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An owl: a fragment from a statuette or ornament
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An owl: a fragment from a statuette or ornament
Bronze
Length: 2.5cm
Museum number: SC15
Vermeule catalogue number: Vermeule 438
Not on display
Curatorial note
An owl with wings half spread and legs drawn up so the claws appear against the chest. The smallness of this fragment suggests that it may have been the attribute held in the hand of a statue of Minerva (the owl is the symbol of Minerva) or perhaps the subsidiary ornament of a semi-functional bronze object.
A random comparative example of the former is the owl held on the outstretched hand of a bronze statuette of Minerva from Herculaneum now in the Museum of Naples1. The most celebrated bronze statuette of Athena with an owl held thus is the Athena Elgin, now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York2.
1 Maiuri, Herculaneum, p.110.
2 Conze, in Festschrift für Benndorf, p.175f., pl. IX.
A random comparative example of the former is the owl held on the outstretched hand of a bronze statuette of Minerva from Herculaneum now in the Museum of Naples1. The most celebrated bronze statuette of Athena with an owl held thus is the Athena Elgin, now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York2.
1 Maiuri, Herculaneum, p.110.
2 Conze, in Festschrift für Benndorf, p.175f., pl. IX.
Provenance
Unrecorded
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