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An Etruscan Bronze Mirror in the Victoria and Albert Museum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

E. A. Lane
E. A. Lane
Affiliation:
Victoria and Albert Museum, S.W.7
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Extract

In the early years after its foundation in 1857, the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington pursued its policy of acquisition with a vigorously catholic taste. Since then its scope has become gradually limited to exclude work of the pre-Christian era, but in addition to the original purchases of Greek vases, the accession of large miscellaneous collections containing antiquities has contributed to what is now an excellent group of Greek and Roman objects. Important Greek vases were included in the big collection of modern European ceramics transferred in 1901 from the Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street, and in 1910 the late George Salting bequeathed his entire collection, other than paintings, to the Victoria and Albert Museum. His good taste in every other direction was sufficient guarantee that the Greek civilisations should be represented by work of more than average merit. Unfortunately, Salting kept few records concerning the provenance of his acquisitions, and so one of the finest Etruscan engraved mirrors in existence came to the Museum without a past history.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 57 , Issue 2 , 1937 , pp. 219 - 223
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1937

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References

1 Salting Collection, M. 707–1910. 21 cm. × 15 cm. In good condition, with smooth green patina on back and front; traces of corrosion on rim and haft, surface worn at the point where the handle once overlapped it, and slightly flaked on the reverse of the disk. Here published by the courtesy of the Museum authorities.

2 Another mirror (Gerhard, , Körte, , Klügmann, , Etruskische Spiegel, V, pl. 97Google Scholar), engraved with the struggle between Peleus and Thetis, has a similar pattern on the reverse and the leaf border is not very different. The Peleus mirror is clearly derived from late black-figure vase-painting, but in view of the archaising tendency to be mentioned later, a possible origin in the same workshop and at the same date as the Salting one cannot be definitely ruled out.

3 This motive developed out of a pair of more naturalistic trees bent sideways to flank the design (RM 1912, p. 258, pl. ix and fig. 2). Already stylised into a conventional border, the ivy-branch is found in Etruscan tomb-paintings (Weege, Etruskische Malerei, pl. 32), and on the Salting mirror the double row of leaves has been telescoped into one in order to save space. A very similar border occurs on the British Museum mirror (Gerhard, Körte, Klügmann, pl. 38).

4 Common throughout the series of Etruscan mirrors, from the late sixth century to the fourth, See Gerhard pls. ccclxiii, ccclxiv and passim.

5 Compare the Kleophrades Painter's amphora in Munich, FR pls. 44–5.

6 See Beazley, , Greek Vases in Poland, pp. 28–9Google Scholar.

7 H. Diepolder, Der Penthesilea-Maler, pls. 19, 20; 10 (top), 12 (bottom), 26.

8 Weege, Etruskische Malerei, pls. 15, 19 (right).

9 See Lamb, W., Greek and Roman Bronzes, pp. 115, 125 ff., for other typesGoogle Scholar.

10 For references, see Ducati, , Storia dell' Arte Etrusca I, 292, 310, notes 80, 81 (mirrors from Rossano and Locri)Google Scholar.

11 Gerhard, E., Die Etruskische Spiegel, 1840–1867Google Scholar; Vol. V, ed. Körte and Klügmann, 1884–1897.

12 RM 1912, pp. 243 ff. See also the same author's Storia dell' Arte Etrusca I, 291 ff., 328 ffGoogle Scholar.

13 RM loc. cit., p. 265, fig. 4.

14 RM loc. cit., p. 282.

15 RM loc. cit., pp. 274–5.

16 Compare the split, stupidly misunderstood palmette with Sieveking-Hackl, Kön. Vasensammlung zu München I, 100, fig. 100Google Scholar. And what Greek would tolerate a bud and palmette frieze made up of four different kinds of complicated plant?

17 RM loc. cit., p. 283.

18 RM loc. cit., p. 278, fig. 7 (Eros) and Gerhard pi. clxxix, 1 (Sphinx) were made for attachment to a support in the form of a human figure, a non-Etruscan shape; there can be no doubt that they are South Italian work.

19 M.N. Plaoutine, on p. 22, Pls. I, II of this volume, publishes a most interesting Etruscan red-figure cup with the Attic piece from which it was undoubtedly copied. In this case an unfamiliar technique has embarrassed the copyist; a bronze-engraver, using his accustomed tools, might have rendered the subject with a sureness of hand worthy of his model.

20 RM loc. cit., p. 265, fig. 4.

21 Compare Hoppin, , Handbook of Attic Red-figure Vases, pp. 33, 41, 449Google Scholar.

22 Weege, pls. 3, 10.

23 Ducati notes the three-figure composition; the female curled headdress would be a corrupt rendering of the Attic fashion on early red-figure vases—compare Caskey, Attic Vase-Paintings in Boston, pl. ii, no. 3 (Menon Painter).

24 Ducati, Storia, pl. 144; Gerhard, pl. cccxliv.

25 Gerhard, pls. clix, clx; Delatte, A., ‘Un nouveau monument de la série Heraclé-Mlacukh,’ in Annuair de l'Institut de Philologie et d'Histoire Orientales, iii, 1935, 113 ff.Google Scholar

26 Two other mirrors, greatly inferior, appear to have come from the same workshop—Gerhard, IV, ccclxxxvii, Peleus and Thetis, and Gerhard, Körte, Klügmann, V, 39, 2, silen and maenad.