Giacobbe Giusti: Jens M Daehner and Kenneth Lapatin, the co-curators of Power and Pathos

Giacobbe Giusti: Jens M Daehner and Kenneth Lapatin, the co-curators of Power and Pathos

 

1. Head of Athlete Holding a Strigil (Ephebe Apoxyomenos from Ephesos),
AD 1-50. 205cm x 78.7cm x 77.5cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

 

Jens M Daehner and Kenneth Lapatin, the co-curators of Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World, explain the thinking behind their stunning
new exhibition

In the winter of 2000, two bronze statues in the Berlin Antikensammlung, the so-called Praying Boy and the headless Salamis Youth, were joined by two other bronzes lent from Florence and Los Angeles, the statue of an ephebe called the Idolino and the victorious athlete known as the Getty Bronze. They had been brought to Germany to undergo scientific testing at the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (Bundesanstalt für Materialprüfung, BAM), particularly CT scanning to measure and visualise the thickness of the casts. While they were there, the curators in Berlin seized the rare opportunity to display these four sculptures, two Greek and two Roman, side by side in the rotunda of the Altes Museum.

2. Bronze portrait head of a man,
1st century BC. 29.5cm x 21.6cm x 21.6cm.
The J Paul Getty Museum, Villa Collection.

3. Ephebe (Idolino from Pesaro) circa 30 BC, bronze with copper inlays and lead. National Archaeological Museum, Florence.

4. Apollo-Kouros, 1st century BC to 1st century AD, bronze, copper, bone, dark stone, glass.
128cm x 33cm x 38cm.
5. The head of Apollo-Kouros.Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Pompei.

The coming together of four life-size male nudes in bronze was unprecedented, inviting direct comparison­ – exploration without scientific equipment – in which topics such as the body as rendered in bronze, various depictions of age and degrees of realism, and the Classical versus classicising, all powerfully came to the fore. The two Greek athletes from around 300 BC and the two Roman youths of the Augustan age, produced three centuries later, made a quartet framing the beginning and the end of the Hellenistic epoch, yet depicting
very much the same subject in the same medium. This temporary installation in Berlin also highlighted persistent challenges in comparing large-scale ancient bronzes: as rare survivors from antiquity, they usually exist in ‘splendid isolation’ at their home institutions, which seldom possess more than one in their collections. Such statues are usually granted a questionable status as unique masterpieces of ancient art. This means being able to see and study more than one or two bronze sculptures at a time is exceptional, but in our exhibition visitors are able to do just that.
Marble sculpture, by contrast, exists in relative abundance, filling galleries and storerooms in museums worldwide. There is a solid, highly evolved set of critical methods for comparing and making sense of marbles, based on the quantity of available specimens and centuries of perceptive experience with the medium that is shared by lay and expert viewers. An equivalent ‘toolbox’ for seeing and understanding bronze statues in direct juxtaposition does not exist, or, simply put, we lack the familiarity of seeing them side by side. This affects not only aesthetic questions such as the assessment of style, but also the interpretation of bronze-specific surface phenomena such as corrosion, intentional patinas ­– both ancient and modern – and the cleaning methods employed in earlier restorations.
One of bronze’s principal characteristics is that, like any metal, it can be melted down and reused. Ancient bronze statues therefore survive in numbers far smaller than their counterparts in more dur-able marble. In fact, with the exception of very few sculptures that seem never to have been lost and subsequently recovered, the ancient bronze images that are so greatly admired today have been preserved largely by chance – whether they were discovered accidentally or unearthed during carefully planned and executed scientific excavations. Given the law of supply and demand, the rarity of ancient bronzes has elevated their value and status. So, although scarce in museum galleries, they are prevalent both in our textbooks and in popular consciousness.
Greek and Latin literary sources and the fact that bronzes were transported as booty, but also as scrap, leave no doubt that the statues were valued. But were they valued more highly than those fashioned from other materials? Certainlynot more than images of gold and ivory, whose materials alone placed them in a different class altogether. But since the Renaissance, when scholars sought to connect surviving artefacts with works mentioned in ancient texts, bronze statues have come to be prized as ‘originals’, frequently in contrast to marble ‘copies’, and they have frequently been considered Greek rather than Roman.

6. Bronze statuette of Alexander the Great on horseback, 1st century BC. 49cm x 47cm x 29cm. National Archaeological Museum, Naples.

There are several paradoxes here: first, the devaluing of marble, which was a primary, natural, local medium for the Greeks and always had to be carved by hand. Second, and more significantly, that bronze, a material that lends itself to the serial reproduction of similar, if not identical statues through the use of moulds and the indirect lost-wax technique, should be regarded as the premier material for the creation of unique, original works of art.
Such is the allure of ancient bronzes that there has been an irresistible urge among scholars to attribute them to famous sculptors – a trend that continues to this day in an almost predictable pattern: the head of a boxer from Olympia has been attributed to Silanion; the Getty Athlete and the Terme Boxer, both to Lysippos; and the Mazara Satyr declared to be an original by Praxiteles. The latest example is the bronze version of the Apollo Sauroktonos in Cleveland, also believed by some to have been cast by Praxiteles himself, or at least by
his workshop.
Indeed, scholars hardly agree on what distinguishes a direct from an indirect casting or how to determine whether surface details were executed in the wax or as part of the cold work after casting. Yet these distinctions are often considered particularly important in the hope of establishing how original a given bronze is, and deemed crucial in any effort to find Greek sculptural ‘originals’.
The number of statue bases whose cuttings indicate that they supported bronze statues preserved in cities and sanctuaries across the Mediterranean world certainly demonstrates the popularity and status of bronze as a medium, as do their inscriptions and other ancient documents recording with varying specificity what achievements those depicted had accomplished or benefactions they had granted in order to merit such
an honour.

7. Bronze head of Apollo, 1st century BC to 1st century AD. 51cm x 40cm x 38cm. Provincial Archaeological Museum, Salerno.

But was bronze always to be preferred over marble? Surviving statues demonstrate that Hellenistic marble carvers were no less skilled than their colleagues who modelled wax and cast bronze, even if the inherent characteristics of bronze, including its greater tensile strength, allowed sculptors to achieve dramatic visual effects less readily realised in other materials. Marbles, too, were enhanced by added colour, and extreme poses could be depicted.
The truth of the matter is that throughout antiquity marble appears to have remained the preferred material for images of gods, for funerary statues, and, as we might expect, for architectural sculpture. But in the Hellenistic period, as the social currency of honorific statuary became even more important than it had been in preceding centuries, bronze became pre-eminent, and the metal contributed its own economic, mythological, and ideological qualities to its unique physical ones.
Exaggerated or not, the fact that Lysippos is credited with having made 1500 bronze statues (Pliny, Natural History, 34.37), of which not one has survived, is a cogent reminder of the known unknowns regarding bronze sculpture at the very outset of the Hellenistic period. More than a Socratic statement of ignorance, the empty statue base from Corinth – inscribed with the name of Lysippos and with cuttings for the feet of a bronze figure – emphasises not only the pervasive loss of Hellenistic bronze statuary, but also the difficulties of reconstructing the original functions of those works that have survived in secondary if not tertiary contexts such as shipwrecks, warehouses, or intentional burials. Wherever statues have escaped re-melting and recycling, the ancient markets for art and metal have often ‘interfered’ in their lives and thus complicated the record. Ironically, it is largely due to the trade in works of art – and the accidents that occurred during such transitions – that bronzes have survived at all.
The relatively small corpus of large-scale Hellenistic bronze sculptures known today has grown slowly but steadily over the past centuries. To this day, however, there is no comprehensive survey of the material, comprising physical, iconographical, and textual evidence. Despite manageable quantities of works and fragments, the obvious challenges lie in defining ‘large scale’ and identifying what belongs to the Hellenistic period, including the vexed question of what may be casts of earlier models or Roman casts after Hellenistic models.
Our exhibition, Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World, features both Hellenistic works and Roman bronzes in a Hellenistic tradition, including some representative medium and small-scale examples. So it seems worthwhile to offer some historiographical perspective and mention some of the landmark discoveries that have shaped our current knowledge and understanding of Hellenistic bronze statuary.
Excavated in the 1750s, the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum has yielded the largest number of ancient bronzes ever found at a single site and almost overnight catapulted the study of bronzes from antiquarian pastime to art-historical discipline. Outnumbering the villa’s marble statuary by a ratio of almost 3:1 (63:22), the bronzes belonged to the superlative sculpture collection of late-Republican and Augustan patrons, which included statues and herm busts of gods, heroes, and athletes; portraits of rulers, citizens, and intellectuals as well as animal sculptures and small-scale fountain decorations. Many of these are replicas of opera nobilia of Classical Greek art; others, particularly some of the portraits, reproduce works of the Hellenistic period, yet there are also creations in the Archaic and Severe styles of the early 5th century BC: not actual ‘antiques’ but deliberate imitations, if not outright forgeries. The decorative programme of the villa thus encapsulates many of the aspects relevant to research into Hellenistic bronze explored in this exhibition: replication, imitation, retrospective styles, originality, and the challenges of dating, as well as the tradition of Hellenistic art in a 1st-century BC Roman context.
When two over-life-size statues, known today as the Terme Ruler and the Terme Boxer, were discovered on the Quirinal hill in 1885, it immediately became clear that they survived intact not by chance, but because they were­­ – for reasons still unknown – carefully deposited in antiquity. The find, if not the circumstances of burial, illuminates the fate of many Greek bronzes that were removed from their original locations and transferred to Italy, beginning with the Roman conquests of the Eastern Mediterranean in the mid-2nd century BC. Although we can easily imagine the Quirinal bronzes installed in a Greek sanctuary or civic space, we can only speculate about their function and display in Rome. They may have been part of the city’s collection of Greek works of art, admired by Romans much as we admire them today. In fact, nothing associates these two Greek bronzes within their new cultural context beyond their extraordinary artistic and conceptual qualities. Since the moment of their discovery, the ruler’s heroic image of power and the boxer’s graphically rendered pathos have helped crystallise in the modern mind two paramount phenomena of Hellenistic art.
Like many bronzes found underwater in the Mediterranean, the cache of statues found – on land – at Athens’ port, Piraeus, in 1959 were sculptures in transition. Packed tightly together in two crates, the five bronzes – Athena, Apollo-Kouros, two statues of Artemis, and a tragic mask – must have been destined for shipment from a warehouse in the ancient harbour that burned down in the early 1st century BC. The group highlights the existence of a vibrant market for Greek bronzes, yet how old exactly they are in this case has not been properly determined. The Apollo in Archaic style, now considered a Hellenistic creation, if not an actual Archaic bronze, is the extreme in the group, while the goddesses have been dated either on the face value of their style (with little consideration that they could be bronze copies of older works) or as contemporary casts of a single commission. Regrettably, since their discovery 56 years ago, the Piraeus bronzes have not been systematically analysed or had their casting techniques examined.
But the seductive opportunities to look inside the hollow-cast bronzes with endoscopes and through their walls with x-rays have, at least for a time, sidelined efforts to make sense of their exteriors and of the medium’s specific aesthetics. We know a lot about the chemistry of man-made alloys, minute details of casting, cold-working, and repairs, but still very little about bronze’s role in artistic development, how its use impacted style, or why it was chosen for particular subjects, genres, or iconographic categories. That bronze as an artistic medium has been studied largely from a technological point of view, perhaps more so than other metals, has to do with its complex metallurgy as a copper alloy and the sophistication of the casting process.

8. Bronze portrait head of Arsinoë III Philopator, late 3rd century to early 2nd century BC.
30cm x 20cm x 30cm. Civic Museum, Palazzo Te, Mantua.

Rarely, however, has technical or analytical data allowed us to narrow the date of a bronze sculpture beyond what could be – and mostly had been already – established on stylistic grounds. In no period of Greek and Roman art is this more apparent than in the Hellenistic age: some of the period’s signature bronze sculptures can be placed, with persuasive stylistic arguments, at various points within a 300-year window spanning the entire period, while none of the intensive scientific investigations have yielded viable arguments in favour of an earlier or later date. Like certain styles in Hellenistic sculpture, bronze-casting technologies cannot (so far) be pinned to particular phases or excluded from others within this long period. Even less so once we recognise that some artists not only imitated earlier styles but also chose old-fashioned techniques. Thus the three Hellenistic artists who left their names on lead tablets inside the Piombino Apollo fashioned their statue, basically an Archaic kouros, with copper inlays for the eyebrows – a typical treatment for Archaic bronzes – and silver inlays for the antiquated letters of the dedicatory inscription.
Either our data on the alloys and techniques of Hellenistic bronze sculpture is too limited for making better distinctions, or the casting process and other metallurgical traditions did not change all that much during the period. So unless the decision is between an actual Archaic bronze and an archaistic cast 500 years younger, many analytical test results are found to be merely ‘not inconsistent’ with a Hellenistic attribution of the object
in question.
Of course, technological and metallurgical diagnostics ought not to be reduced to the issue of chronology or authenticity: we do understand bronze sculptures better because the analytical lens allows us to comprehend how they were made. As mentioned above, this kind of manufacturing data, like simple measurements, is increasingly becoming part of the common infrastructure for the serious study of ancient bronzes. Yet the investigations could go significantly further when the methodical juxtaposition of actual works – through loans, exhibitions, or parallel conservation treatments – creates opportunities for comparative inquiries, generating and fuelling future analytical questions. In fact, some recent and current analytical explorations already go hand in hand with a new art-historical interest in the aesthetics of bronze surfaces.

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9. Herm of Dionysos (Getty Herm), from the workshop of Boëthos of Kalchedon, bronze, copper, calcitic stone, 2nd century BC. 103cm x 23.5cm x 19.5cm. The J Paul Getty Museum, Villa Collection.

