depicted in this sculpture wears a Greek Corinthian-style helmet tipped back on his head.  This practice gave rise to a series of var...

In mythology, Capaneus was a highly skilled warrior of immense strength and body size.  Unfortunately, he was also notorious for his extreme arrogance.  He was a prominent character in the ancient play "Seven Against Thebes" by Aeschylus in which he stood at the wall of Thebes and shouted that Zeus himself could not stop him from invading it.  While  mounting a siege ladder, Zeus struck and killed Capaneus with a thunderbolt for his blatant hubris.  The flawed hero also appears in the plays "The Suppliants" and "The Phoenician Women" by Euripides and in works by the Roman poet Statius. In Dante's "Inferno", Capaneus has been condemned to the seventh circle of hell where he lies supine on a plain of burning sand while fire rains down on him.  He continues to curse Jove (Jupiter) even though his pain increases with each outburst. Etruscan bronze relief of a collapsing armed figure thought to be Capaneus 500-450 BCE courtesy of the Metropolitan ...

These bronze handles have the distinctive shape associated with a type of krater made in Vulci and exported to Etruscan settlements as far away as Spina in Northern Italy. The youths wearing winged boots and holding the bridles of their horses are almost certainly the twin gods, Castur and Pultuce (Roman: Castor and Pollux), the sons of Zeus. The two are known in Etruscan as Tinas Cliniar and as the Roman Dioscuri although in Latin the twins are also known as the Gemini (literally "twins") or Castores, as well as the Tyndaridae or Tyndarid. In Homer's Iliad, Castor, the horse breaker, and Polydeuces, the boxer, are brothers to Helen of Troy and are both mortals who have died. ("... there are two commanders I do not see, / Castor the horse breaker and the boxer / Polydeuces, my brothers ...") – Helen, Iliad 3.253–255 But, as described by Pindar, the two, born of the same mother, were only half-brothers, however. Castor was the mortal son of Tyndareus, the king ...

 "Votive offerings have been part of the human relationship with gods and belief from pre-history to the present. Today we might light a candle, a stick of incense, lay a bunch of flowers or in some Catholic churches people still leave a wax body part by way of a votive offering, but in the ancient world the practice was more wide-ranging, literal and multifaceted. The ancient Greeks and Romans offered them to a deity to bring good fortune or to grant favours and they were an important expression of their personal relationship with their gods and goddesses." - Richard Moss, Museum Crush: https://museumcrush.org/anatomical-votive-offerings-of-the-greco-roman-world/ Moss lavishly illustrates his article with votive objects from the Wellcome Collection, the Science Museum, and the British Museum in London.  He also mentions The Votives Project, a cross-cultural and multi-period effort to study votive material and contexts.  Participants' research include such diverse studies...