LaurieAnnie's photos with the keyword: Celt

Sword with Three Mounts, mid-1st century B.C.; Late Iron Age (La Tène) Celtic Iron blade, copper alloy hilt and scabbard; L. 19 3/4 in. (50 cm) Rogers Fund, 1999 (1999.94a-d) This magnificent anthropomorphic Celtic sword is also one of the best preserved. The beautifully modeled head that terminates the hilt is one of the finest surviving images of a Celtic warrior. The human form of the hilt—appearing as a geometric reduction of a classical warrior—must have been intended to enhance the power of the owner and to bear a talismanic significance. The face is emphatically articulated with large almond eyes, and the head with omega-shaped and finely drawn hair. Although the scabbard has become amalgamated to the iron blade, affecting parts of the surface, its ornamentation and the exquisitely worked hilt make the whole an evocative statement about the technical ability of the Celts, the powerful conquerors of ancient Europe. The sword is of a type associated with the La Tène culture, named after the important Celtic site on Lake Neuchâtel in present-day Switzerland and eastern France. Other related anthropomorphic swords from diverse finds in France, Ireland, and the British Isles demonstrate the expansion of the Celts across Europe. As the first such example in the Museum's collection, the sword is a superb and singular example that richly adds to a select group of Celtic works of art. Text from: www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/viewOne.asp?dep=17&vie...

Sword with Three Mounts, mid-1st century B.C.; Late Iron Age (La Tène) Celtic Iron blade, copper alloy hilt and scabbard; L. 19 3/4 in. (50 cm) Rogers Fund, 1999 (1999.94a-d) This magnificent anthropomorphic Celtic sword is also one of the best preserved. The beautifully modeled head that terminates the hilt is one of the finest surviving images of a Celtic warrior. The human form of the hilt—appearing as a geometric reduction of a classical warrior—must have been intended to enhance the power of the owner and to bear a talismanic significance. The face is emphatically articulated with large almond eyes, and the head with omega-shaped and finely drawn hair. Although the scabbard has become amalgamated to the iron blade, affecting parts of the surface, its ornamentation and the exquisitely worked hilt make the whole an evocative statement about the technical ability of the Celts, the powerful conquerors of ancient Europe. The sword is of a type associated with the La Tène culture, named after the important Celtic site on Lake Neuchâtel in present-day Switzerland and eastern France. Other related anthropomorphic swords from diverse finds in France, Ireland, and the British Isles demonstrate the expansion of the Celts across Europe. As the first such example in the Museum's collection, the sword is a superb and singular example that richly adds to a select group of Celtic works of art. Text from: www.metmuseum.org/Works_of_Art/viewOne.asp?dep=17&vie...

Marble statue of a fighting Gaul Greek, Late Hellenistic, 2nd or 1st century BC Said to be from Cerveteri, Italy Accession # 08.258.48 This figure can be identified by its trousers as one of the barbarian enemies that the Romans faced on their northern borders. The Celts or Gauls, a diverse array of tribes with a common culture, were settled in much of Europe, and Germanic tribes inhabited the area beyond the Danube and the Rhine. Although all these peoples wore tight-fitting trousers, this figure probably represented a Celt because of the carefully detailed sword belt suspended from his waist, with holes for a metal scabbard at the right side. We know from ancient literary descriptions and the archaeological evidence from tombs that the Celts were especially noted for their use of long cutting swords that hung at their right side from chain belts. The Celts harried the Mediterranean world intermittently from the late fourth century until they were subdued in Gaul by Julius Caesar in the mid-first century BC. Famous statues of the barbarian warriors had been erected by the rulers of the Hellenistic city of Pergamon in western Asia Minor after their victories over invading Gallic tribes in the third century BC. Those statues, preserved in Roman copies, represented the Gauls in the nude in various defensive or defeated poses. This work, which shows a fully dressed fighter in an attacking stance, was perhaps part of a monument commissioned from Greek sculptors by a Roman general who had been victorious in a campaign on the northern frontier. Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art label.

Marble statue of a fighting Gaul Greek, Late Hellenistic, 2nd or 1st century BC Said to be from Cerveteri, Italy Accession # 08.258.48 This figure can be identified by its trousers as one of the barbarian enemies that the Romans faced on their northern borders. The Celts or Gauls, a diverse array of tribes with a common culture, were settled in much of Europe, and Germanic tribes inhabited the area beyond the Danube and the Rhine. Although all these peoples wore tight-fitting trousers, this figure probably represented a Celt because of the carefully detailed sword belt suspended from his waist, with holes for a metal scabbard at the right side. We know from ancient literary descriptions and the archaeological evidence from tombs that the Celts were especially noted for their use of long cutting swords that hung at their right side from chain belts. The Celts harried the Mediterranean world intermittently from the late fourth century until they were subdued in Gaul by Julius Caesar in the mid-first century BC. Famous statues of the barbarian warriors had been erected by the rulers of the Hellenistic city of Pergamon in western Asia Minor after their victories over invading Gallic tribes in the third century BC. Those statues, preserved in Roman copies, represented the Gauls in the nude in various defensive or defeated poses. This work, which shows a fully dressed fighter in an attacking stance, was perhaps part of a monument commissioned from Greek sculptors by a Roman general who had been victorious in a campaign on the northern frontier. Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art label.