The challenges of chronology in Hellenistic sculpture often seem to get compounded when dealing with bronze. In our exhibition, the artworks follow only a broad chronological framework: the image of Alexander – represented not by a contemporary bronze portrait (which has not survived) but by a 1st-century BC equestrian statuette – and portraits of subsequent rulers, among which only the heads of Arsinoë III and Seuthes III of Thrace are plausibly (though not indisputably) identified and hence dated.
The subsequent thematic sections each cut across time and geography. Their topics are a blend of iconographical and aesthetic categories ­– portraiture, the body, realism, imitation, and replication – setting up a framework to correlate bronze sculpture to cultural trends, artistic tendencies, and stylistic developments in the Hellenistic age. The idea is to identify and describe phenomena specific to bronze and to bring out what bronze as a medium contributes to the period’s sculpture, be it as a vehicle for tradition or a catalyst for change. How are the expression and the expressiveness of portraits impacted by the use of bronze as opposed to marble? How do surface finishes, such as patinas or polychrome details, affect the question of realism?
Particular emphasis is placed on the aspect of replication. The one phenomenon that distinguishes bronze from other media is its reproducibility through casting. Several examples of multiple versions of the same statue are shown in the catalogue, the extraordinary case being the Apoxyomenos of the Ephesos type, for whom there are three bronze versions, all of them probably late Hellenistic or early Roman Imperial copies of a 4th-century BC athlete holding a strigil. The number of bronze replicas extant has now compelled experts to reassess that
work’s attribution.
Bringing these three bronzes together for the first time in the exhibition will provide an opportunity for comparative study, looking not only at casting and finishing techniques, but also at proportions, details, and styles in order to understand the bronzes’ relation both to one another and to their obviously famous prototype. The two herms of Dionysos, one of which is signed by the 2nd-century BC sculptor Boëthos of Kalchedon, may present a case of multiples produced by the same workshop. The evidence is less clear on this issue for the two archaistic Apollo-Kouroi from Piombino and Pompeii. Although often compared in print, till now neither of these two pairs has previously been displayed side by side.
The idealised sculptures, Idolinos such as the Florentine statue, were made around the time of Augustus, reproducing, refashioning, and sometimes mixing the severe and high-Classical styles of Greek sculpture in the 5th century BC. The Vani torso from ancient Colchis – cast in a local workshop, probably at the height of the Hellenistic period, but in the early Classical idiom of at least 300 years earlier – reminds us that Classicism and other retrospective modes of representation are neither Roman inventions nor exclusive to Italy. Established in Hellenistic art, they fed into the taste for what looks like a Greek revival at the very beginning of the Roman Empire. Bronze certainly was the material of choice that made this period an early ‘age of mechanical reproduction’.

http://www.minervamagazine.co.uk/feature-2015-08.html

http://www.giacobbegiuti.com

Giacobbe Giusti, Greek antiquities

Giacobbe Giusti, Greek antiquities

Gaze upon the eyes of ancient Greece

The Canadian Museum of History debuts a huge exhibit exposing the lives behind the ancients who have held our imaginations in thrall

Greek antiquities

This gold headdress of a Bottiaean woman, which identified her as a high priestess, was found in the necropolis of Archontiko in the ancient city of Pella. It dates from 540 to 530 BCE. (Hellenic Ministry of Culture, Education and Religious Affairs)

There is a turning point early in The Greeks: Agamemnon to Alexander the Great, the big summer show at the Canadian Museum of History, in Gatineau, Que., across the Ottawa River from the Parliament Buildings. The exhibition starts quietly, with some small objects from Stone Age hunter-gatherers, including carved fertility figurines, followed by early Minoan artifacts, notably, an impressive bronze double axe. But then, the visitor enters the section devoted to Mycenaean civilization—the period remembered in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey—to be greeted by a gleaming, circular, gold death mask.

Here is one of the most storied objects of world archaeological lore, never before allowed to leave Greece. The 19th-century German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann famously set out to locate the Iliad’s main cities and, having discovered and excavated Troy, moved on to searching for Mycenae, home city of Agamemnon, commander of the Greeks in the Trojan war. Schliemann found it, too, uncovering fabulous burial objects. On this historic dig in 1876, he unearthed the mask, declaring, “I have gazed upon the eyes of Agamemnon.” Later scholarship, alas, showed the object is perhaps 300 years too old to be from the era historians believe was reimagined centuries later in Homer’s epic.

But that hardly matters. Even if it doesn’t depict Agamemnon, the Mycenaean mask dazzles. And, as a potent symbol of Greek civilization’s long hold on our imaginations, it serves notice of this show’s ambition. Covering 5,000 years of history, the exhibition sets out to tell a triumphant story—nothing less than how the glory that was Greece remains the foundation of what many museum visitors will still recognize, even in the age of multiculturalism, as shared cultural values. “I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say this is where our civilization is coming from,” says curator Terence Clark.

With the Greek government’s full backing, 21 Greek museums loaned the more than 500 artifacts on display. The Canadian Museum of History led the organization of the show, but it was first uncrated this past winter at Montreal’s Pointe-à-Callière archaeology museum, where it proved enormously popular. After a planned run until Oct. 12 in Gatineau—timed to draw in Ottawa’s summer tourist throngs—the show moves on to Chicago’s Field Museum and, finally, to the National Geographic Museum in Washington.

After the Mycenaean mask, there’s no letdown, as the exhibition strides through the rise of classical Greece. A circle of bronze helmets, decorated with gold, from sometime after 530 BCE, conveys the muscle of a warrior culture. An elegant marble bas-relief from around 460 BCE shows a victorious young athlete crowning himself with an olive wreath, a gesture Clark interprets as signifying the emergence of the Greek sense of the individual. Athenian democracy is fully explored. Marble heads of Plato and Aristotle, along with one of the orator Demosthenes, celebrate the city state as the birthplace of European philosophy and politics. The final section on Alexander the Great features a famous bust of the youthful Macedonian conqueror, along with troves of spectacular gold and bronze items from Macedonian tombs.

The show’s creators strive to avoid overloading visitors with chronology. The strategy, Clark says, includes offering plenty of “little snapshots that tell an individual’s story.” Thus, instead of just displaying the burial bling of the queen called “the Lady of Archontiko” under glass, her gold is arranged on a mannequin. “You can see who this person was,” Clark says. The ancient bronze swords inside a display case can’t be touched, but a replica is there to be gripped. Press a button in front of Plato, Aristotle or Demosthenes to hear their words while looking into their time-worn marble faces.

The exceptional quality of the artifacts assembled in this show is undeniable. The only question is whether the ideas associated with the ancient Greeks can—as they have so often throughout history—again outshine even the amazing objects they left behind.

Gaze upon the eyes of ancient Greece

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Charioteer of Delphi

Giacobbe Giusti, Charioteer of Delphi

 

 

The Charioteer of Delphi, 478 or 474 BC, Delphi Museum.

Charioteer of Delphi,

The Charioteer of Delphi, also known as Heniokhos (Greek: Ηνίοχος, the rein-holder), is one of the best-known statues surviving from Ancient Greece, and is considered one of the finest examples of ancient bronze statues. The life-size (1.8m)^[1] statue of a chariot driver was found in 1896 at the Sanctuary of Apollo in Delphi.^[2] It is now in the Delphi Archaeological Museum.

• 1 Background
• 2 Design and completeness
• 3 Style
• 4 The Delphos Gown
• 5 Gallery
• 6 References
• 7 External links

Background

The statue was made at Delphi in 478 or 474 BC,^[2] to commemorate the victory of a chariot team in the Pythian Games, which were held at Delphi every four years in honor of Pythean Apollo. It was originally part of a larger group of statuary, including the chariot, four (possibly six) horses and two grooms. Some fragments of the horses were found with the statue. When intact, it must have been one of the most imposing works of statuary in the world.

An inscription on the limestone base of the statue shows that it was dedicated by Polyzalus,^[2] the tyrant of Gela, a Greek colony in Sicily, as a tribute to Apollo for helping him win the chariot race. The inscription reads: [P]OLUZALOS MA nETHÊK[EN] …]ON AES EUONUM APOLL[ON], which is reconstructed to read “Polyzalos dedicated me. … Make him prosper, honoured Apollo.”

The Sicilian cities were very wealthy compared with most of the cities of mainland Greece and their rulers could afford the most magnificent offerings to the gods, also the best horses and drivers. It is unlikely, however, the statue itself comes from Sicily. The name of the sculptor is unknown, but for stylistic reasons it is believed that the statue was cast in Athens. It has certain similarities of detail to the statue known as the Piraeus Apollo, which is known to be of Athenian origin.

Design and completeness

Charioteer of Delphi, (3:38), Smarthistory

Most bronze statues from ancient times were melted down for their raw materials sometime after casting, but the Charioteer survived because it was buried under a rock-fall at Delphi.^[2] The Charioteer is almost intact except that his left forearm and some details on the head are missing including the copper inlays on the lips and most of the silver eyelashes and headband.^[2] The statue is one of the few Greek bronzes to preserve the inlaid glass eyes. Greek bronzes were cast in sections and then assembled. When discovered, the statue was in three pieces—head and upper torso, lower torso, and right arm.

The figure is of a very young man, as is shown by his soft side-curls. Like modern jockeys, chariot racers were chosen for their lightness, but also needed to be tall, so they were frequently teenagers. It seems that it represents a teenager from a noble family of his time. As we know, aristocratic chariot racers selected their drivers from glorious noble families to race their chariot in the Panhellenic games. The Charioteer wears the customary long tunic, (the xystin), reaching down to his ankles. A wide belt tightens the tunic high above the waist, while two other bands pass as suspenders over the shoulders, under the arms and crisscross in the back. This is the analavos which keeps the garment from billowing in the wind during the race. The deep vertical pleats in the lower part of the tunic emphasize the Charioteer’s solid posture, resembling also the fluting of an Ionic column. On the upper part of the body, however, the pleats are wavy, diagonal or curved. This contrast in the garment representation is also followed by the body’s contrapuntal posture, so that the statue does not show any rigidity, but looks perfectly mobile and almost real. The entire statue is as if it is animated by a gradual shift to the right starting from the solid stance of the feet and progressing sequentially through the body passing the hips, chest and head to end up at its gaze. The hands are spread out holding the reins, with the long and thin fingers tightening – together with the reins – a cylindrical object, the riding crop. The Charioteer is not portrayed during the race, as in this case his movement would be more intense, but in the end of the race, after his victory, when – being calm and full of happiness – he makes the victory lap in the hippodrome. His attractive gemstone eyes evoke what Classical period Greeks called ethos and balance. His motion is instantaneous, but also eternal. In spite of the great victory, there are no shouts, but a calm inner power. The face and the body do not have the features of arrogance, but those of calm self-confidence.^[3]

Unusually for this era, the Charioteer is clothed head to foot. Most athletes at this time would have competed, and been depicted nude. The young man would certainly have been of a lower status than his master Polyzalos and Honour and Fleming have speculated that he may have been a household slave that it was not appropriate to depict nude.^[2]

Style

Stylistically, the Charioteer is classed as “Early Classical” or “Severe”^[4] (see Greek art). The statue is more naturalistic than the kouroi of the Archaic period, but the pose is still very rigid when compared with later works of the Classical period. One departure from the Archaic style is that the head is inclined slightly to one side. The naturalistic rendering of his feet was greatly admired in ancient times.^{[citation needed]} The introverted expression does away with the old ‘Archaic smile’.

The Delphos Gown

In about 1907, some ten years after the discovery of the Charioteer, Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo (1871–1949), a Spanish artist-designer based in Venice, created a finely pleated silk dress that he named the Delphos gown after the statue, whose robes it closely resembled.^[5][6] These gowns are considered important pieces of early 20th century fashion and art objects in their own right, with one being the only fashion garment in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.^[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charioteer_of_Delphi

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Croatian Apoxyomenos

Giacobbe Giusti, Croatian Apoxyomenos

 

Statue of an athlete scraping himself or scraping his strigil.

Statue d’un athlète se raclant la peau ou raclant son strigile.

l’Apoxyomène de Croatie a été découvert en 1996 en mer Adriatique, remonté en 1999 et restauré jusqu’en 2005^[19]. Son apparence est proche de l’Apoxyomène d’Éphèse et de la tête se trouvant au musée d’art Kimbell de Fort Worth (Texas). La particularité de l’Apoxyomène de Croatie est d’être pratiquement complet (il lui manque l’auriculaire de la main gauche), dans un état de conservation exceptionnel et d’avoir encore sa plinthe antique^[20].

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apoxyom%C3%A8ne

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

Giacobbe Giusti, Mount Falterona, ‘Il lago degli idoli’

Giacobbe Giusti, Mount Falterona ‘Il lago degli idoli’

 

Nude youth with baldric , bronze

Louvre museum, Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities
Etruscan Art (9th-1st centuries BC)

Author(s):
Astier Marie-Bénédicte

musée du Louvre

This statuette comes from a votive depository found on Mount Falterona in Italy, on the site of a temple, which appears to have been frequented especially by the military. The figurine, representing a nude youth adjusting his baldric, probably adorned the upper part of a candelabrum. It has been attributed by some to a workshop in Vulci, by others to one in Etruria Padana, where great numbers of Vulcian bronzes imported in the early 5th century were subsequently copied.

The votive depot at Falterona

This statuette comes from an exceptional trove of bronze votive offerings discovered in 1838 on Mount Falterona, central Italy, near a small lake by a road linking Northern Etruria to Romagna. The collection of objects included items made between the late 6th century BC and the Hellenistic era: 620 statuettes, human figures (some of which went to the British Museum in London and to the Louvre), and representations of domestic animals; nearly 2,000 fragments of weapons and parts of the human body (heads, trunks, arms, legs, etc.); and a number of coins. The cult celebrated in this location was probably devoted to the worship of healing gods. The presence of a numerous weapons and warrior statuettes indicates that this temple, where representations of Hercules also have been found, was especially favored by the military.

A warrior figure decorating a candelabrum

The Louvre figurine represents a warrior, in the form of a nude youth, adjusting his baldric and scabbard to sheathe a two-edged sword in his right hand. The athletic build and posture of the figure echo Greek works of the classical period. The bronze maker applied the lessons of the mid-5th century BC Greek sculptor Polycletus, who invented the contrapposto pose, in which the hips and shoulders move in opposite directions. Set on a small molded base, the statuette probably decorated the upper part of a candelabrum.

