Harness Pendant with Confronted Beasts

If at first the erect, taut symmetry of thse two stylized, seated, and confronted panthers (?), each with its head turned backward in profile—a heralidc pose reguardant—and with its chest facing outward and the hip joints clearly demarcated, recalls Asian prototypes, closer examination indicates the artist's familarity with Greek animal bronzes. Among harness pendants with similar iconography from Spain and southwestern France, this hitherto unknown example appears to be the most finished and perhaps the most puzzling. It still retains the loop above the heads of the beasts through which the harness strap could be passed. The realisitic rendering of the fur by means of fine, engraved lines of each animal's body and tail—which is elegantly curled around and resting on the haunch—as well as in the wrinkles on the neck, reveals a knowledge of Greek art, and seems to set this example apart from other related pendants.

Although the Near Eastern aspects of this object could have been derived from Greek art during its Orientalizing period, Pedro de Palol Salellas has suggested possible alternative migration routes for the theme of confronted, symmetrical animals with turned heads: The imagery might have passed from Mesopotamia to the Scytho-Sarmatian culture in southern Russia, from which it could have been taken up by the Greeks or Goths; it might have been transferred from Han dynasty China to the Huns and the Avars; or perhaps it was created independently by Greek artists in Greece or Spain. Although the immediate prototype for this pendant is suggested by an example from Lectoure, in southwestern France, on which the beasts rest on a fluted vase or capital of Roman form, it is symbiosis of Greek and a variety of Near Eastern traditions that characterizes sixth-century Visigothic art in Iberia.

[ Robin Symes Limited, London (sold 1990)]

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Mirror of the Medieval World," March 9–June 1, 1999.

Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Recent Acquisitions: A Selection, 1989-1990." The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, n.s., 48, no. 2 (Fall 1990). p. 17.

Little, Charles T., ed. The Art of Medieval Spain, A.D. 500–1200. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1993. no. 29, p. 69.

López, Gisela Ripoll, and Marta Darder Lissón. "Frena equorum: Guarniciones de frenos de caballos en la antigüedad tardía hispánica." Espacio, Tiempo y Forma: Revista de la facultad de geografia e historia in Prehistoria y Arqueologia Series 1, no. 7 (1994). pp. 277–356, fig. 28.

Wixom, William D., ed. Mirror of the Medieval World. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1999. no. 52, p. 42.