Day 154 - Ram cup and tiger bowl
May 15, 2019
Gallery 405 is largely devoted to works from Iran and other areas that formed part of a series of empires whose lands stretched from Anatolia to Afghanistan. Useful wall signs describe the Achaemenid rulers (Cyrus, Darius), the defeat of the Achaemenid dynasty by Alexander the Great, the Seleucid kings who were Alexander's successors, the rise to power of the Parthians, and the Parthians' defeat by the Sassanians, who ruled until they were conquered in the 7th century by Arab armies bringing Islam to the area. (How's that for centuries of Iranian history summarized in a single sentence?) It's fascinating to see how the art of these empires incorporated elements of other cultures with which they came in contact. The Greco-Roman influence wasn't surprising, given my prior exposure to Gandaran images. But I did not expect to see painted wall panels from the Kushan empire in Bactria that demonstrate the identification of local gods with both Zeus and Shiva.
I want to write about two works separated by more than a thousand years that incorporate images of animals. The first, from the 8th or 7th century B.C.E., is a ceramic vessel about 8 inches high with a curved handle in the form of a ram. The cup is decorated with painted stripes, while the ram's body is rather simply modeled. The ram's head is slightly higher than the rim of the cup; its front hooves touch that rim. It strikes me as a humorous image, as if the ram were standing up on its hind legs to peer into the cool water of a well.
The second work, from the 6th or 7th century C.E., illustrates the enormous skill of Sassanian silversmiths. It's an oval bowl, perhaps 14 inches long and 4 inches high, whose sides are decorated with images of running tigresses in low relief; the big cats are flanked on either side by low vegetation. I'm not sure just how the raised shapes were created, although I would guess they were hammered; the animals' stripes were formed with inlays of niello (silver sulphide), a technique that the Sasanians may have adopted from the Byzantines. The tigresses' bodies are elongated to fit the dimensions of the bowl; the exaggeration, as well as the animals' raised forepaws and their curving parallel stripes, helps to convey a sense of momentum and energy as the tigresses bound forward.
I want to write about two works separated by more than a thousand years that incorporate images of animals. The first, from the 8th or 7th century B.C.E., is a ceramic vessel about 8 inches high with a curved handle in the form of a ram. The cup is decorated with painted stripes, while the ram's body is rather simply modeled. The ram's head is slightly higher than the rim of the cup; its front hooves touch that rim. It strikes me as a humorous image, as if the ram were standing up on its hind legs to peer into the cool water of a well.
The second work, from the 6th or 7th century C.E., illustrates the enormous skill of Sassanian silversmiths. It's an oval bowl, perhaps 14 inches long and 4 inches high, whose sides are decorated with images of running tigresses in low relief; the big cats are flanked on either side by low vegetation. I'm not sure just how the raised shapes were created, although I would guess they were hammered; the animals' stripes were formed with inlays of niello (silver sulphide), a technique that the Sasanians may have adopted from the Byzantines. The tigresses' bodies are elongated to fit the dimensions of the bowl; the exaggeration, as well as the animals' raised forepaws and their curving parallel stripes, helps to convey a sense of momentum and energy as the tigresses bound forward.
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