Artworks

Sizeable relief fragment showing a scene from the Amazonomachy; a fight between Greek warriors and the Amazons. On the left a bare-chested warrior lunges forwards, his round shield lifted with his left arm, a crested Attic helmet upon his head. A rearing horse which lashes out at him, its right leg kicking violently at the warrior, is being ridden by an Amazonian woman who grasps the reins, her short chiton fluttering in the wind, her feet in calf-length boots. A rectangular mortise on top of the moulding with a finished edge, the other three edges broken. Traces of cement and painted plaster along the edges suggest this fragment was once set into a wall in modern times. The front legs of the horse broken away, the surface worn and in areas eaten away consistent with it being in a marine environment.

The Amazons were a nation of all-female warriors. Greek mythology tells of several battles between the ‘barbaric’ Amazons and the ‘civilised’ Greek men. The Amazon represented a divergence from normal social structure, and posed as a threat to the status quo. It is therefore not unnatural that their image came to represent all enemies of the state, and indeed that they embodied the very essence of barbarism and an unnatural way of being. Depictions of an Amazonian defeat embodies not so much a victory over womankind, as much as the conquering of the barbaric world by that of the civilised, and often directly refers to Western defeat of the East, such as Greece or Rome against the Persians. Similar interpretations can be taken from other mythological battles, such as the Centauromachies and Gigantomachies.

Provenance

Ugo Jandolo, Rome, Italy
Joseph Brummer (1883-1947), New York, USA; acquired from the above on 19th November 1936, inventory no.P13151, archived as "Found in the Sea, at Piraeus, in the beginning of the 19th Century"
The Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, USA; acquired from the above on 2nd June 1938
Private collection, Japan

Literature

Compare For the scene see a drawing by Richard Dalton in the British Museum, showing the friezes on the Maussolleion at Halicarnassus, museum number 1955,0421.3, Mausoleum 1012

Publications

Sotheby Parke-Bernet, New York, USA; The Cranbrook Collections, 2nd-5th May 1972, lot 337