Tyche of Antioch in the Yale University Art Gallery, October 2013

Roman copy of an original by: Eutychides, Greek, active ca. 295 BC

Tyche of Antioch

ca. 1st-2nd century A.D.

Bronze, hollow cast; originally inlaid with silver at eyes; base cast separately and attached

15 x 8.4 x 7.7 cm (5 7/8 x 3 5/16 x 3 1/16 in.)

Leonard C. Hanna, Jr., Class of 1913, Fund

1986.65.1

This bronze statuette of the Roman period is modeled on one of the most influential statues of antiquity—the Tyche of Antioch by Eutychides, created in about 300 B.C. Tyche, the personification of Fortune, was held in great esteem in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Cities throughout the Graeco-Roman world attempted to improve their own fortunes by celebrating Tyche as a civic deity. Tyche is usually represented in art as a female figure, wearing a mural crown. Sometimes identifying attributes, such as landscape features, were incorporated into a particular city’s image of Tyche. Judging by surviving copies, Eutychides’s Tyche of Antioch was shown seated on a rock, with a personification of the river Orontes at her feet. It is unclear whether Yale’s statuette originally included the figure of Orontes.

Culture: Roman, after a Greek original

Classification: Sculpture

Bibliography:

Handbook of the Collections, exh. cat. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Art Gallery, 1992), 266, ill.

“Catalogue of the Exhibition ‘An Obsession with Fortune: Tyche in Greek and Roman Art’,” Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin (1994): 108, no. 2.

Mark D. Stansbury-O’Donnell, “Reflections of the Tyche of Antioch in Literary Sources and on Coins,” Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin (1994): 54, no. 2, fig. 31.

Text from: artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/7257