An object made in Vulci or Etruria Padana

The statuette was made in the early decades of the 4th century BC, using the lost-wax solid casting method. Some have attributed it to a workshop in Vulci, but it is perhaps more likely that it was made at Spina, in Etruria Padana: there are clear links between the works made by the two centers of production ; Vulcian bronzes, imported in great numbers in the early 5th century, were subsequently copied by the craftsmen of Spina.

Bibliography
E. Hostetter, Bronzes from Spina, Mayence, 1986, p. 197, n 29.
Civiltà degli Etruschi, Florence-Milan, 1985, n 10.30.6, p. 285.
M. Cristofani, I Bronzi degli Etruschi, 1985, n 4.8, p. 256.

http://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/nude-youth-baldric

Il Lago degli Idoli

Il lago degli Idoli.

Plus à l’est se trouve un petit point d’eau dénommé Lago degli Idoli. Le lac a été récemment rétabli car jusqu’à peu, il avait complètement disparu.

Il s’agissait par le passé d’un site archéologique duquel ont été extraites un nombre considérable de statuettes principalement d’origine étrusque mais aussi grecque et romaine. Une grande partie de celles-ci représente des parties anatomiques humaines mais aussi certaines représentent des animaux et semblent toutes symboliser des sacrifices : tout cela participe à donner à ce lieu un caractère sacré.

Au printemps 1838, suite à l’heureuse découverte d’une statuette en bronze par une gardienne de troupeaux aux alentours du lac, se met en place à Stia une société formée de différents groupes d’amateurs locaux qui entreprend une grande campagne de fouilles sur les lieux. L’exceptionnelle quantité de pièces mises à jour au cours des années 1838 – 1839 participeront à l’assèchement du lac afin de faciliter les excavations. Il n’y a que quelques années que le lac a été rétabli en son lit initial.

Tout le fruit de cette première campagne de fouilles fut offert au grand-duc Léopold II de Toscane qui non seulement ne se montra pas intéressé par l’acquisition de ces pièces mais en plus ne fit rien pour en empêcher la dispersion. En effet, quelques pièces ont été retrouvées dans des collections permanentes de musées prestigieux tels que Le Louvre, le British Museum et l’Ermitage mais une grande partie de ces pièces restent encore aujourd’hui introuvables^[3]. Dans les années suivantes, d’autres campagnes de fouilles se sont succédé, apportant de nouveaux résultats, surtout grâce au Groupe Archéologique Casentinois.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_Falterona

http://www.giacobbegiusti

Giacobbe Giusti, PUISSANCE ET PATHOS. Bronzes du Monde Hellénistique

Giacobbe Giusti, PUISSANCE ET PATHOS. Bronzes du Monde Hellénistique

La beauté à l’époque hellénistique bronzes exposés au Palazzo Strozzi

En collaboration avec J. Paul Getty Museum de Los Angeles di, la National Gallery of Art de Washington et de l’Archaeological Survey of Toscane, coup d’envoi de l’exposition «Pouvoir et pathos. Bronzes du monde hellénistique »dans le prestigieux Palazzo Strozzi.

Les animateurs, jusqu’au 21 Juin, Palazzo Strozzi à Florence, une extraordinaire série de sculptures à partir du quatrième siècle avant JC. au premier siècle D.C..

Pour la première fois réunis à Florence sur les 50 chefs-d’œuvre en bronze de la période hellénistique, IV-I siècle avant JC, qualité très expressive, faite avec des techniques raffinées dans un langage artistique très élaborée, y compris Apoxyomenos Vienne bronze et la version en marbre Offices utilisé pour sa restauration; i due Apollo-Kouroi, archaïsant au Louvre et à Pompéi.

Jusqu’à présent, aucun des couples ne avait jamais été exposé un à côté de l’autre.

Le Apoxyomenos est l’athlète qui nettoie la sueur à la fin d’une course, avec un métal incurvée outil spécial, ce strigile.

Les sculpteurs hellénistiques qui le premier a poussé à la limite les effets dramatiques de les rideaux étaient balançant, les cheveux en désordre, grimaces dents serrées; était entre leurs mains que les formes extérieures de la sculpture sont devenus tout aussi expressive de triomphe et de tragédie intérieure; et ce est dans leurs images de taille que nous voyons pour la première fois une représentation de tous les individus crédibles et événements réels, ils étaient des scènes de la vie quotidienne ou le combat entre Achille et chevaux de Troie.

La représentation artistique de la figure humaine est centrale dans la plupart des cultures anciennes, mais la Grèce est l’endroit où il avait plus d’importance et d’influence sur l’histoire ultérieure de l’art.

L’art sculptural était destiné à embellir les rues et les espaces publics, où commémorant gens et les événements, et le sanctuaire, où ils ont été utilisés comme des “votes”, o le case, où il a servi comme éléments décoratifs, ou dans les cimetières, où les symboles funéraires représentés.

Alla fine dell’età classica gli scultori greci avevano raggiunto un’abilità straordinaria, sans précédent dans le monde de l’art, imitant le corps de disposition et la forme plastique.

Le bronze, pour sa qualité, a toujours été considéré comme un métal noble et les artistes du monde antique étaient les maîtres dans le processus de fabrication du complexe métallique.

L’exposition est divisée en sept sections thématiques, ouverture avec la grande statue de la soi-disant Arringatore, ce était déjà partie de la collection de Cosme Ier de Médicis, pour indiquer combien d’intérêt produit les œuvres hellénistiques déjà à la Renaissance; poi prosegue con una vasta sezione di ritratti di personaggi influenti, nouveau genre artistique qui est né avec Alexandre le Grand.

Organismes idéaux, organismes extrêmes vous permet de vérifier le développement de nouvelles formes de disciplines artistiques de la vie quotidienne, positions avec dynamique.

La sixième section, “Divinité”, aborde la place d’un sujet important et présente des œuvres d’une beauté extraordinaire, y compris la Minerve d’Arezzo, le médaillon avec le buste d’Athéna et de la Tête d’Aphrodite.

Cecilia Chiavisteli

Par le nombre 57 – Année II 25/03/2015

Puissance et de pathos. Bronzes du monde hellénistique
Jusqu’au 21 Juin 2015
Palais Strozzi – Florence
Info: 055 2645155 – http://www.palazzostrozzi.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Apoxyomène

L’Apoxyomène dans le cabinet auquel il a donné son nom, musée Pio-Clementino

L’Apoxyomène (en grec ancienἀποξυόμενος / apoxuómenos, de ἀποξὐω / apoxúô, « racler, gratter ») est un marbre d’après Lysippe, représentant, comme son nom l’indique, un athlète nu se raclant la peau avec un strigile. Il est conservé au musée Pio-Clementino (musées du Vatican) sous le numéro Inv. 1185.

Sommaire

 [masquer] 

• 1 Découverte
• 2 Description
• 3 Copies et variantes
• 4 Notes
• 5 Voir aussi
  • 5.1 Bibliographie
  • 5.2 Liens externes

Découverte

En 1849, dans le quartier romain du Trastevere, des ouvriers découvrent dans les ruines de ce qu’on croit alors être des thermes romains la statue d’un jeune homme nu se raclant avec un strigile^[1]. Son premier commentateur, l’architecte et antiquaire Luigi Canina, l’identifie comme une copie du sculpteur grec Polyclète^[2], mais dès l’année suivante, l’archéologue allemand August Braun^[3] y reconnaît une copie d’un type en bronze de Lysippe (vers 330–320 av. J.-C.), que nous connaissons uniquement par une mention de Pline l’Ancien dans son Histoire naturelle : « [Lysippe] réalisa, comme nous l’avons dit, le plus grand nombre de statues de tous, avec un art très fécond, et parmi elles, un athlète en train de se nettoyer avec un strigile (destringens se)^[4]. »

Le type est fameux dès l’Antiquité : toujours selon Pline, la statue est consacrée par le général Marcus Agrippa devant les thermes qui portent son nom. L’empereur Tibère, grand admirateur de la statue, la fait enlever et transporter dans sa chambre. « Il en résulta une telle fronde du peuple romain », raconte Pline, « qu’il réclama dans les clameurs du théâtre qu’on restituât l’Apoxyomène et que le prince, malgré son amour, le restitua^[4]. »

Braun se fonde d’une part sur la pose de la statue, d’autre part sur les remarques de Pline sur le canon lysippéen, plus élancé que celui de Polyclète^[5] : effectivement, la tête est plus petite par rapport au corps, plus fin — il faut toutefois remarquer qu’à l’époque, le Doryphore n’avait pas encore été reconnu comme tel^[6]. Dans l’ensemble, les arguments avancés par Braun sont assez faibles^[7] : d’abord, l’athlète au strigile est un type commun dans l’Antiquité. Ensuite, le canon élancé, bien qu’utilisé de manière intensive par Lysippe et son école, n’est pas spécifique à cet artiste : on le retrouve par exemple dans les combattants de la frise du Mausolée d’Halicarnasse^[8]. Cependant, malgré des contestations, l’attribution à Lysippe est largement admise aujourd’hui^[9].

La statue jouit d’une grande popularité dès sa découverte. Elle est restaurée par le sculpteur italien Pietro Tenerani qui complète les doigts de la main droite, le bout du nez, restitue le strigile disparu de la main gauche et cache le sexe de l’athlète par une feuille de vigne^[10] — ces restaurations ont été supprimées récemment. De nombreux moulages en sont réalisés. Jacob Burckhardt la cite dans son Cicerone (guide de Rome) de 1865^[11].

Description

Détail de la tête et des bras

La statue, réalisée en marbre du Pentélique est légèrement plus grande que nature : elle mesure 2,05 mètres^[12]. Elle représente un jeune homme nu, debout, raclant la face postérieure de l’avant-bras droit à l’aide d’un strigile tenu de la main gauche. Il hoche légèrement la tête et regarde devant lui. Un tronc d’arbre sert d’étai à la jambe gauche ; un autre étai, aujourd’hui brisé, faisait supporter le poids du bras droit tendu sur la jambe droite.

La statue frappe d’abord par sa composition : elle n’est plus uniquement frontale, comme dans le Doryphore ou le Discobole. Le bras tendu à angle droit de l’athlète oblige le spectateur, s’il veut bien saisir le mouvement, à se déplacer sur les côtés. Elle se distingue également par l’emploi du contrapposto (« déhanché ») : le poids du corps repose sur la seule jambe gauche, la droite étant légèrement avancée et repliée. De ce fait, les hanches sont orientées vers la gauche, alors que les épaules sont tournées dans le sens inverse, suivant le mouvement du bras droit, créant ainsi un mouvement de torsion que le spectateur ne peut pleinement saisir qu’en reproduisant lui-même la pose. La musculature est rendue de manière moins marquée que chez Polyclète. Alors que le torse représente traditionnellement le morceau de bravoure du sculpteur, il est ici partiellement dissimulé par la position des bras.

La tête frappe par sa petite taille : elle représente un huitième du corps entier, contre un septième dans le canon polyclétéen. L’historienne de l’art Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway juge même l’effet « presque comique^[13] ». Autre nouveauté, la tête est traitée comme un portrait : la chevelure est représentée en désordre, le front est marqué et les yeux, enfoncés. Pour R. R. R. Smith, ces caractéristiques rendent la tête plus vivante^[14], mais Ridgway les considère comme des défauts attribuables au copiste, ou à une erreur de présentation de la statue : elle aurait pu être présentée sur une base surélevée^[15].

Copies et variantes

L’Apoxyomène d’Éphèse

L’Apoxyomène de Croatie

L’Apoxyomène du Vatican est le seul exemplaire entier en marbre de ce type^[16]. Un torse très abîmé des réserves du Musée national romain, d’origine inconnue, a été reconnu en 1967 comme une réplique, mais dont la pose est inversée. Un autre torse, décorant la façade du Bâtiment M (probablement une bibliothèque) à Sidé, en Pamphylie, a été identifiée comme une variante en 1973. Enfin, un torse de proportions beaucoup plus réduites, découvert à Fiesole (Toscane) a été rattaché à l’Apoxyomène, mais son authenticité a été contestée^[17]. Cette relative absence de copies s’explique mal : Rome comptait plusieurs ateliers de copistes^[18]. Par ailleurs, aucun obstacle technique ne semble avoir pu empêcher la réalisation de moulages, Pline ne mentionnant aucune dorure.

Un type différent a été découvert en 1898 à Éphèse ; la statue, en bronze, est actuellement conservée au musée d’histoire de l’art de Vienne (Inv. 3168). Haute de 1,92 mètre, cette copie romaine représente un athlète à la musculature puissante qui, ayant terminé de se racler le corps, nettoie son strigile : il le tient de la main droite et enlève la sueur et la poussière du racloir avec l’index et le pouce de la main gauche ; la position des jambes et plus généralement le mouvement de torsion sont inversés par rapport à l’Apoxyomène du Vatican. Contrairement à ce dernier, qui semble regarder dans la vague, l’athlète d’Éphèse est concentré sur sa tâche.

Un autre exemplaire en bronze, l’Apoxyomène de Croatie a été découvert en 1996 en mer Adriatique, remonté en 1999 et restauré jusqu’en 2005^[19]. Son apparence est proche de l’Apoxyomène d’Éphèse et de la tête se trouvant au musée d’art Kimbell de Fort Worth (Texas). La particularité de l’Apoxyomène de Croatie est d’être pratiquement complet (il lui manque l’auriculaire de la main gauche), dans un état de conservation exceptionnel et d’avoir encore sa plinthe antique^[20].

 

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apoxyom%C3%A8ne

http://www.laterrazzadimichelangelo.it/news/la-bellezza-nei-bronzi-ellenistici-in-mostra-a-palazzo-strozzi/?lang=fr
http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

Giacobbe Giusti, The Antikythera Ephebe

Giacobbe Giusti, The Antikythera Ephebe

Museus Athens Efivos Adikithira 4th Century B.C.

