Boston throne
The so-called Boston Throne ( English Boston Throne ) is a work of art that is often referred to as the counterpart to the Ludovisian throne . Its authenticity is disputed.
description
The Boston throne is a marble barrier , the three outer sides of which are decorated with reliefs . The long side is about 1.60 m long, the right narrow side 73 cm and the left narrow side 55 cm. The main relief on the long side shows an unclothed winged boy who stands smiling between two seated female figures. He put his left hand on his hip and originally held a scale with his right, which has not been preserved. Only the marble weights in the form of two male figures are left. The scales were probably out of balance. The two women are each dressed in chiton and peplos . While the woman, who is sitting on the left of the viewer, is smiling and sitting relatively casually on a thick, folded cushion and gesticulating towards the central figure with her left hand, the one on the right has wrapped herself in her robes and propped her head in her hand. In contrast to the figure opposite, you cannot see what she is sitting on; Erika Simon suspected that she could sit on a doorstep in mourning like Penelope after she learned that her son Telemachus has embarked on a dangerous journey to look for his father Odysseus . The seating of the two female figures is fitted into the volutes with which the relief ends at the bottom.
The two side figures also sit in or on the ornamental lower end of their relief. The next right-hand side of the Boston throne shows a hulking naked youth with short hair, strong muscles and soft sandals on his feet, who is sitting on a similar folded cushion as the one marginal figure in the main relief, on the next left-hand side a gaunt old woman can be seen, who sits huddled with no upholstery and is probably busy doing wool work or something like that. This relief is relatively badly damaged in the area of the hands.
history
The artwork was reportedly found in Rome in the fall of 1894 . A few days later, the archaeologist and art dealer Paul Hartwig wrote a letter to Carl Jacobsen in Copenhagen . His main concern was evidently the - illegal - removal of the play from Italy , because a "Permess" will hardly be obtainable. The piece was actually carried out two years later, but it did not end up in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek , but in the hands of Edward P. Warren , who bought it for the Boston Museum . The work of art has also been named after this location, where it has been since 1908.
The authenticity of the piece was questioned early on. The fact that the Ludovisian throne was discovered during illegal excavations just a few years before the Boston throne, in 1887, and that its counterpart appeared so shortly afterwards, should not arouse suspicion alone. But the two museums that were contacted immediately after the alleged discovery of the Boston Throne had both shown great interest in the discovery of the Ludovisian Throne. But there was no chance for her to acquire this first work of art. It was therefore suspected that art dealers had the alleged counterpart to the Ludovisian throne made in order to sell it to one of the two museums at a high price. Ulrich Sinn , who traced the path of the work of art from Italy via England to the USA, states that the theory of forgery cannot be substantiated any more than the assumption that it is really a work of art from the fifth century BC. The scientific argument, according to Sinn, was overlaid by personal aversions and doubts about the integrity of the colleagues who had to do with the promotion and sale of the work of art. In addition, “a science that works with the criterion of iconographic formula, typology and stylistic comparison will inevitably falter when it is confronted with singular forms”, and this is exactly what the two “thrones” do Case.
Question of authenticity
In the attempts to assess the authenticity of the Boston throne, on the one hand the motif of kerostasy or psychostasy was used, which is depicted on the main relief, and on the other hand the architectural frame ornamentation . The volute that rises from the corner and is crowned with a palmette is not infrequently found as an ornament on Greek altars. According to Ulrich Sinn, however, with a single exception, a copy from Epidauros , all known altar decorations of this type were only known after the Ludovis and the Boston throne, so that a forger of the 19th century could hardly find his bearings. However, this does not rule out that a forger who knew the Ludovisian throne might adopt the motif for the Boston throne. The interpretation of the reliefs of both the Ludovis and the Boston thrones did not lead to a reliable result either. Although one can feel reminded of Christian contexts by the image of the weighing of the soul, which would speak for a fake, one can just as well refer to ancient traditions, which at least make the authenticity of the reliefs seem possible.
