Siren statuette
Siren statuette
3D
Published 2023-05-12T13:49:29+00:00
The sirens, birds with human heads, were closely related to the Muses and according to legend even engage them in a musical contest. Plato (Republic X 617 b) places a singing siren on each of the spheres of heaven and collectively makes them personify the euphony of celestial harmony. In the tombs sirens of terracotta were laid together with ordinary mourning women of terracotta in order to impart a more sublime character to the death lamentations, and the sirens on the sepulchral monuments were for the same purpose.
The earliest Attic marble sirens known are from the 4th Century BC, but who torsoes from Mykonos and Gordion hitherto indicated the type in early Ionian art (C. Jorgensen: Kvindefigurer i den archaiske grseske Kunst p. 52. G. Weicker: Der Seelenvogel p. 106. Patroni, Rendiconti della Accademia dei Lincei Ser. V, Vol. Ill 1894 p. 192, Note 3 and p. 199 fig. 3). Thus the Glyptotek figure is the earliest well preserved marble siren of Greek Ionic art, a work dating from 555-550 BC, related to the sculptures of the older temple of Artemis at Ephesus, whose columns King Kroisos of Lydia had partly embellished with reliefs. Indeed, the Glyptotek's siren, which was acquired in 1933, is said to have its provenance at Kyzikos in Asia Minor. It is the Glyptotek's finest piece of Ionic-archaic sculpture. On siren figures, in the earliest Greek art cf. Kunze in Athen. Mitt. 57, 1932 p. 124 seqq. To it may now be added a small Ionic bronze siren from Crotona (Arch. Anz. 55, 1940 p. 531 with fig. 53).
The siren has locks in form of beads down past the neck, and in the left hand holds the zither, in the right a small plectron.
| Date published | 12/05/2023 |
| Complessità | Medium |
| Title | Siren statuette |
| Date | 555 - 550 BC |
| Dimension | Height 0.37m |
| Accession | IN 2817 |
| Period | Archaic |
| Medium | Marble |
| Record | https://archive.org/stream/GlyptothequeNyCarlsberg5/GlyptothequeNyCarlsberg5_djvu.txt |
| Artist | Unknown artist |
| Place | Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek |