Classical Greek bronze sculptures and coins at the Metropolitan Museum

Classical Art at the Met

The large octagon at the center of the Lod Mosaic contains:

A Tiger (lower left of the octagon)

An Elephant (center right of the octagon)

A Giraffe (backing nervously away from the elephant)

OBJECT # 1 ROOM 150

ACCESSION NUMBER 1997.145.1

TITLE Bronze Rod Tripod Stand

MEDIUM Bronze

CULTURE Greek

DATE Early 6th Century BCE

The sculpted figures on the top of the tripod are uncanny -- they alternate abstract horse's heads which might have come from a sleek twentieth-century chess set, rearing high, alongside strange, much shorter sphinxes with disproportionately huge heads, seemingly braided hair, and giant bug eyes. The facial features look robotic and abstracted, the bodies of the sphinxes are recognizably leonine but remarkably small with features not clearly defined. As representational art it is abstract in a way that I'm much more accustomed to from early 20th century primitivism -- the Picasso works that imitate African masks. This piece stands about two and a half feet high -- the bronze is heavily patinaed so the work appears green in color. The strange modernism of the ornamental figures on the top is weirdly offset by the ornamental fleurs-de-lis or rosette looking designs that hang from the arches of the tripod's three legs: the legs at the base end in claw feet like a Victorian bathtub.

OBJECT 2 ROOM 151

ACCESSION NUMBER 17.190.2072

TITLE Statuette of a Man and a centaur

MEDIUM Bronze

CULTURE Late Geometric Greek

DATE approx 750 BCE

COMMENTARY

A "stater" is a form of currency from ancient Greece -- it's a term like "doubloon" or "krugerrand." However, this seems to have no form of regular shape -- it is oblong with irregular outline, shaped precisely like a potato sitting on its side. In other words, what defined it as a coin was not its regular geometric shape but rather its inimitable artistic design: in an abstracted sculpture that makes good use of the sort of bas-relief one can get on a piece of coinage, it depicts a large cat (depicted with fangs bared and a slightly geometric pattern on his hide) fighting a long-horned bull. The additional documentation for the item notes that the Greek historian Herodotus stated that the first gold coins were issued by the Lydian king Croesus -- still