Marble statue of a fighting Gaul Greek, Late Hellenistic, 2nd or 1st century BC Said to be from Cerveteri, Italy Accession # 08.258.48 This figure can be identified by its trousers as one of the barbarian enemies that the Romans faced on their northern borders. The Celts or Gauls, a diverse array of tribes with a common culture, were settled in much of Europe, and Germanic tribes inhabited the area beyond the Danube and the Rhine. Although all these peoples wore tight-fitting trousers, this figure probably represented a Celt because of the carefully detailed sword belt suspended from his waist, with holes for a metal scabbard at the right side. We know from ancient literary descriptions and the archaeological evidence from tombs that the Celts were especially noted for their use of long cutting swords that hung at their right side from chain belts. The Celts harried the Mediterranean world intermittently from the late fourth century until they were subdued in Gaul by Julius Caesar in the mid-first century BC. Famous statues of the barbarian warriors had been erected by the rulers of the Hellenistic city of Pergamon in western Asia Minor after their victories over invading Gallic tribes in the third century BC. Those statues, preserved in Roman copies, represented the Gauls in the nude in various defensive or defeated poses. This work, which shows a fully dressed fighter in an attacking stance, was perhaps part of a monument commissioned from Greek sculptors by a Roman general who had been victorious in a campaign on the northern frontier. Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art label.

The Dying Gaul (in Italian: Galata Morente) is an ancient Roman marble copy of a lost ancient Greek statue, thought to have been executed in bronze, that was commissioned some time between 230 BC and 220 BC by Attalos I of Pergamon to honor his victory over the Galatians. The present base was added after its rediscovery. The identity of the statue's sculptor is unknown but it has been suggested that Epigonus, the court sculptor of the Attalid dynasty of Pergamon, may have been its author. The statue depicts a dying Celt with remarkable realism, particularly in the face, and may have been painted. He is represented as a Gallic warrior with a typically Gallic hairstyle and moustache. The figure is naked save for a neck torc. He is shown fighting against death, refusing to accept his fate. The statue serves both as a reminder of the Celts' defeat, thus demonstrating the might of the people that defeated them, and a memorial to their bravery as worthy adversaries. If we discount that it may merely mirror heroic nudity elsewhere in Hellenistic art, it may also provide evidence to corroborate ancient accounts of the Gallic fighting style - historians recorded that the Gaesates fought naked in the battles in the Po valley in Italy in the Cisalpine War, Julius Caesar records in his account of the Gallic War that the Gauls went into battle naked save for their weapons and Diodorus Siculus.30 reports other instances of such combat: "Some use iron breast-plates in battle, while others fight naked, trusting only in the protection which nature gives. However, the depiction of this Gaul as naked may also be to lend him the dignity of heroic nudity as seen in depictions of Greek heroes, rather than as a journalistic depiction of actual nudity in combat. The Dying Gaul became one of the most celebrated works to have survived from antiquity and was endlessly copied and engraved by artists and sculptors. It is thought to have been rediscovered in the early 17th century during excavations for the foundations of the Villa Ludovisi and was first recorded in 1623 in the collections of the powerful Ludovisi family of Rome. It shows signs of having been repaired, with the head seemingly having been broken off at the neck, though it is unclear whether the repairs were carried out in Roman times or after the statue's 17th century rediscovery. The artistic quality and expressive pathos of the statue aroused great admiration among the educated classes in the 17th and 18th centuries and was a "must-see" sight on the Grand Tour of Europe undertaken by young men of the day. Byron was one such visitor, commemorating the Dying Gaul in his poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (canto 4, stanzas 140-141). It was widely copied, with kings, academics and wealthy landowners commissioning their own reproductions of the Dying Gaul (eg the black marble copy in the Robert Adam entrance hall of Syon House). The less well-off could purchase copies of the statue in miniature for use as ornaments and paperweights. More basic, full-size plaster copies were also studied by arts students during this period (the Royal Academy in London had one such, now at the Courtauld Gallery in London, and also an echorche in this pose, moulded from the body of a dead smuggler and hence nicknamed the "smugglerius"). During this period, some misinterpreted the statue's theme as representing a defeated gladiator, leading to the coining of several (entirely erroneous) alternative names for the statue: the 'Dying' or 'Wounded Gladiator', 'Roman Gladiator', and 'Murmillo Dying'. It has also been called the 'Dying Trumpeter'. It was requisitioned by Napoleon Bonaparte by terms of the Treaty of Campoformio (1797) during his invasion of Italy and taken in triumph to Paris, where it was put on display. It was returned to Rome in 1815 and is currently on display in the Capitoline Museums. Copies of the statue can be seen in the Museum of Classical Archaeology at Cambridge University, Leinster House in Dublin Ireland, as well as in Berlin, Prague and Stockholm. In t