Day 55 - Cypriot mother and infant

June 12, 2018

Gallery 173, which is located on the second floor above the main classical collection, takes us back in time to Bronze Age Cyprus, with objects dating from the first millennium B.C.E. At first, I am confused by the break in chronology, but then I notice that the objects are all part of a collection amassed by one Luigi Palma di Cesnola, an American who, in the second half of the 19th century, financed many treasure-hunting expeditions to Cyprus and sold his collection to the Met, which now has the most comprehensive collection of Cypriot art in the Western Hemisphere, according to the blurb on the wall. Presumably, a condition of the sale was that the collection be shown of a piece and not divvied up.  The blurb says that Cesnola saw his work as rivaling that of Schliemann at Troy, but it's my sense, anyway, that Schliemann was by far the more serious archaeologist. Cesnola might be seen as more of a grave-robber, since many of the objects were taken from tombs. I wonder if extensive notes were taken about the sites, or whether the objects were simply ripped from their context, limiting our ability to understand them in other than aesthetic terms.

In terms of aesthetics, though, I'm a bit startled by the "primitive" quality of many of them, in comparison, say, with Egyptian objects from the same period. The ones on display here are largely terracotta, although some are made of bronze or alabaster or gold. The larger vessels, while often beautifully shaped (hand-built? turned on a wheel?), primarily have geometric designs. There are also smaller terracotta vessels shaped like animals or people. And there are some statuettes of nude women, probably fertility figures.

Today's object is a small terracotta statuette, perhaps 4 to 5 inches high,  from about 1900-1600 B.C.E. It shows a seated woman.  On her lap rests a pallet (the caption describes it as a cradle)  on which an infant is lying.  The woman seems to be wearing a headdress and a neck collar of some sort. Her large ears, nose, brows, and mouth appear to have been modeled from bits if clay stuck onto the main figure, and there are little holes denoting her eyes. But what is most notable is that her ams are thrown up into the air. What is the meaning of this gesture? One might interpret it as a lamentation over the corpse of her dead baby, a pre-Christian Pieta'.  A nearby placard says that figurines of infants lying in cradles were sometimes placed in tombs, "probably as symbols of regeneration" - although why we should think that is unspecified. I would rather think of the figure as representing the mother throwing up her arms in elation, rejoicing in the birth of her child and her capacity to give life. The caption says that the figure was originally attached to a large vase or a platfom, which only deepens the mystery.

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To my frustration, I find, when I return downstairs, that the "skipped" classical galleries, which I have checked every day except today and found closed, were, in fact, open!