Metalwork

Greek sculptor and metalworker. His signature occurs on a bronze archaistic herm (Tunis, Mus. N. Bardo) from the Mahdia shipwreck that supported a statue of a winged youth identified as Eros or as Agon, the personification of athletic contests. Though the lettering of the inscription suits a date in the ...

2nd century, male.

Born in Lucania or Leucas.

Worker in bronze.

Ancient Greek.

Botrys worked in Rhodes, where a base bearing his signature has been found, in the first half of the 2nd century BC.

Style of European Iron Age art (see also Prehistoric Europe, §VI). The term is used to describe the distinctive art produced by the La Tène culture (named after the site of La Tène in Switzerland), which flourished c. 450–c. 50 bc in temperate continental Europe, extending to ...

Hoard of late 4th-century silver objects discovered in the year 1793 by workmen digging at the foot of the Esquiline Hill in Rome. In 1930, the first reliable inventory of the treasure was taken. What is currently identified as the Esquiline Treasure remains split between three museums—in London (British Museum), Naples (Museo Archeologico Nazionale), and Paris (Musée de Petit Palais)—with a speculative corpus of 61 objects. The greater part of the treasure, 59 objects, was acquired by the British Museum in ...

Silver vessel of the 2nd–1st centuries bc, found in 1891 in a peat bog at Gundestrup, Jutland, Denmark. The Gundestrup Cauldron (Copenhagen, Nmus.) is arguably the finest and most fascinating example of toreutic (chased or repoussé) silverwork in the Thracian and Dacian art tradition. A large, partly gilded silver vessel measuring 400 mm high×690 mm in diameter, the cauldron comprises a hemispherical bowl with vertical sides constructed from 13 plates covered with detailed figural scenes executed in the Thracian ‘Animal style’, its surfaces densely packed with representations of elephants, lions, dolphins, stags, snakes, griffins, hunters and deities. There are five long rectangular inner plates with inward-facing scenes and seven squarer outer plates; these do not enclose the entire circumference, and a missing eighth plate is presumed. A circular plate generally known as the base plate was probably once part of a lid....

Treasure hoard consisting of more than 15,000 coins (both gold and silver), gold jewellery, and silver tableware, mainly from the 4th century AD, found in 1992 at Hoxne (pronounced ‘Hoxon’), in Suffolk, and now in the British Museum, London. The latest datable coins in the hoard were minted in ...

1st century BC, male.

Sculptor, metal worker.

Ancient Greek.

Leostratides is mentioned by Pliny as a talented sculptor of warriors and battles.

Terms used principally to describe the figural toreutic (chased and embossed) metalwork of the Eurasian steppes in the 1st millennium bc. The designation ‘Scythian’ or ‘Scytho-Siberian’ covers the artistic production of a vast region, stretching from the northern Black Sea area to China. A key element in the so-called ...

In its most general sense, spolia (pl., from Lat. spolium: ‘plunder’) denotes all artifacts re-employed in secondary contexts, from building blocks reused in a wall to pagan gems mounted on a Christian reliquary. It is a matter of debate whether this broad application of the term is justified, or whether it should be restricted to the relatively small subset of reused objects that were taken or ‘stripped’ (like spoils) from their original context, rather than found, purchased, inherited or otherwise acquired by non-violent means. It is likewise debated when the use of spolia should be considered meaningful, if at all. Arnold Esch defined five possible motives for using spolia: convenience, profanation, Christianization, political legitimation and aesthetic attraction. Michael Greenhalgh has argued for reducing the motives to three (at least with regard to marble): pragmatism, aesthetics and ideology; while Finbarr Barry Flood cautioned against reductive interpretations generated by any taxonomy, insisting that reused objects are mutable in meaning and capable of multiple interpretations during their life cycle....

Terms applied principally to types of figural toreutic metalwork produced in south-east Europe between the 7th century bc and 1st century ad.

Thracian art dates from the 7th–1st centuries bc and is closely connected to Scythian and Sarmatian art. Dacian art represents the later manifestation of Thracian art (...

2nd century, male.

Active c. 183 to 172 BC.

Engraver. Seals, coins.

Ancient Greek.

Zoilus is the maker of some coins (tetradrachms) bearing the effigy of King Perseus of Macedonia.