Terracotta anatomical votive; spiral coil ending in trefoil
Terracotta anatomical votive; spiral coil ending in trefoil. Tivoli/Lazio, 3rdC BC-1stC BC © The Trustees of the British Museum Museum Number 1899,0720.13 CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 – This terracotta votive nicely combines the clean volumetric rotundity of the belly with the coiled shape of the imagined innards (intestines? the uterus? the spiral image as an abstract […]
Terracotta anatomical votive
Terracotta anatomical votive 3rdC BC-1stC BC © The Trustees of the British Museum, Museum Number 1839,0214.51CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 – This image represents an inner part; some of the features, such as the ribs and wrinkles and the central globe, point to a womb as an ‘empty sack’, a container ready to receive the embryo; on […]
Apollo the Python-Slayer or Cleveland Apollo
Apollo the Python-Slayer or Cleveland Apollo Hellenistic (?) Courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Museum Number 1839,0214.51 – The celebrated Cleveland Apollo is one of the most famous works attributed to the fourth-century Attic sculptor Praxiteles. Many later marble copies survive, but this bronze classical piece came to public attention only in 2004 when […]
Grotesque figurine
Grotesque terracotta figurine 3rd century BCE–3rd century CE (?) © 2023, Benaki Museum, Athens. Benaki Museum inv. No 12793 – This Hellenistic terracotta, part of the Benaki Museum collection in Athens, depicts with hyper-realistic traits an old, and/or ‘disabled’ man with a protruding pot belly, achieving a grotesque effect and signalling a pathology while offering […]
Marble tombstone of an Athenian physician
Athens, 2nd century CE