The Antikythera Ephebe, here a profile head detail of the bronze statue of a young man of languorous grace, which was found in 1900 by sponge-divers in the area of an ancient shipwreck off the island of Antikythera, Greece.

 

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

The Antikythera Ephebe

The Antikythera Ephebe is a bronze statue of a young man of languorous grace that was found in 1900 by sponge-divers in the area of the ancient Antikythera shipwreck off the island of Antikythera, Greece. It was the first of the series of Greek bronze sculptures that the Aegean and Mediterranean yielded up in the twentieth century which have fundamentally altered the modern view of Ancient Greek sculpture.^[1] The wreck site, which is dated about 70–60 BC, also yielded the Antikythera Mechanism, an astronomical calculating device, a characterful head of a Stoic philosopher, and a hoard of coins. The coins included a disproportionate quantity of Pergamenecistophorictetradrachms and Ephesian coins, leading scholars to surmise that it had begun its journey on the Ionian coast, perhaps at Ephesus; none of its recovered cargo has been identified as from mainland Greece.^[2]

The Ephebe, which measures 1.94 meters, slightly over lifesize, was retrieved in numerous fragments. Its first restoration was revised in the 1950s, under the direction of Christos Karouzos, changing the focus of the eyes, the configuration of the abdomen, the connection between the torso and the right upper thigh and the position of the right arm; the re-restoration is universally considered a success.^[2]

The Antikythera Ephebe

The Ephebe does not correspond to any familiar iconographic model, and there are no known copies of the type. He held a spherical object in his right hand,^[3] and possibly may have represented Paris presenting the Apple of Discord to Aphrodite; however, since Paris is consistently depicted cloaked and with the distinctive Phrygian cap, other scholars have suggested a beardless, youthful Heracles with the Apple of the Hesperides.^[2] It has also been suggested that the youth is a depiction of Perseus holding the head of the slain Gorgon.^[2] At any rate, the loss of the context of the Antikythera Ephebe has stripped it of its original cultural meaning.

The Ephebe, dated by its style to about 340 BC, is one of the most brilliant products of Peloponnesian bronze sculpture; the individuality and character it displays have encouraged speculation on its possible sculptor. It is, perhaps, the work of the famous sculptor Euphranor, trained in the Polyclitan tradition, who did make a sculpture of Paris, according to Pliny:

“By Euphranor is an Alexander [Paris]. This work is specially admired, because the eye can detect in it at once the judge of the goddesses, the lover of Helen, and yet the slayer of Achilles.“^[4]

The Antikythera Ephebe is conserved in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.^[5]

 

 

 

Éphèbe d’Anticythère

L’éphèbe d’Anticythère.

L’éphèbe d’Anticythère est une statue de bronze d’un jeune homme datant de vers 340-330 av. J.-C. et découverte en 1900 dans l’épave d’Anticythère au large de l’île de Anticythère, en Grèce. La sculpture est conservée au musée national archéologique d’Athènes.

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89ph%C3%A8be_d%27Anticyth%C3%A8re

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_Ephebe
http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

 

Antikythera Ephebe

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Antikythera Ephebe

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Antikythera Ephebe
Antikythera Ephebeはによって1900年に発見された物憂げ恵みの若者の銅像ですスポンジ古代の領域に-divers Antikytheraの難破船の島オフAntikythera 、 ギリシャ 。 これは、ギリシャのブロンズ彫刻のシリーズの第一号だったエーゲ海と地中海が根本的に現代のビュー変更した二十世紀中に得られた古代ギリシャの彫刻を 。 [1]約70から60 BC日公開の難破船サイト、また、得られたアンティキティラ島の機械 、天文計算装置の個性ヘッド禁欲的な哲学者、およびコインの買いだめを。 コインは不釣り合いな量含まPergamene cistophoric tetradrachmsとEphesianそれがその旅を始めていたことを推測するために学者をリードし、コインをイオニア海岸をおそらくエフェソスで、。 その回収された貨物のいずれも、ギリシャ本土からのように同定されていない。 [2]

Ephebe若干実物大の上に、1.94メートルを測定し、多数の断片に回収しました。 その最初の復元が目の焦点を変え、クリストスKarouzosの指示の下、1950年に改正された、腹部の構成、胴体と右大腿上部と右アームの位置との間の接続。 再復元が普遍的に成功したと考えられている。 [2]

Antikythera Ephebe
Ephebeは任意のおなじみの図像のモデルに対応していない、その型の既知のコピーはありません。 彼は、彼の右手に球状の物体を開催しました[3] 、おそらく表現している可能性があり、パリを提示不和のアップルにアフロディーテ 。 パリは一貫クローキングと独特で描かれているのでしかし、 フリギアキャップ 、他の学者がひげのない、若々しい示唆したヘラクレスとヘスペリデスのアップルに 。 [2]それはまた、若者がの描写であることが示唆されているペルセウスヘッドを保持しているが、殺害されたのゴルゴン 。 [2]いずれにしても、Antikythera Ephebeとの関連の損失は、元の文化的な意味のことを剥奪しました。

約340紀元前に、そのスタイルで日付Ephebeは 、ペロポネソスブロンズ彫刻の最も華麗な製品の1つです。 個性やキャラクター、それが表示され、その可能彫刻家の投機を奨励しています。 それは、おそらく、有名な彫刻家の作品ですEuphranorの訓練を受け、 Polyclitanのによると、パリの彫刻を作った伝統、 プリニウス ：

「 目は女神の裁判官の恋人一度それに検出することができるので、Euphranorではアレキサンダー[パリ]です。この作品は、特別に、賞賛されヘレン 、とのまだスレイヤーアキレス 。」 [4]

Antikythera Ephebeがで保存されているアテネの国立考古学博物館 。 [5]

ご注意 [ 編集 ]

1. ^ 他の周知の水中青銅は、一般から、検索された見つけた難破船サイト： マディアは難破チュニジア、1907年の沖。 マラソン少年マラソン、1925年の沖。 立っケープArtemisionのポセイドンは北部ユービア、1926年にケープArtemisionをオフに見つかりました。 ケープArtemision、1928年と1937年から見つかった馬とライダー 。 ゲッティ勝利青年がオフに見つかったファノ 1964年に、イタリア、。 リアーチェはブロンズ 1972年に見つかりました、。 マザーラデルヴァッロの踊るサテュロス 、ブリンディジ近く、1992; と Apoxyomenosは 「オフ海から回収されたクロアチアの島·ロシニュ 1999年。
2. ^ Jump up to: Bの Cの D マイヤーズ1999
3. ^ 青銅の分断片が指（マイヤーズ1999）に準拠しています。
4. ^ 自然史、34.77：Euphranorisアレクサンダーパリエストでクオlaudatur QUOD OMNIAサイマルintelliguntur、iudex dearum、amator Helenaeらtamen Achillisのinterfector。
5. ^ Invの。 ありません。 13396。

参考文献 [ 編集 ]
ボル、PC 1972はSkulpturenデSchiffsfundesフォンAntikytheraダイ （ベルリン：マン）。
フレイザー、AD 1928 “Antikytheraブロンズ青年とハーム·レプリカ」、 考古学 32 .3（7月〜1928年9月）、頁298から308 のアメリカジャーナル 。 同様のタイプのローマサームヘッドと、 初期の出版物の書誌。
Karouzou、S. 1968年国立考古学博物館彫刻のコレクション：カタログ （アテネ）。
マイヤーズ、エリザベススーザン、1999年修士論文、ルイジアナ州立大学（「そのコンテキストでAntikythera青年「 オンラインテキスト、PDF形式 ）。

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

http://translate.google.co.jp/translate?hl=ja&sl=en&u=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_Ephebe&prev=search

Giacobbe Giusti, Chimera of Arezzo

Giacobbe Giusti, Chimera of Arezzo

Chimera of Arezzo

Chimera of Arezzo

 

Year	c. 400 BC
Type	bronze

The bronze “Chimera of Arezzo” is one of the best known examples of the art of the Etruscans. It was found in Arezzo, an ancient Etruscan and Roman city in Tuscany, in 1553 and was quickly claimed for the collection of the Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany Cosimo I, who placed it publicly in the Palazzo Vecchio, and placed the smaller bronzes from the trove in his own studiolo at Palazzo Pitti, where “the Duke took great pleasure in cleaning them by himself, with some goldsmith’s tools,” Benvenuto Cellini reported in his autobiography. The Chimera is still conserved in Florence, now in the Archaeological Museum. It is approximately 80 cm in height.^[1]

In Greek mythology the monstrous Chimera ravaged its homeland, Lycia, until it was slain by Bellerophon. The goat head of the Chimera has a wound inflicted by this Greek hero. Based on the cowering, representation of fear, and the wound inflicted, this sculpture may have been part of a set that would have included a bronze sculpture of Bellerophon. This bronze was at first identified as a lion by its discoverers in Arezzo, for its tail, which would have taken the form of a serpent, is missing. It was soon recognized as representing the chimera of myth and in fact, among smaller bronze pieces and fragments brought to Florence, a section of the tail was soon recovered, according to Giorgio Vasari. The present bronze tail is an 18th-century restoration.

The Chimera was one of a hoard of bronzes that had been carefully buried for safety some time in antiquity. They were discovered by accident, when trenches were being dug just outside the Porta San Laurentino in the city walls. A bronze replica now stands near the spot.

Inscribed on its right foreleg is an inscription which has been variously read, but most recently is agreed to be TINSCVIL, showing that the bronze was a votive object dedicated to the supreme Etruscan god of day, Tin or Tinia. The original statue is estimated to have been created around 400 BC.

In 2009 and 2010 the statue traveled to the United States where it was displayed at the Getty Villa in Malibu, California.^[1][2][3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_of_Arezzo

Chimera di Arezzo

Chimera di Arezzo
Autore	sconosciuto
Data	seconda metà o fine V sec. a.C. circa
Materiale	bronzo
Altezza	65 cm
Ubicazione	Museo archeologico nazionale, Firenze

La firma

La Chimera di Arezzo è un bronzo etrusco, probabilmente opera di un équipe di artigiani attiva nella zona di Arezzo, che combinava modello e forma stilistica di ascendenza greca o italiota all’abilità tecnica fornita da maestranze etrusche^[1]. È conservata presso il Museo archeologico nazionale di Firenze ed è alta 65 cm.

Storia

La sua datazione viene fatta risalire ad un periodo compreso tra l’ultimo quarto del V e i primi decenni del IV secolo a.C. Faceva parte di un gruppo di bronzi sepolti nell’antichità per poterli preservare.

Con l’aiuto di Pegaso, Bellerofonte riuscì a sconfiggere Chimera con le sue stesse terribili armi: immerse la punta del suo giavellotto nelle fauci della belva, il fuoco che ne usciva sciolse il piombo che uccise l’animale.

Si tratta di una statua di bronzo rinvenuta il 15 novembre 1553 in Toscana,La chimera è stata representata in modi diversi.è stata creata per incudere peura e terrore. precisamente nella città d’Arezzo durante la costruzione di fortificazioni medicee alla periferia della cittadina, fuori da Porta San Lorentino (dove oggi si trova una replica in bronzo). Venne subito reclamata dal granduca di Toscana Cosimo I de’ Medici per la sua collezione, il quale la espose pubblicamente presso il Palazzo Vecchio, nella sala di Leone X. Venne poi trasferita presso il suo studiolo di Palazzo Pitti, in cui, come riportato da Benvenuto Cellini nella sua autobiografia, “il duca ricavava grande piacere nel pulirla personalmente con attrezzi da orafo”.

Dalle notizie del ritrovamento, presenti nell’Archivio di Arezzo, risulta che questo bronzo venne identificato inizialmente con un leone poiché la coda, rintracciata in seguito da Giorgio Vasari, non era ancora stata trovata e fu ricomposta solo nel XVIII secolo grazie ad un restauro visibile ancora oggi. Vasari nei suoi Ragionamenti sopra le invenzioni da lui dipinte in Firenze nel palazzo di loro Altezze Serenissime^[2] risponde così ad un interlocutore che gli domanda se si tratta proprio della Chimera di Bellerofonte

« Signor sì, perché ce n’è il riscontro delle medaglie che ha il Duca mio signore, che vennono da Roma con la testa di capra appiccicata in sul collo di questo leone, il quale come vede V.E., ha anche il ventre di serpente, e abbiamo ritrovato la coda che era rotta fra que’ fragmenti di bronzo con tante figurine di metallo che V.E. ha veduto tutte, e le ferite che ella ha addosso, lo dimostrano, e ancora il dolore, che si conosce nella prontezza della testa di questo animale… »

Il restauro alla coda è però un restauro sbagliato: il serpente doveva avventarsi minacciosamente contro Bellerofonte e non mordere un corno della testa della capra.

Nel 1718 venne poi trasportata nella Galleria degli Uffizi e in seguito fu trasferita nuovamente, insieme all’Idolino e ad altri bronzi classici, presso il Palazzo della Crocetta, dove si trova tuttora, nell’odierno Museo archeologico di Firenze.

Descrizione e stile

Nella mitologia greca la chimera (il cui nome in greco significa letteralmente capra) era un mostro che sputava fuoco, talvolta alato, con il corpo e la testa di leone, la coda a forma di serpente e con una testa di capra nel mezzo della schiena, che terrorizzava la terra della Licia. Venne uccisa da Bellerofonte in un epico scontro con l’aiuto del cavallo alato Pegaso.

La Chimera di Arezzo raffigura il mostro uccidente, che si ritrae di lato, e volge la testa in atteggiamento drammatico di notevole sofferenza, con la bocca spalancata e la criniera irta. La testa di capra sul dorso è già reclinata e morente a causa delle ferite ricevute. Il corpo è modellato in maniera da mostrare le costole del torace, mentre le vene solcano il ventre e le gambe. Probabilmente, la Chimera faceva parte di un gruppo con Bellerofonte e Pegaso ma non si può escludere completamente l’ipotesi che si trattasse di un’offerta votiva a sé stante. Quest’ipotesi sembra essere confermata dalla presenza di un’iscrizione sulla branca anteriore destra, in cui vi si legge la scritta TINSCVIL o TINS’VIL (TLE^2 663), che significa “donata al dio Tin“, supremo dio etrusco del giorno.

