1
CALABRIAN HIEROS GAMOS PENDANTS AND PANOFSKY’S METHOD
1.Bronze pendant, height c. 3cm. Timpone della Motta, Francavilla Marittima, 8th century BC. National Archaeological Museum of the Sibaritide, Sibari.
2.Bronze pendant of a seated couple, from the environments Macchiabate/Timpone della Motta, present location unknown (photo and drawing after Zancani Montuoro 1983-84, pl. 74c).
3.Terracotta figurine of an anthropomorphic couple, from Tomb 2, Temparella cluster, Macchiabate necropolis, National Archaeological Museum, Sibari.
4.Terracotta hierogamy couple from the Patsos Cave, drawing J. Boardman,The Cretan Collection in Oxford: The Dictean Cave and Iron Age Crete, Oxford 1961, 77, fig. 34c.
Introduction Images like the Calabrian bronze pendant here illustrated in figure 1 - of which now some 20 specimens are known to us1 - seem to speak for themselves and most people will readily interpret them as representations of a couple of lovers. This is probably why these 8th-century BC figurines have hitherto received little consideration. However, the concept of love this early and in Oenotrian Early Iron Age context merits, of course, our full attention. A functional fact of these pendants is that they are very small (3cm in height) and in some cases attached to chains and worn on the body by women and small children, which makes it likely that some special ideology was associated with them. Whether we understand ideology as a structure of values and interests behind any representation of reality or as a system of symbolic representation that reflects an historical situation of dominance by a particular class, it is especially the concept of iconology the “logos” (discourse, ideas, science) of “icons” (images, pictures, likenesses) - that makes it possible to discuss the ideologies of images.2 The well-known iconology developed by Erwin Panofsky offers probably the best possibility to discuss ancient images in such a way that the resulting contribution allows a further determination of the levels of certainty or probability in our interpretation.3 The Calabrian anthropomorphic pendants and Oenotrian society in Mediterranean urbanisation processes In the case of the anthropomorphic bronze pendants or “coppiette” we have no difficulty to follow Panofsky’s pre-iconographical description that indeed can be reached without any further cultural knowledge: the figurines are clearly nude and by their genitals the one on the left is a woman and the other a man. Although the knees are somewhat bent, the figures are probably standing, because there is a tiny oblique plinth underneath their feet. They are rendered with open mouth and pellet-eyes, so with expressive faces. Because the inner arms of both figurines are around the other person’s shoulder we understand that they form a heterosexual couple. However, Panofsky’s iconographical analysis which is undertaken to identify the conventional subject matter in the ancient world of visual signs, images or stories is much more 1
KLEIBRINK 2016. MITCHELL 1986, pp. 1-4; pp. 158-159. 3 PANOFSKY 1982. 2
Diritti riservati per l’edizione nei relativi atti.
www.romarche.it
2 difficult, because nothing is known about Oenotrian mythology. Cultural-specific themes and concepts must be borrowed by tracing the origin of the motif and by speculating on the stories attached to them.4 In this phase it is important to realize that we deal with icons, with image that try to visualize an idea, not with pictures of specific individuals. This is among other things clear from the fact that at Torano five casts from the same mould were found on the body of a deceased woman; repeating the image probably increased its force. The more commonly found pendants of figure 1 have parallels not only in bronze versions of seated couples with more expressive gestures (figure 2), but also in terracotta figurines which are different in style but seem to express the same concept (figure 3). In general, one may probably lump all ancient images of heterosexual couples together in case they show elements of mutual bonding and are placed side by side, because the position of these pairs is very demonstrative: the couples meet our gaze and return it,5 while in the case of the breast-holding or vulva-reaching by the male, the fertility of the female is explicitly advertised. The Calabrian “coppiette” are part of a culturally-independent repertoire of bronze body ornaments and vessels made by Oenotrian bronzesmiths and the origin of the motif is not clear. The best parallels are found in the Early Iron Age culture of Crete (figure 4) but are associated with Levantine immigrants. Ancient mythology offers only one kind of story for this kind of images and that is the very old “hieros gamos” story of an all-encompassing goddess (like Sumerian Inanna) and her young and heroic lover and there is no way of knowing whether the Phoenician imports in the Sibaritide, which are contemporary with the bronze pendants and in some cases found in the same grave, indicate so much Levantine influence that later versions of such hieros gamos myths can have circulated in 8th-century BC southern Italy. This brings us to Panofsky's third step, the iconological analysis, because whatever the story behind the anthropomorphic pendants may have been their find-circumstances point out that it must have had a strong function in the proto-urban Oenotrian society of southern Italy. The pendants are found in rich Oenotrian female graves and are thus surely connected to an ideology of an emerging dominant class. Panofsky's recommendations for synthetic intuition and Weltanschauung in iconological interpretation make it easy to interpret that ideology because it must have been connected with heterosexual bonding and specifically with new marriage practice. Generally, it seems safe to assert that in most societies the nuclear family is thought to socially form a strong organising principle, especially where different and larger groups are sharing the same area, for instance in urbanisation processes. The current understanding of the organisation of Oenotrian grave fields does not allow us to connect the anthropomorphic pendants directly with a new social order dependent on nuclear families, but Renato Peroni pointed already to some burials in the Oenotrian Temparella tumulus at Francavilla Marittima as evidence for the emergence of nuclear families and more recently findings by Francesco Quondam confirm this kind of social change. The transition from clan to nuclear family and the associated rights on land, house and hearth generally strengthen the position of elite women, which may be especially evident from the veneration of a goddess on the Timpone della Motta (Francavilla Marittima) where her altar was a focus for offerings of young animals and for dedications of jewelry, among which two anthropomorphic pendants. MARIANNE KLEIBRINK Emerita Università di Groningen, Olanda
[email protected] BIBLIOGRAPHY KLEIBRINK 2016: M. KLEIBRINK, “Into Bride Ritual as an Element of Urbanization: Iconographic Studies of Objects from the Timpone Della Motta, Francavilla Marittima”, in Mouseion, Series III, Vol. 13, Toronto 2016, pp. 235–292. LACAN 1978: J. LACAN, Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. New York: W.W. Norton. MITCHELL 1986: W.J.T. MITCHELL, Image, Text, Ideology, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. PANOFSKY 1982: E. PANOFSKY, Meaning in the Visual Arts, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1982 (original edition 1955).
4 5
PANOFSKY 1982, pp. 29-30) LACAN 1978.
Diritti riservati per l’edizione nei relativi atti.
www.romarche.it
3
ABSTRACT Among the first Italic bronze pendants of the 8 th century BC are figurines of a nude woman and man holding their inner arms around the other person’s shoulders. Following Erwin Panofsky’s steps for art-historical analysis, these tiny figures may be identified as hieros gamos (holy matrimony) couples because of iconographic parallels from the Eastern Mediterranean and elsewhere, among others the famous ‘Hera and Zeus’ couple from Samos, although of later date. Panofsky’s next step, iconological analysis, must answer our curiosity as to how and why these bronze pendants of a loving couple became popular in indigenous Calabria and whether the original meaning had adhered to the images or whether they were seen as something else altogether. In the proposed paper Panofsky’s method, will be followed by scrutinising the find contexts - mainly prosperous 8th-century BC graves and a sanctuary at Timpone della Motta, Francavilla Marittima - for an answer. Iconological analysis is based upon the posing of one major question; that is, it persistently asks why this image has assumed this shape at this historical moment.
KEY-WORDS Hieros gamos imagery, Oenotrians, pre-Greek urbanisation, Erwin Panofsky’s analysis.
Diritti riservati per l’edizione nei relativi atti.
www.romarche.it