Erika Simon's interpretation
Erika Simon, who had followed the disputes over the authenticity of the reliefs, presented a work in 1959 entitled The Birth of Aphrodite , in which she dealt extensively with both the Boston and the Ludovisian throne. She assumes that the two works of art were created by different artists, but originally belonged together, probably as acroters of a common ensemble. At least she does not consider the authenticity of the Boston throne to be ruled out.
Simon first examined the relationship between the number of figures on the Boston and the Ludovisian throne. The naked, hurdy-gurdy boy in the right side relief corresponds to the flute player on the Ludovisian relief. According to Simon, he originally wore a wreath made of bronze and was sitting on a half-empty wineskin. Simon points to a satyr by the Brygos painter , who also, half lying and playing music, has chosen such an " Askos " as a soft surface.
Simon also looked for equivalents in vase painting for the old woman of the other narrow side relief and found it in a depiction of Geropso , who accompanied the young Heracles to the lyre hour on a vessel by the Pistoxenus painter . However, Geropso is depicted ignoble, whereas the old woman on the Boston relief looks more like an honorable gray wet nurse. Also their pupil, the lyre player, is certainly more cultivated than Herakles, who simply killed his music teacher. Nor is it to be assumed that the woman on the relief, like Geropso, is holding a crooked stick in her hands. Simon rather interprets the “amorphous mass” with which the old woman handles as wool or flax on a distaff. For Simon, this creates a connection between the two thrones again, since the artists tried to “characterize the material” in both works. Such wool work is also clearly recognizable on an Attic grave relief from the 4th century. With hopes of working old woman also had to be a likely Kalathos thought of as Wollkorb. Other attempts to supplement the side relief with the old woman are unconvincing to Simon. The tree suggested by Franz Studniczka , for example, looks like it is made of rubber.
According to Simon, the relationship between the young, powerful lyre player and the old, crooked female figure is just as antithetical as that between the flute-playing hetaera and the bride on the two side reliefs of the Ludovisian throne. These in turn showed a connection to the Aphrodite motif of the main relief in an antistrophic statement about “nature and type of female devotion” . From this, Simon concludes: "In a similar way, the theme of the two Boston side wings, which encompasses the splendor of youth and the darkness of old age, should reappear transformed on a divine level in the middle section of the triptych ."
Simon describes the winged scale holder, who smiles at the cheerful female figure, as a "rogue" and interprets him as Eros . He is particularly similar to the erots on a stamnos of the Hermonax in Munich . He smiles at the cheerful woman on his right; at the same time, however, the scale that is turned towards this woman is lowered and the bowl that is evidently related to the other woman who seems to be mourning rises. The small male figures that stand like weights in these scales also behave accordingly. The sinking figure stands calmly, the rising figure seems to fidget.
The ornamentation below the reliefs includes pomegranates and fish . Simon considers these elements, because they are depicted very naturalistically, to be more significant than palmettes and rosettes, and believes that their common occurrence points to the sea-born Aphrodite Urania. This is the main character of the Ludovisian Throne. Simon sees himself relieved of the obligation to see these attributes as indications for the interpretation of the togetherness of individual figures on the Boston throne, and suggests a chiastic connection between the figures, so to speak . These are to be assigned to each other according to their seating, so the cheerful woman belongs more to the young man playing hunts and the grieving woman to the crouching old woman.
Eros now appears with the balance of fate, which is actually originally attributed to Zeus , who thus weighs the deadless , the "Keren", for example for Achilles and Hector . According to Simon, the balance of fate has been an attribute of Hermes in the visual arts since the late Archaic period . So why is Eros balanced on the Boston relief? And why, of all people, is the woman smiling on whose side the weighing pan sinks? According to Simon, these peculiarities were viewed as errors and thus as arguments against the authenticity of the relief. But: The figures in the scales are non-warlike; it is clearly not a situation like that between Achilles and Hector in the Trojan War . Simon's interpretation is: "Regardless of a specific, time-definable situation, the scales seem to determine for each of the two about life and death, that is, about mortality or immortality." But this weighing is a divine right and Eros is undoubtedly acting in this Order of Zeus. This is an innovation that is more in the sense of a Greek artist of the 5th century than a sculptor of the imperial era or even a forger, especially since the archaic image of the weighing of the soul around the middle of the 5th century BC. Chr. Changed.