La Chimera presenta elementi arcaici, come la criniera schematica e il muso leonino simile a modelli greci del V secolo a.C., mentre il corpo è di una secchezza austera. Altri tratti sono invece più spiccatamente naturalistici, come l’accentuazione drammatica della posa e la sofisticata postura del corpo e delle zampe. Questa commistione è tipica del gusto etrusco della prima metà del IV secolo a.C. e attraverso il confronto con leoni funerari coevi si è giunti a una datazione attorno al 380–360 a.C. È da osservare il particolare della criniera, molto lavorata, e che riproduce abbastanza fedelmente (per l’epoca) l’aspetto naturale della fiera.

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimera_di_Arezzo

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

https://softbrightness.wordpress.com/

https://giacobbegiusti01.wordpress.com/

https://giacobbegiusti10.wordpress.com/

Giacobbe Giusti, The Celts

Giacobbe Giusti, The Celts

Celts

This article is about the ancient and medieval peoples of Europe. For Celts of the present day, see Celts (modern). For other uses, see Celt (disambiguation).

Diachronic distribution of Celtic peoples:

  core Hallstatt territory, by the 6th century BC

  maximal Celtic expansion, by 275 BC

 Lusitanian area of Iberia where Celtic presence is uncertain

  the six Celtic nations which retained significant numbers of Celtic speakers into the Early Modern period

  areas where Celtic languages remain widely spoken today

The Wandsworth Shield-boss, in the plastic style, found in London

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v t e

The Celts (/ˈkɛlts/, occasionally /ˈsɛlts/, see pronunciation of Celtic) were people in Iron Age and Medieval Europe who spoke Celtic languages and had cultural similarites,^[1] although the relationship between ethnic, linguistic and cultural factors in the Celtic world remains uncertain and controversial.^[2] The exact geographic spread of the ancient Celts is also disputed; in particular, the ways in which the Iron Age inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland should be regarded as Celts has become a subject of controversy.^[1][2][3][4]

The history of pre-Celtic Europe remains very uncertain. According to one theory, the common root of the Celtic languages, a language known as Proto-Celtic, arose in the Late Bronze Age Urnfield culture of Central Europe, which flourished from around 1200 BC.^[5] In addition, according to a theory proposed in the 19th century, the first people to adopt cultural characteristics regarded as Celtic were the people of the Iron Age Hallstatt culture in central Europe (c. 800–450 BC), named for the rich grave finds in Hallstatt, Austria.^[5][6] Thus this area is sometimes called the ‘Celtic homeland’. By or during the later La Tène period (c. 450 BC up to the Roman conquest), this Celtic culture was supposed to have expanded by diffusion or migration to the British Isles (Insular Celts), France and The Low Countries (Gauls), Bohemia, Poland and much of Central Europe, the Iberian Peninsula (Celtiberians, Celtici, Lusitanians and Gallaeci) and Italy (Canegrate, Golaseccans and Cisalpine Gauls)^[7] and, following the Gallic invasion of the Balkans in 279 BC, as far east as central Anatolia (Galatians).^[8]

The earliest undisputed direct examples of a Celtic language are the Lepontic inscriptions, beginning in the 6th century BC.^[9] Continental Celtic languages are attested almost exclusively through inscriptions and place-names. Insular Celtic is attested beginning around the 4th century AD through Ogham inscriptions, although it was clearly being spoken much earlier. Celtic literary tradition begins with Old Irish texts around the 8th century. Coherent texts of Early Irish literature, such as the Táin Bó Cúailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley), survive in 12th-century recensions.

By the mid 1st millennium AD, with the expansion of the Roman Empire and the Great Migrations (Migration Period) of Germanic peoples, Celtic culture and Insular Celtic had become restricted to Ireland, the western and northern parts of Great Britain (Wales, Scotland, and Cornwall), the Isle of Man, and Brittany. Between the 5th and 8th centuries, the Celtic-speaking communities in these Atlantic regions emerged as a reasonably cohesive cultural entity. They had a common linguistic, religious, and artistic heritage that distinguished them from the culture of the surrounding polities.^[10] By the 6th century, however, the Continental Celtic languages were no longer in wide use.

Insular Celtic culture diversified into that of the Gaels (Irish, Scottish and Manx) and the Brythonic Celts (Welsh, Cornish, and Bretons) of the medieval and modern periods. A modern “Celtic identity” was constructed as part of the Romanticist Celtic Revival in Great Britain, Ireland, and other European territories, such as Portugal and Spanish Galicia.^[11] Today, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton are still spoken in parts of their historical territories, and Cornish and Manx are undergoing a revival.

Contents

• 1 Names and terminology
• 2 Origins
  • 2.1 Linguistic evidence
  • 2.2 Archaeological evidence
  • 2.3 Historical evidence
  • 2.4 Minority views
• 3 Distribution
  • 3.1 Continental Celts
    • 3.1.1 Gaul
    • 3.1.2 Iberia
    • 3.1.3 Alps and Italy
    • 3.1.4 Eastward expansion
  • 3.2 Insular Celts
• 4 Romanisation
• 5 Society
  • 5.1 Clothing
  • 5.2 Gender and sexual norms
  • 5.3 Celtic art
• 6 Warfare and weapons
  • 6.1 Head hunting
• 7 Religion
  • 7.1 Polytheism
  • 7.2 Gallic calendar
  • 7.3 Roman influence
  • 7.4 Celtic Christianity
• 8 See also
• 9 References
• 10 External links

Names and terminology

Celtic stele from Galicia, 2nd century AD: “APANA·AMBO / LLI·
F(ilia)·CELTICA / SUPERTAM(arica)· /
(j) MIOBRI· / AN(norum)·
XXV·H(ic)·S(ita)·E(st)· / APANUS·FR(ater)·
F(aciendum)·C(uravit)”

Main article: Names of the Celts

The first recorded use of the name of Celts – as Κελτοί – to refer to an ethnic group was by Hecataeus of Miletus, the Greek geographer, in 517 BC,^[12] when writing about a people living near Massilia (modern Marseille).^[13] According to the testimony of Julius Caesar and Strabo, the Latin name Celtus (pl. Celti or Celtae) and the Greek Κέλτης (pl. Κέλται) or Κελτός (pl. Κελτοί) were borrowed from a native Celtic tribal name.^[14][15] Pliny the Elder cited its use in Lusitania as a tribal surname,^[16] which epigraphic findings have confirmed.^[17][18]

Latin Gallus (pl. Galli) might also stem from a Celtic ethnic or tribal name originally, perhaps one borrowed into Latin during the Celtic expansions into Italy during the early 5th century BC. Its root may be the Common Celtic *galno, meaning “power, strength”, hence Old Irish gal “boldness, ferocity” and Welsh gallu “to be able, power”. The tribal names of Gallaeci and the Greek Γαλάται (Galatai, Latinized Galatae; see the region Galatia in Anatolia) most probably go with the same origin.^[19] The suffix -atai might be an Ancient Greek inflection.^[20] Classical writers did not apply the terms Κελτοί or “Celtae” to the inhabitants of Britain or Ireland,^[1][2][3] which has led to some scholars preferring not to use the term for the Iron Age inhabitants of those islands.^[1][2][3][4]

Celt is a modern English word, first attested in 1707, in the writing of Edward Lhuyd, whose work, along with that of other late 17th-century scholars, brought academic attention to the languages and history of the early Celtic inhabitants of Great Britain.^[21] The English form Gaul (first recorded in the 17th century) and Gaulish come from the French Gaule and Gaulois, a borrowing from Frankish *Walholant, “Land of foreigners or Romans” (see Gaul: Name), the root of which is Proto-Germanic *walha-, “foreigner”’, or “Celt”, whence the English word Welsh (Anglo-Saxon wælisċ < *walhiska-), South German welsch, meaning “Celtic speaker”, “French speaker” or “Italian speaker” in different contexts, and Old Norse valskr, pl. valir, “Gaulish, French”). Proto-Germanic *walha is derived ultimately from the name of the Volcae,^[22] a Celtic tribe who lived first in the South of Germany and emigrated then to Gaul.^[23] This means that English Gaul, despite its superficial similarity, is not actually derived from Latin Gallia (which should have produced **Jaille in French), though it does refer to the same ancient region.

Celtic refers to a family of languages and, more generally, means “of the Celts” or “in the style of the Celts”. Several archaeological cultures are considered Celtic in nature, based on unique sets of artefacts. The link between language and artefact is aided by the presence of inscriptions.^[24] (See Celtic (disambiguation) for other applications of the term.) The relatively modern idea of an identifiable Celtic cultural identity or “Celticity” generally focuses on similarities among languages, works of art, and classical texts,^[25] and sometimes also among material artefacts, social organisation, homeland and mythology.^[26] Earlier theories held that these similarities suggest a common racial origin for the various Celtic peoples, but more recent theories hold that they reflect a common cultural and language heritage more than a genetic one. Celtic cultures seem to have been widely diverse, with the use of a Celtic language being the main thing they have in common.^[1]

Today, the term Celtic generally refers to the languages and respective cultures of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, and Brittany, also known as the Celtic nations. These are the regions where four Celtic languages are still spoken to some extent as mother tongues. The four are Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton; plus two recent revivals, Cornish (one of the Brythonic languages) and Manx (one of the Goidelic languages). There are also attempts to reconstruct the Cumbric language (a Brythonic language from North West England and South West Scotland). Celtic regions of Continental Europe are those whose residents claim a Celtic heritage, but where no Celtic language has survived; these areas include the western Iberian Peninsula, i.e. Portugal, and north-central Spain (Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, Castile and León, Extremadura).^[27] (See also: Modern Celts.)

Continental Celts are the Celtic-speaking people of mainland Europe and Insular Celts are the Celtic-speaking peoples of the British and Irish islands and their descendants. The Celts of Brittany derive their language from migrating insular Celts, mainly from Wales and Cornwall, and so are grouped accordingly.^[28]

Origins

Overview of the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures:

  The core Hallstatt territory (HaC, 800 BC) is shown in solid yellow,

  the eventual area of Hallstatt influence (by 500 BC, HaD) in light yellow.

  The core territory of the La Tène culture (450 BC) is shown in solid green,

  the eventual area of La Tène influence (by 250 BC) in light green.

Main articles: Pre-Celtic and Celticization

The territories of some major Celtic tribes of the late La Tène period are labelled.

Reconstruction of a late La Tène period settlement in Altburg near Bundenbach (1st century BC).

Reconstruction of a late La Tène period settlement in Havranok, Slovakia (2nd–1st century BC).

The Celtic languages form a branch of the larger Indo-European family. By the time speakers of Celtic languages enter history around 400 BC, they were already split into several language groups, and spread over much of Western continental Europe, the Iberian Peninsula, Ireland and Britain.

Some scholars think that the Urnfield culture of Western Middle Europe represents an origin for the Celts as a distinct cultural branch of the Indo-European family.^[5] This culture was preeminent in central Europe during the late Bronze Age, from c. 1200 BC until 700 BC, itself following the Unetice and Tumulus cultures. The Urnfield period saw a dramatic increase in population in the region, probably due to innovations in technology and agricultural practices. The Greek historian Ephoros of Cyme in Asia Minor, writing in the 4th century BC, believed that the Celts came from the islands off the mouth of the Rhine and were “driven from their homes by the frequency of wars and the violent rising of the sea”.

The spread of iron-working led to the development of the Hallstatt culture directly from the Urnfield (c. 700 to 500 BC). Proto-Celtic, the latest common ancestor of all known Celtic languages, is considered by this school of thought to have been spoken at the time of the late Urnfield or early Hallstatt cultures, in the early 1st millennium BC. The spread of the Celtic languages to Iberia, Ireland and Britain would have occurred during the first half of the 1st millennium BC, the earliest chariot burials in Britain dating to c. 500 BC. Other scholars see Celtic languages as covering Britain and Ireland, and parts of the Continent, long before any evidence of “Celtic” culture is found in archaeology. Over the centuries the language(s) developed into the separate Celtiberian, Goidelic and Brythonic languages.

The Hallstatt culture was succeeded by the La Tène culture of central Europe, which was overrun by the Roman Empire, though traces of La Tène style are still to be seen in Gallo-Roman artefacts. In Britain and Ireland La Tène style in art survived precariously to re-emerge in Insular art. Early Irish literature casts light on the flavour and tradition of the heroic warrior elites who dominated Celtic societies. Celtic river-names are found in great numbers around the upper reaches of the Danube and Rhine, which led many Celtic scholars to place the ethnogenesis of the Celts in this area. A recent book about an ancient site in northern Germany, concludes that it was the most significant Celtic sacred site in Europe. It is called the “Externsteine”, the strange carvings and astronomical orientation of the chambers of this site are presented as solid evidence for a Celtic origin. In view of the large number of sites excavated in recent years in Germany, and formally defined as ‘Celtic”, Pryor’s research appears to be on solid ground. (Damien Pryor, The Externsteine, 2011, Threshold Publishing, ISBN 978-0-9581341-7-0 )

Diodorus Siculus and Strabo both suggest that the heartland of the people they called Celts was in southern France. The former says that the Gauls were to the north of the Celts, but that the Romans referred to both as Gauls (in linguistic terms the Gauls were certainly Celts). Before the discoveries at Hallstatt and La Tène, it was generally considered that the Celtic heartland was southern France, see Encyclopædia Britannica for 1813.

