Statue, National Museum of Iran 2401
The statue , in the Iranian National Museum Inventory No. 2401, is considered to be one of the most important works of Parthian art . The statue was found by farmers in Shami, in Chuzestan in southwest Iran .
The statue is 1.94 m tall and made of bronze . It represents a man in frontal view. The left leg of the statue is the supporting leg , the right, the free leg . The arms are lost, but a bronze arm was found in Shami, which is tentatively assigned to the statue. The head is a little too small compared to the body. The face is flat, without any further modeling. The nose is slightly aquiline . The man has a very short beard and a bushy mustache. The hair is long and covers the ears. He wears a hoop around his neck. The view is directed slightly upwards. He wears a tunic that has a V-shaped neckline at the front and pants underneath.
Since the head is a bit too small, it has been assumed that it was worked separately from the body and that the statue was only assembled in Shami. The slightly different bronze alloy of the head also speaks for this.
The high quality of the work gave rise to much speculation. It was assumed that the work was produced by a Greco-Roman artist. Others see it as the work of a Palmyra workshop , while others see it as a local work that was produced in Susa .
The dating of the work is also difficult, as there are hardly any comparable works. The dates in the literature vary between the second pre-Christian and the second post-Christian century, at least from the Parthian period .
The figure is mostly interpreted as a local nobleman depicted as a prayer. The statue was found by peasants, but it certainly comes from a sanctuary excavated by Schami, in which numerous bronze sculptures, mostly of Hellenistic origin, were found.
literature
- Hans Erik Mathiesen: Sculpture in the Parthian Empire. A Study in Chronolgy. Volume 2. Aarhus University Press, Aarhus 1992, ISBN 87-7288-311-1 , pp. 165-167.
Web links
- Trudy S. Kawami: Statue, National Museum of Iran 2401 . In: Ehsan Yarshater (Ed.): Encyclopædia Iranica , as of October 10, 2016 (English, including references)