According to Simon, the two seated female figures represent goddesses, each of whom has connected with mortal men, which explains the presence of Eros as a balance holder. Such love relationships are characterized by two problems: firstly, the gods can react jealously and kill mortal lovers prematurely; secondly, they are not ageless, whereas the goddesses are blessed with eternal youth. The latter, according to Simon, is probably the difficulty in the relationship of one couple: The goddess mourns because her human partner is given immortality but not agelessness. So it is about Eos and Tithonos . Mimnermos put into words what probably moved the soul of the condemned to dying to remain calmly in the balance and his calm demeanor: Old age is more terrible than death. Simon also appeals to Mimnermos when she identifies the second goddess as Aphrodite, especially fragments 1 and 2. Mimnermos thinks it better to die as soon as the golden youth with which Aphrodite is closely connected is over. A work by Sappho also goes with it, in which the sad fate of the Eos is also remembered and it is made clear that man is not immortal and ageless. The gesture of the happy woman on the Boston relief seems to express the sensibly resigned “What should I do?” Of the Sappho poem. In the scales on the side of Aphrodite, however, Anchises stood , from whom she had received the son Aeneas after she had got him so excited that he was ready to go straight into the house of Hades from the side store. This story is told, among other things, in the fifth Homeric Hymn , which Simon sees in close thematic relationship with the images of the Boston Throne.
Simon draws the conclusion: “The reliefs in the Thermenmuseum and in Boston are both dedicated to Aphrodite. Her birth is depicted in one, her fate in the other [...] The connection between the two works is so finely structured that the subject of the other echoes in the composition of one. ”“ The correspondence between hymns and thrones is so big that it cannot be based on chance [...] The common root lies in the cult. The hymns were probably sung in connection with the cult of the goddess, the reliefs adorned one of her sanctuaries. ”“ The two works are to be understood as Akrotere [...] ”Simon assumes that these Akrotere became a sanctuary of Urania in Greater Greece, perhaps in Lokroi or on Mount Eryx , belonged. The location of at least the Ludovisian, perhaps also the Boston throne, in or near the Horti Sallustiani suggests that they were used there for a temple of Venus Erucina . They were probably transferred to Rome in the Augustan era .
literature
- Erika Simon, The Birth of Aphrodite , Berlin 1959
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Simon 1959, p. 67
- ↑ Ulrich Sinn: Introduction to Classical Archeology. CHBeck, 2000, ISBN 978-3-406-45401-1 , p. 98 ( limited preview in Google book search)
- ↑ Simon 1959, p. 56
- ↑ Ulrich Sinn: Introduction to Classical Archeology. CH Beck, 2000, ISBN 978-3-406-45401-1 , p. 99 f. ( limited preview in Google Book search)
- ↑ Ulrich Sinn: Introduction to Classical Archeology. CHBeck, 2000, ISBN 978-3-406-45401-1 , pp. 100–103 ( limited preview in Google book search)
- ↑ a b c Simon 1959, p. 64
- ↑ Simon 1959, p. 60
- ↑ a b c d Simon 1959, p. 65
- ↑ Simon 1959, p. 72
- ↑ Simon 1959, p. 76
- ↑ Simon 1959, p. 78
- ↑ Simon 1959, p. 82
- ^ Mimnermos, Fr. 4, Diehl. Quoted in Simon 1959, p. 83
- ↑ Sappho, Fr. 58 Lobel, quoted in Simon 1959, p. 85
- ↑ Simon 1959, p. 93
- ↑ Simon 1959, p. 94
- ↑ Simon 1959, p. 95
- ↑ Simon 1959, p. 98 ff.