Linguistic evidence

Main article: Proto-Celtic language

Further information: Celtic toponymy

The Proto-Celtic language is usually dated to the Late Bronze Age.^[5] The earliest records of a Celtic language are the Lepontic inscriptions of Cisalpine Gaul (Northern Italy), the oldest of which still predate the La Tène period. Other early inscriptions, appearing from the early La Tène period in the area of Massilia, are in Gaulish, which was written in the Greek alphabet until the Roman conquest. Celtiberian inscriptions, using their own Iberian script, appear later, after about 200 BC. Evidence of Insular Celtic is available only from about 400 AD, in the form of Primitive Irish Ogham inscriptions.

Besides epigraphical evidence, an important source of information on early Celtic is toponymy.^[29]

Archaeological evidence

Map of the Hallstatt Culture

Further information: Iron Age Europe

Before the 19th century, scholars^[who?] assumed that the original land of the Celts was west of the Rhine, more precisely in Gaul, because it was where Greek and Roman ancient sources, namely Caesar, located the Celts. This view was challenged by the 19th-century historian Marie Henri d’Arbois de Jubainville^{[citation needed]} who placed the land of origin of the Celts east of the Rhine. Jubainville based his arguments on a phrase of Herodotus’ that placed the Celts at the source of the Danube, and argued that Herodotus had meant to place the Celtic homeland in southern Germany. The finding of the prehistoric cemetery of Hallstat in 1846 by Johan Ramsauer and the finding of the archaeological site of La Tène by Hansli Kopp in 1857 drew attention to this area.

The concept that the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures could be seen not just as chronological periods but as “Culture Groups”, entities composed of people of the same ethnicity and language, started to grow by the end of the 19th century. In the beginning of the 20th century the belief that those “Culture Groups” could be thought in racial or ethnic terms was strongly held by Gordon Childe whose theory was influenced by the writings of Gustaf Kossinna.^[30] Along the 20th century the racial ethnic interpretation of La Tène culture rooted much stronger, and any findings of “La Tène culture” and “flat inhumation cemeteries” were directly associated with the celts and the Celtic language.^[31] The Iron Age Hallstatt (c. 800–475 BC) and La Tène (c. 500–50 BC) cultures are typically associated with Proto-Celtic and Celtic culture.^[32]

In various^{[clarification needed]} academic disciplines the Celts were considered a Central European Iron Age phenomenon, through the cultures of Hallstatt and La Tène. However, archaeological finds from the Halstatt and La Tène culture were rare in the Iberian Peninsula, in southwestern France, northern and western Britain, southern Ireland and Galatia^[33][34] and did not provide enough evidence for a cultural scenario comparable to that of Central Europe. It is considered equally difficult to maintain that the origin of the Peninsular Celts can be linked to the preceding Urnfield culture, leading to a more recent approach that introduces a ‘proto-Celtic’ substratum and a process of Celticisation having its initial roots in the Bronze Age Bell Beaker culture.^[35]

Expansion of the Celtic culture in the 3rd century BC according to Francisco Villar^[36]

The La Tène culture developed and flourished during the late Iron Age (from 450 BC to the Roman conquest in the 1st century BC) in eastern France, Switzerland, Austria, southwest Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. It developed out of the Hallstatt culture without any definite cultural break, under the impetus of considerable Mediterranean influence from Greek, and later Etruscan civilisations. A shift of settlement centres took place in the 4th century.

The western La Tène culture corresponds to historical Celtic Gaul. Whether this means that the whole of La Tène culture can be attributed to a unified Celtic people is difficult to assess; archaeologists have repeatedly concluded that language, material culture, and political affiliation do not necessarily run parallel. Frey notes that in the 5th century, “burial customs in the Celtic world were not uniform; rather, localised groups had their own beliefs, which, in consequence, also gave rise to distinct artistic expressions”.^[37] Thus, while the La Tène culture is certainly associated with the Gauls, the presence of La Tène artefacts may be due to cultural contact and does not imply the permanent presence of Celtic speakers.

Historical evidence

Polybius published a history of Rome about 150 BC in which he describes the Gauls of Italy and their conflict with Rome. Pausanias in the 2nd century AD says that the Gauls “originally called Celts”, “live on the remotest region of Europe on the coast of an enormous tidal sea”. Posidonius described the southern Gauls about 100 BC. Though his original work is lost it was used by later writers such as Strabo. The latter, writing in the early 1st century AD, deals with Britain and Gaul as well as Hispania, Italy and Galatia. Caesar wrote extensively about his Gallic Wars in 58–51 BC. Diodorus Siculus wrote about the Celts of Gaul and Britain in his 1st-century history.

The world according to Herodotus

Borders of the region known as Celtica at time of the Roman conquest c. 54 BC; they soon renamed it Gallia Lugdunensis.

Minority views

Myles Dillon and Nora Kershaw Chadwick accepted that “the Celtic settlement of the British Isles” might have to be dated to the Beaker period concluding that “There is no reason why so early a date for the coming of the Celts should be impossible”.^[38][39] Martín Almagro Gorbea^[40] proposed the origins of the Celts could be traced back to the 3rd millennium BC, seeking the initial roots in the Bell Beaker culture, thus offering the wide dispersion of the Celts throughout western Europe, as well as the variability of the different Celtic peoples, and the existence of ancestral traditions an ancient perspective. Using a multidisciplinary approach Alberto J. Lorrio and Gonzalo Ruiz Zapatero reviewed and built on Almagro Gorbea’s work to present a model for the origin of the Celtic archaeological groups in the Iberian Peninsula (Celtiberian, Vetton, Vaccean, the Castro Culture of the northwest, Asturian-Cantabrian and Celtic of the southwest) and proposing a rethinking the meaning of “Celtic” from a European perspective.^[41] More recently, John Koch^[42] and Barry Cunliffe^[43] have suggested that Celtic origins lie with the Atlantic Bronze Age, roughly contemporaneous with the Hallstatt culture but positioned considerably to the West, extending along the Atlantic coast of Europe.

Stephen Oppenheimer^[44] points out that the only written evidence that locates the Keltoi near the source of the Danube (i.e. in the Hallstatt region) is in the Histories of Herodotus. However, Oppenheimer shows that Herodotus seemed to believe the Danube rose near the Pyrenees, which would place the Ancient Celts in a region which is more in agreement with later Classical writers and historians (i.e. in Gaul and the Iberian peninsula).

Distribution

Continental Celts

Gaul

Main article: Gauls

The Romans knew the Celts then living in what became present-day France as Gauls. The territory of these peoples probably included the Low Countries, the Alps and present-day northern Italy. Julius Caesar in his Gallic Wars described the 1st-century BC descendants of those Gauls.

Eastern Gaul became the centre of the western La Tène culture. In later Iron Age Gaul, the social organisation resembled that of the Romans, with large towns. From the 3rd century BC the Gauls adopted coinage, and texts with Greek characters from southern Gaul have survived from the 2nd century BC.

Greek traders founded Massalia about 600 BC, with some objects (mostly drinking ceramics) being traded up the Rhone valley. But trade became disrupted soon after 500 BC and re-oriented over the Alps to the Po valley in the Italian peninsula. The Romans arrived in the Rhone valley in the 2nd century BC and encountered a mostly Celtic-speaking Gaul. Rome wanted land communications with its Iberian provinces and fought a major battle with the Saluvii at Entremont in 124–123 BC. Gradually Roman control extended, and the Roman Province of Gallia Transalpina developed along the Mediterranean coast.^[45][46] The Romans knew the remainder of Gaul as Gallia Comata – “Hairy Gaul”.

In 58 BC the Helvetii planned to migrate westward but Julius Caesar forced them back. He then became involved in fighting the various tribes in Gaul, and by 55 BC had overrun most of Gaul. In 52 BC Vercingetorix led a revolt against the Roman occupation but was defeated at the siege of Alesia and surrendered.

Following the Gallic Wars of 58–51 BC, Caesar’s Celtica formed the main part of Roman Gaul, becoming the province of Gallia Lugdunensis. This territory of the Celtic tribes was bounded on the south by the Garonne and on the north by the Seine and the Marne.^[47] The Romans attached large swathes of this region to neighboring provinces Belgica and Aquitania, particularly under Augustus.

Place- and personal-name analysis and inscriptions suggest that the Gaulish Celtic language was spoken over most of what is now France.^[48][49]

Main language areas in Iberia, showing Celtic languages in beige, c. 300 BC.

Iberia

Main articles: Celtiberians and Gallaeci

See also: Castro culture, Pre-Roman peoples of the Iberian Peninsula, Prehistoric Iberia, Hispania, Lusitania, Gallaecia and Celtici

Until the end of the 19th century, traditional scholarship dealing with the Celts did acknowledge their presence in the Iberian Peninsula^[50][51] as a material culture relatable to the Hallstatt and La Tène cultures. However, since according to the definition of the Iron Age in the 19th century Celtic populations were supposedly rare in Iberia and did not provide a cultural scenario that could easily be linked to that of Central Europe, the presence of Celtic culture in that region was generally not fully recognised. Three divisions of the Celts of the Iberian Peninsula were assumed to have existed: the Celtiberians in the mountains near the centre of the peninsula, the Celtici in the southwest, and the Celts in the northwest (in Gallaecia and Asturias).^[52]

Modern scholarship, however, has clearly proven that Celtic presence and influences were most substantial in what is today Spain and Portugal (with perhaps the highest settlement saturation in Western Europe), particularly in the central, western and northern regions.^[53][54] The Celts in Iberia were divided into two main archaeological and cultural groups,^[55] even though that division is not very clear:

Triskelion and spirals on a Galician torc terminal (Museu do castro de Santa Tegra).

• One group was spread out along Galicia^[56] and the Iberian Atlantic shores. They were made up of the Proto / Para-Celtic Lusitanians (in Portugal)^[57] and the Celtic region that Strabo called Celtica in the southwestern Iberian peninsula,^[58] including the Algarve, which was inhabited by the Celtici, the Vettones and Vacceani peoples^[59] (of central-western Spain and Portugal), and the Gallaecian, Astures and Cantabrian peoples of the Castro culture of northern and northwestern Spain and Portugal.^[60]
• The Celtiberian group of central Spain and the upper Ebro valley.^[61] This group originated when Celts (mainly Gauls and some Celtic-Germanic groups) migrated from what is now France and integrated with the local Iberian people.

The origins of the Celtiberians might provide a key to understanding the Celticisation process in the rest of the Peninsula. The process of Celticisation of the southwestern area of the peninsula by the Keltoi and of the northwestern area is, however, not a simple Celtiberian question. Recent investigations about the Callaici^[62] and Bracari^[63] in northwestern Portugal are providing new approaches to understanding Celtic culture (language, art and religion) in western Iberia.^[64]

John T. Koch of Aberystwyth University suggested that Tartessian inscriptions of the 8th century BC might be classified as Celtic. This would mean that Tartessian is the earliest attested trace of Celtic by a margin of more than a century.^[65]

Alps and Italy

Peoples of northern Italy during the 4th to 3rd centuries BC.

Main articles: Canegrate culture, Golasecca culture, Lepontii and Cisalpine Gaul

Further information: History of the Alps

The Canegrate culture (13th century BC) represents the first migratory wave of the proto-Celtic^[66] population from the northwest part of the Alps that, through the Alpine passes, had already penetrated and settled in the western Po valley between Lake Maggiore and Lake Como (Scamozzina culture). They brought a new funerary practice—cremation—which supplanted inhumation.

It had been known for some time that there was an early, Celtic (Lepontic, sometimes called Cisalpine Celtic) presence in Northern Italy since inscriptions dated to the 6th century BC have been found there.

The site of Golasecca, where the Ticino exits from Lake Maggiore, was particularly suitable for long-distance exchanges, in which Golaseccans acted as intermediaries between Etruscans and the Halstatt culture of Austria, supported on the all-important trade in salt.

Ligures lived in Northern Mediterranean Coast straddling South-east French and North-west Italian coasts, including parts of Tuscany, Elba island and Corsica. Xavier Delamarre argues that Ligurian was a Celtic language, similar to, but not the same as Gaulish.^[67][68] The Ligurian-Celtic question is also discussed by Barruol (1999). Ancient Ligurian is either listed as Celtic (epigraphic),^[69] or Para-Celtic (onomastic).^[70]

In 391 BC Celts “who had their homes beyond the Alps streamed through the passes in great strength and seized the territory that lay between the Apennine mountains and the Alps” according to Diodorus Siculus. The Po Valley and the rest of northern Italy (known to the Romans as Cisalpine Gaul) was inhabited by Celtic-speakers who founded cities such as Milan.^[71] Later the Roman army was routed at the battle of Allia and Rome was sacked in 390 BC by the Senones.

 

The oldest known Lepontic inscription (from Castelletto sopra Ticino), dated ca. 575 BC.

Clear La Tène Celtic presence in Italy was found as far south as among the Umbri, who were thought to be descended from an ancient Gaulish tribe by many Roman writers, and related to the Insubres and the Ambrones.^[72][73]

At the battle of Telamon in 225 BC a large Celtic army was trapped between two Roman forces and crushed.

The defeat of the combined Samnite, Celtic and Etruscan alliance by the Romans in the Third Samnite War sounded the beginning of the end of the Celtic domination in mainland Europe, but it was not until 192 BC that the Roman armies conquered the last remaining independent Celtic kingdoms in Italy.

Eastward expansion

Celtic tribes in S.E.Europe, c. 1st century BC (in purple)

Main article: Gallic invasion of the Balkans

The Celts also expanded down the Danube river and its tributaries. One of the most influential tribes, the Scordisci, had established their capital at Singidunum in 3rd century BC, which is present-day Belgrade, Serbia. The concentration of hill-forts and cemeteries shows a density of population in the Tisza valley of modern-day Vojvodina, Serbia, Hungary and into Ukraine. Expansion into Romania was however blocked by the Dacians.

Further south, Celts settled in Thrace (Bulgaria), which they ruled for over a century, and Anatolia, where they settled as the Galatians (see also: Gallic Invasion of Greece). Despite their geographical isolation from the rest of the Celtic world, the Galatians maintained their Celtic language for at least 700 years. St Jerome, who visited Ancyra (modern-day Ankara) in 373 AD, likened their language to that of the Treveri of northern Gaul.

For Venceslas Kruta, Galatia in central Turkey was an area of dense Celtic settlement.

The Boii tribe gave their name to Bohemia, Bologna and possibly Bavaria, and Celtic artefacts and cemeteries have been discovered further east in what is now Poland and Slovakia. A Celtic coin (Biatec) from Bratislava‘s mint was displayed on the old Slovak 5-crown coin.

As there is no archaeological evidence for large-scale invasions in some of the other areas, one current school of thought holds that Celtic language and culture spread to those areas by contact rather than invasion.^[74] However, the Celtic invasions of Italy and the expedition in Greece and western Anatolia, are well documented in Greek and Latin history.

There are records of Celtic mercenaries in Egypt serving the Ptolemies. Thousands were employed in 283–246 BC and they were also in service around 186 BC. They attempted to overthrow Ptolemy II.

Insular Celts

Principal sites in Roman Britain, with indication of tribal territories.

Main article: Insular Celts

Further information: Iron Age Britain and Celtic immigration to the British Isles

Further information: Iron Age tribes in Britain, Goidelic substrate hypothesis and O’Rahilly’s historical model

All Celtic languages extant today belong to the Insular Celtic languages, derived from the Celtic languages spoken in Iron Age Britain and Ireland.^[75] They were separated into a Goidelic and a Brythonic branch from an early period.

Linguists have been arguing for many years whether a Celtic language came to Britain and Ireland and then split or whether there were two separate “invasions”. The older view of prehistorians was that the Celtic influence in the British Isles was the result of successive invasions from the European continent by diverse Celtic-speaking peoples over the course of several centuries, accounting for the P-Celtic vs. Q-Celtic isogloss. This view has fallen into disfavour,^{[dubious – discuss]} to be replaced by the model of a phylogenetic Insular Celtic dialect group.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, scholars commonly dated the “arrival” of Celtic culture in Britain (via an invasion model) to the 6th century BC, corresponding to archaeological evidence of Hallstatt influence and the appearance of chariot burials in what is now England. Some Iron Age migration does seem to have occurred but the nature of the interactions with the indigenous populations of the isles is unknown. In the late Iron Age. According to this model, by about the 6th century (Sub-Roman Britain), most of the inhabitants of the Isles were speaking Celtic languages of either the Goidelic or the Brythonic branch. Since the late 20th century, a new model has emerged (championed by archaeologists such as Barry Cunliffe and Celtic historians such as John T. Koch) which places the emergence of Celtic culture in Britain much earlier, in the Bronze Age, and credits its spread not to invasion, but due to a gradual emergence in situ out of Proto-Indo-European culture (perhaps introduced to the region by the Bell Beaker People, and enabled by an extensive network of contacts that existed between the peoples of Britain and Ireland and those of the Atlantic seaboard.^[76][77]

It should be noted, however, that Classical writers did not apply the terms Κελτοί or “Celtae” to the inhabitants of Britain or Ireland,^[1][2][3] leading a number of scholars to question the use of the term Celt to describe the Iron Age inhabitants of those islands.^[1][2][3][4] The first historical account of the islands of Britain and Ireland was by Pytheas, a Greek from the city of Massalia, who around 310-306 BC, sailed around what he called the “Pretannikai nesoi”, which can be translated as the “Pretannic Isles”.^[78] In general, classical writers referred to the inhabitants of Britain as Pretannoi or Britanni.^[79] Strabo, writing in the Roman era, clearly distinguished between the Celts and Britons.^[80]

Romanisation

Main article: Gallo-Roman culture

The Roman republic and its neighbours in 58 BC.

Under Caesar the Romans conquered Celtic Gaul, and from Claudius onward the Roman empire absorbed parts of Britain. Roman local government of these regions closely mirrored pre-Roman tribal boundaries, and archaeological finds suggest native involvement in local government.

The native peoples under Roman rule became Romanised and keen to adopt Roman ways. Celtic art had already incorporated classical influences, and surviving Gallo-Roman pieces interpret classical subjects or keep faith with old traditions despite a Roman overlay.

The Roman occupation of Gaul, and to a lesser extent of Britain, led to Roman-Celtic syncretism. In the case of the continental Celts, this eventually resulted in a language shift to Vulgar Latin, while the Insular Celts retained their language.

There was also considerable cultural influence exerted by Gaul on Rome, particularly in military matters and horsemanship, as the Gauls often served in the Roman cavalry. The Romans adopted the Celtic cavalry sword, the spatha, and Epona, the Celtic horse goddess.^[81][82]

Society

To the extent that sources are available, they depict a pre-Christian Iron Age Celtic social structure based formally on class and kingship, although this may only have been a particular late phase of organization in Celtic societies. Patron-client relationships similar to those of Roman society are also described by Caesar and others in the Gaul of the 1st century BC.

In the main, the evidence is of tribes being led by kings, although some argue that there is also evidence of oligarchical republican forms of government eventually emerging in areas which had close contact with Rome. Most descriptions of Celtic societies portray them as being divided into three groups: a warrior aristocracy; an intellectual class including professions such as druid, poet, and jurist; and everyone else. In historical times, the offices of high and low kings in Ireland and Scotland were filled by election under the system of tanistry, which eventually came into conflict with the feudal principle of primogeniture in which succession goes to the first-born son.

Stone head from Mšecké Žehrovice, Czech Republic, wearing a torc, late La Tène culture.

The Dying Gaul, a Roman marble copy of a Hellenistic work of the late 3rd century BC Capitoline Museums, Rome

Little is known of family structure among the Celts. Patterns of settlement varied from decentralised to urban. The popular stereotype of non-urbanised societies settled in hillforts and duns,^[83] drawn from Britain and Ireland (there are about 3,000 hill forts known in Britain)^[84] contrasts with the urban settlements present in the core Hallstatt and La Tène areas, with the many significant oppida of Gaul late in the first millennium BC, and with the towns of Gallia Cisalpina.

Slavery, as practised by the Celts, was very likely similar to the better documented practice in ancient Greece and Rome.^[85] Slaves were acquired from war, raids, and penal and debt servitude.^[85] Slavery was hereditary^{[citation needed]}, though manumission was possible. The Old Irish word for slave, cacht, and the Welsh term caeth are likely derived from the Latin captus, captive, suggesting that slave trade was an early venue of contact between Latin and Celtic societies.^[85] In the Middle Ages, slavery was especially prevalent in the Celtic countries.^[86] Manumissions were discouraged by law and the word for “female slave”, cumal, was used as a general unit of value in Ireland.^[87]

Archaeological evidence suggests that the pre-Roman Celtic societies were linked to the network of overland trade routes that spanned Eurasia. Archaeologists have discovered large prehistoric trackways crossing bogs in Ireland and Germany. Due to their substantial nature, these are believed to have been created for wheeled transport as part of an extensive roadway system that facilitated trade.^[88] The territory held by the Celts contained tin, lead, iron, silver and gold.^[89] Celtic smiths and metalworkers created weapons and jewellery for international trade, particularly with the Romans.

The myth that the Celtic monetary system consisted of wholly barter is a common one, but is in part false. The monetary system was complex and is still not understood (much like the late Roman coinages), and due to the absence of large numbers of coin items, it is assumed that “proto-money” was used. This included bronze items made from the early La Tène period and onwards, which were often in the shape of axeheads, rings, or bells. Due to the large number of these present in some burials, it is thought they had a relatively high monetary value, and could be used for “day to day” purchases. Low-value coinages of potin, a bronze alloy with high tin content, were minted in most Celtic areas of the continent and in South-East Britain prior to the Roman conquest of these lands. Higher-value coinages, suitable for use in trade, were minted in gold, silver, and high-quality bronze. Gold coinage was much more common than silver coinage, despite being worth substantially more, as while there were around 100 mines in Southern Britain and Central France, silver was more rarely mined. This was due partly to the relative sparcity of mines and the amount of effort needed for extraction compared to the profit gained. As the Roman civilisation grew in importance and expanded its trade with the Celtic world, silver and bronze coinage became more common. This coincided with a major increase in gold production in Celtic areas to meet the Roman demand, due to the high value Romans put on the metal. The large number of gold mines in France is thought to be a major reason why Caesar invaded.

There are only very limited records from pre-Christian times written in Celtic languages. These are mostly inscriptions in the Roman and sometimes Greek alphabets. The Ogham script, an Early Medieval alphabet, was mostly used in early Christian times in Ireland and Scotland (but also in Wales and England), and was only used for ceremonial purposes such as inscriptions on gravestones. The available evidence is of a strong oral tradition, such as that preserved by bards in Ireland, and eventually recorded by monasteries. Celtic art also produced a great deal of intricate and beautiful metalwork, examples of which have been preserved by their distinctive burial rites.

In some regards the Atlantic Celts were conservative: for example, they still used chariots in combat long after they had been reduced to ceremonial roles by the Greeks and Romans. However, despite being outdated, Celtic chariot tactics were able to repel the invasion of Britain attempted by Julius Caesar.

According to Diodorus Siculus:

The Gauls are tall of body with rippling muscles and white of skin and their hair is blond, and not only naturally so for they also make it their practice by artificial means to increase the distinguishing colour which nature has given it. For they are always washing their hair in limewater and they pull it back from the forehead to the nape of the neck, with the result that their appearance is like that of Satyrs and Pans since the treatment of their hair makes it so heavy and coarse that it differs in no respect from the mane of horses. Some of them shave the beard but others let it grow a little; and the nobles shave their cheeks but they let the moustache grow until it covers the mouth.

The Waterloo Helmet

Clothing

Celtic costumes par in Przeworsk culture (3rd century BC, La Tène period), Archaeological Museum of Kraków.

During the later Iron Age the Gauls generally wore long-sleeved shirts or tunics and long trousers (called braccae by the Romans).^[90] Clothes were made of wool or linen, with some silk being used by the rich. Cloaks were worn in the winter. Brooches and armlets were used, but the most famous item of jewellery was the torc, a neck collar of metal, sometimes gold. The horned Waterloo Helmet in the British Museum, which long set the standard for modern images of Celtic warriors, is in fact a unique survival, and may have been a piece for ceremonial rather than military wear.

Gender and sexual norms

Reconstruction of a German Iron Age Celtic warrior’s garments

According to Aristotle, most “belligerent nations” were strongly influenced by their women, but the Celts were unusual because their men openly preferred male lovers (Politics II 1269b).^[91] H. D. Rankin in Celts and the Classical World notes that “Athenaeus echoes this comment (603a) and so does Ammianus (30.9). It seems to be the general opinion of antiquity.”^[92] In book XIII of his Deipnosophists, the Roman Greek rhetorician and grammarian Athenaeus, repeating assertions made by Diodorus Siculus in the 1st century BC (Bibliotheca historica 5:32), wrote that Celtic women were beautiful but that the men preferred to sleep together. Diodorus went further, stating that “the young men will offer themselves to strangers and are insulted if the offer is refused”. Rankin argues that the ultimate source of these assertions is likely to be Poseidonius and speculates that these authors may be recording male “bonding rituals”.^[93]

The sexual freedom of women in Britain was noted by Cassius Dio:

… a very witty remark is reported to have been made by the wife of Argentocoxus, a Caledonian, to Julia Augusta. When the empress was jesting with her, after the treaty, about the free intercourse of her sex with men in Britain, she replied: “We fulfill the demands of nature in a much better way than do you Roman women; for we consort openly with the best men, whereas you let yourselves be debauched in secret by the vilest.” Such was the retort of the British woman.^[94]

There are instances recorded where women participated both in warfare and in kingship, although they were in the minority in these areas. Plutarch reports that Celtic women acted as ambassadors to avoid a war among Celts chiefdoms in the Po valley during the 4th century BC.^[95]

Very few reliable sources exist regarding Celtic views towards gender divisions and societal status, though some archaeological evidence does suggest that their views towards gender roles may differ from contemporary and less egalitarian classical counterparts of the Roman era.^[96][97]

There are some general indications from Iron Age burial sites in the Champagne and Bourgogne regions of Northeastern France suggesting that women may have had roles in combat during the earlier La Tène period. However, the evidence is far from conclusive.^[98] Examples of individuals buried with both female jewellery and weaponry have been identified, such as the Vix Grave, and there are questions about the gender of some skeletons that were buried with warrior assemblages. However, it has been suggested that “the weapons may indicate rank instead of masculinity”.^[99]

Among the insular Celts, there is a greater amount of historic documentation to suggest warrior roles for women. In addition to commentary by Tacitus about Boudica, there are indications from later period histories that also suggest a more substantial role for “women as warriors”, in symbolic if not actual roles. Posidonius and Strabo described an island of women where men could not venture for fear of death, and where the women ripped each other apart.^[100] Other writers, such as Ammianus Marcellinus and Tacitus, mentioned Celtic women inciting, participating in, and leading battles.^[101] Poseidonius’ anthropological comments on the Celts had common themes, primarily primitivism, extreme ferocity, cruel sacrificial practices, and the strength and courage of their women.^[102]

Under Brehon Law, which was written down in early Medieval Ireland after conversion to Christianity, a woman had the right to divorce her husband and gain his property if he was unable to perform his marital duties due to impotence, obesity, homosexual inclination or preference for other women.^[103]

Celtic art

The reverse side of a British bronze mirror, with spiral and trumpet motifs typical of La Tène Celtic art in Britain

Main article: Celtic art

Celtic art is generally used by art historians to refer to art of the La Tène period across Europe, while the Early Medieval art of Britain and Ireland, that is what “Celtic art” evokes for much of the general public, is called Insular art in art history. Both styles absorbed considerable influences from non-Celtic sources, but retained a preference for geometrical decoration over figurative subjects, which are often extremely stylised when they do appear; narrative scenes only appear under outside influence. Energetic circular forms, triskeles and spirals are characteristic. Much of the surviving material is in precious metal, which no doubt gives a very unrepresentative picture, but apart from Pictish stones and the Insular high crosses, large monumental sculpture, even with decorative carving, is very rare; possibly it was originally common in wood.

The interlace patterns that are often regarded as typical of “Celtic art” were in fact introduced to Insular art from the animal Style II of Germanic Migration Period art, though taken up with great skill and enthusiasm by Celtic artists in metalwork and illuminated manuscripts. Equally, the forms used for the finest Insular art were all adopted from the Roman world: Gospel books like the Book of Kells and Book of Lindisfarne, chalices like the Ardagh Chalice and Derrynaflan Chalice, and penannular brooches like the Tara Brooch. These works are from the period of peak achievement of Insular art, which lasted from the 7th to the 9th centuries, before the Viking attacks sharply set back cultural life.

In contrast the less well known but often spectacular art of the richest earlier Continental Celts, before they were conquered by the Romans, often adopted elements of Roman, Greek and other “foreign” styles (and possibly used imported craftsmen) to decorate objects that were distinctively Celtic. After the Roman conquests, some Celtic elements remained in popular art, especially Ancient Roman pottery, of which Gaul was actually the largest producer, mostly in Italian styles, but also producing work in local taste, including figurines of deities and wares painted with animals and other subjects in highly formalised styles. Roman Britain also took more interest in enamel than most of the Empire, and its development of champlevé technique was probably important to the later Medieval art of the whole of Europe, of which the energy and freedom of Insular decoration was an important element. Rising nationalism brought Celtic revivals from the 19th century.

Warfare and weapons

Parade Helmet, Agris, France. 350 BC, with stylistic borrowings from around the Mediterranean.

Main articles: Celtic warfare and Celtic sword

Tribal warfare appears to have been a regular feature of Celtic societies. While epic literature depicts this as more of a sport focused on raids and hunting rather than organised territorial conquest, the historical record is more of tribes using warfare to exert political control and harass rivals, for economic advantage, and in some instances to conquer territory.^{[citation needed]}

The Celts were described by classical writers such as Strabo, Livy, Pausanias, and Florus as fighting like “wild beasts”, and as hordes. Dionysius said that their “manner of fighting, being in large measure that of wild beasts and frenzied, was an erratic procedure, quite lacking in military science. Thus, at one moment they would raise their swords aloft and smite after the manner of wild boars, throwing the whole weight of their bodies into the blow like hewers of wood or men digging with mattocks, and again they would deliver crosswise blows aimed at no target, as if they intended to cut to pieces the entire bodies of their adversaries, protective armour and all”.^[104] Such descriptions have been challenged by contemporary historians.^[105]

Polybius (2.33) indicates that the principal Celtic weapon was a long bladed sword which was used for hacking edgewise rather than stabbing. Celtic warriors are described by Polybius and Plutarch as frequently having to cease fighting in order to straighten their sword blades. This claim has been questioned by some archaeologists, who note that Noric steel, steel produced in Celtic Noricum, was famous in the Roman Empire period and was used to equip the Roman military.^[106][107] However, Radomir Pleiner, in The Celtic Sword (1993) argues that “the metallographic evidence shows that Polybius was right up to a point”, as around one third of surviving swords from the period might well have behaved as he describes.^[108]

Polybius also asserts that certain of the Celts fought naked, “The appearance of these naked warriors was a terrifying spectacle, for they were all men of splendid physique and in the prime of life.”^[109] According to Livy this was also true of the Celts of Asia Minor.^[110]

A Gallic statue of a Celtic warrior, in the Museum of Brittany

Head hunting

Celts had a reputation as head hunters. According to Paul Jacobsthal, “Amongst the Celts the human head was venerated above all else, since the head was to the Celt the soul, centre of the emotions as well as of life itself, a symbol of divinity and of the powers of the other-world.”^[111] Arguments for a Celtic cult of the severed head include the many sculptured representations of severed heads in La Tène carvings, and the surviving Celtic mythology, which is full of stories of the severed heads of heroes and the saints who carry their own severed heads, right down to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, where the Green Knight picks up his own severed head after Gawain has struck it off, just as St. Denis carried his head to the top of Montmartre.

A further example of this regeneration after beheading lies in the tales of Connemara‘s St. Feichin, who after being beheaded by Viking pirates carried his head to the Holy Well on Omey Island and on dipping the head into the well placed it back upon his neck and was restored to full health.

Diodorus Siculus, in his 1st-century History had this to say about Celtic head-hunting:

They cut off the heads of enemies slain in battle and attach them to the necks of their horses. The blood-stained spoils they hand over to their attendants and striking up a paean and singing a song of victory; and they nail up these first fruits upon their houses, just as do those who lay low wild animals in certain kinds of hunting. They embalm in cedar oil the heads of the most distinguished enemies, and preserve them carefully in a chest, and display them with pride to strangers, saying that for this head one of their ancestors, or his father, or the man himself, refused the offer of a large sum of money. They say that some of them boast that they refused the weight of the head in gold

In Gods and Fighting Men, Lady Gregory‘s Celtic Revival translation of Irish mythology, heads of men killed in battle are described in the beginning of the story The Fight with the Fir Bolgs as pleasing to Macha, one aspect of the war goddess Morrigu.

Religion

A statuette in the Museum of Brittany, Rennes, probably depicting Brigantia/Brigid: c. 1st century AD, with iconography derived from Roman statues of Minerva.

Polytheism

Main articles: Celtic polytheism and Celtic animism

Like other European Iron Age tribal societies, the Celts practised a polytheistic religion.^[112] Many Celtic gods are known from texts and inscriptions from the Roman period. Rites and sacrifices were carried out by priests known as druids. The Celts did not see their gods as having human shapes until late in the Iron Age. Celtic shrines were situated in remote areas such as hilltops, groves, and lakes.

Celtic religious patterns were regionally variable; however, some patterns of deity forms, and ways of worshipping these deities, appeared over a wide geographical and temporal range. The Celts worshipped both gods and goddesses. In general, Celtic gods were deities of particular skills, such as the many-skilled Lugh and Dagda, while goddesses were associated with natural features, particularly rivers (such as Boann, goddess of the River Boyne). This was not universal, however, as goddesses such as Brighid and The Morrígan were associated with both natural features (holy wells and the River Unius) and skills such as blacksmithing and healing.^[113]

Triplicity is a common theme in Celtic cosmology, and a number of deities were seen as threefold.^[114] This trait is exhibited by The Three Mothers, a group of goddesses worshipped by many Celtic tribes (with regional variations).^[115]

The Celts had literally hundreds of deities, some of which were unknown outside a single family or tribe, while others were popular enough to have a following that crossed lingual and cultural barriers. For instance, the Irish god Lugh, associated with storms, lightning, and culture, is seen in similar forms as Lugos in Gaul and Lleu in Wales. Similar patterns are also seen with the continental Celtic horse goddess Epona and what may well be her Irish and Welsh counterparts, Macha and Rhiannon, respectively.^[116]

Roman reports of the druids mention ceremonies being held in sacred groves. La Tène Celts built temples of varying size and shape, though they also maintained shrines at sacred trees and votive pools.^[112]

Druids fulfilled a variety of roles in Celtic religion, serving as priests and religious officiants, but also as judges, sacrificers, teachers, and lore-keepers. Druids organised and ran religious ceremonies, and they memorised and taught the calendar. Other classes of druids performed ceremonial sacrifices of crops and animals for the perceived benefit of the community.^[117]

Gallic calendar

The Coligny calendar, which was found in 1897 in Coligny, Ain, was engraved on a bronze tablet, preserved in 73 fragments, that originally was 1.48 m wide and 0.9 m high (Lambert p. 111). Based on the style of lettering and the accompanying objects, it probably dates to the end of the 2nd century.^[118] It is written in Latin inscriptional capitals, and is in the Gallic language. The restored tablet contains 16 vertical columns, with 62 months distributed over 5 years.

The French archaeologist J. Monard speculated that it was recorded by druids wishing to preserve their tradition of timekeeping in a time when the Julian calendar was imposed throughout the Roman Empire. However, the general form of the calendar suggests the public peg calendars (or parapegmata) found throughout the Greek and Roman world.^[119]

Roman influence

Further information: Gallo-Roman culture

A Celtic cross

The Roman invasion of Gaul brought a great deal of Celtic peoples into the Roman Empire. Roman culture had a profound effect on the Celtic tribes which came under the empire’s control. Roman influence led to many changes in Celtic religion, the most noticeable of which was the weakening of the druid class, especially religiously; the druids were to eventually disappear altogether. Romano-Celtic deities also began to appear: these deities often had both Roman and Celtic attributes and combined the names of Roman and Celtic deities. Other changes included the adaptation of the Jupiter Pole, a sacred pole which was used throughout Celtic regions of the empire, primarily in the north. Another major change in religious practice was the use of stone monuments to represent gods and goddesses. The Celts had only created wooden idols (including monuments carved into trees, which were known as sacred poles) previously to Roman conquest.^[115]

Celtic Christianity

Main article: Celtic Christianity

While the regions under Roman rule adopted Christianity along with the rest of the Roman empire, unconquered areas of Ireland and Scotland began to move from Celtic polytheism to Christianity in the 5th century. Ireland was converted by missionaries from Britain, such as Saint Patrick. Later missionaries from Ireland were a major source of missionary work in Scotland, Anglo-Saxon parts of Britain, and central Europe (see Hiberno-Scottish mission). Celtic Christianity, the forms of Christianity that took hold in Britain and Ireland at this time, had for some centuries only limited and intermittent contact with Rome and continental Christianity, as well as some contacts with Coptic Christianity. Some elements of Celtic Christianity developed, or retained, features that made them distinct from the rest of Western Christianity, most famously their conservative method of calculating the date of Easter. In 664 the Synod of Whitby began to resolve these differences, mostly by adopting the current Roman practices, which the Gregorian Mission from Rome had introduced to Anglo-Saxon England.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celts

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

Giacobbe Giusti, ‘dea Turan’

Giacobbe Giusti, ‘dea Turan’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Turan (mythology)

Turan
Goddess of love, fertility and vitality
Balsamarium possibly depicting Turan, or perhaps one of the Lasas (Walters Art Museum)
Greek equivalent	Aphrodite
Roman equivalent	Venus

Turan was the Etruscan goddess of love, fertility and vitality and patroness of the city of Velch. In art, she was usually depicted as a young winged girl.^[1] Turan appears in toilette scenes of Etruscan bronze mirrors. She is richly robed and jeweled in early and late depictions, but appears nude under the influence of Hellenistic art in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE.^[2] She is paired with her young lover Atunis (Adonis) and figures in the episode of the Judgement of Paris.

She was commonly associated with birds such as the dove, goose and above all the swan,^[3] Tusna, “the swan of Turan”.^[4] Her retinue were called Lasas. Turan may be quite ancient but does not appear on the Piacenza list nor in Martianus list of Etruscan deities. The Etruscan month of July was named after her, although we only know the Latin word for it, Traneus.^[5]

She was seen as the equivalent to the Roman Venus and the Greek Aphrodite. Her name is the pre-Hellenic root of “Turannos” (absolute ruler),^[6] so Turan can be viewed as “Mistress”.

Turan had a sanctuary in the Greek-influenced Gravisca, the port for Tarquinia, where votive gifts inscribed with her name have been found. One inscription calls her Turan ati, “Mother Turan” which has been interpreted as connecting her to Venus Genetrix, Venus the mother of Aeneas and progenitor of the Julio-Claudian lineage.

Turan dans la mythologie étrusque est la déesse de l’amour, de la beauté, de la fécondité et de la santé, à l’égale d’Aphrodite chez les Grecs et de Vénus chez les Romains, tout en présentant certaines caractéristiques étrusques originales.

Sommaire

 [masquer] 

• 1 Description
  • 1.1 Étymologie
  • 1.2 Iconographie
  • 1.3 Culte
• 2 Articles connexes
• 3 Bibliographie
• 4 Notes et références
• 5 Liens externes

Description

Avec Uni et Menrva elle était la divinité féminine la plus importante d’Étrurie, bien qu’elle n’apparaisse pas sur le foie de Plaisance. Elle donnait son nom à un mois calendaire correspondant au mois de juillet, mois dans lequel on retrouve les principales fêtes. Elle est associée à deux oiseaux, le cygne et la colombe^[1], dont le vol constituait un signe transmettant un message de la divinité.

Étymologie

Contrairement à d’autres divinités, son nom n’est pas emprunté aux Grecs ou aux Romains. Son étymologie a fait l’objet d’hypothèses. On a suggéré un rapprochement avec le mot τύραννος, d’originne préhellénique, ce qui en ferait la « maîtresse ». Une autre étymologie, qui a la préférence de beaucoup de spécialistes mais tout aussi hypothétique, serait le participe du verbe tur (donner), ce qui ferait d’elle la « dispensatrice »^[2]

Iconographie

Dans l’iconographie, elle apparaît seule ou en compagnie d’autres divinités : Adonis appelé Atunis par les Étrusques, et Laran, l’équivalent étrusque de Mars. On la rencontre également en compagnie de personnages sans équivalent dans la religion grecque : des jeunes femmes nommées Zipna, Munθc, Mean et Alpan ou encore des nymphes appelées Lasa (les «Lases»)^[3]. Sur un miroir de bronze étrusque, au revers gravé représentant le thème récurrent du jugement de Pâris^[4], Turan est représentée assise face à ses rivales Uni et Menrva, tandis qu’Elcsntre, l’équivalent étrusque de Pâris se tient à gauche de la scène^[5]. On la rencontre également en compagnie d’autres personnages mythologiques : les Dioscures appelés Tinas cliniar, c’est-à-dire les fils de Tina en étrusque, ou encore Hercule (Hercle en étrusque).

Culte

Les Étrusques consacraient à Turan un des lieux de culte des plus importants dans le sanctuaire de Gravisca l’ancien port de la cité Tarquinia. Elle était la déesse tutélaire de la cité de Vulci

 

http://www.laprovinciacr.it/scheda/91717/Una-giornata-con-gli-Etruschi-di.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turan_(mythology)

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com