Seated Musician

Simply formed figures of this type are often labeled Coptic. The Harvard musician may have belonged to a larger composition, as indicated by a small copper alloy model temple on top of which are seated five musicians that are very similar to the Harvard piece, and at least one also plays a stringed instrument (1). Other similar unassociated Coptic musicians were known previously in Berlin (2). The Harvard piece is similar in scale and modeling to a small statuette purchased in Egypt of a woman holding a mirror (3) and to Coptic statuettes in Cairo (4). A similar seating arrangement and oversized hands are also seen in a piece in the Benaki Museum, Athens (5).

NOTES:

1. See Aegyptische Kunst: Auktion 46, Münzen und Medaillen (Basel), April 28, 1972, lot 154, with additional comparanda. See H. Mahboubian, Art of Ancient Iran: Copper and Bronze (London, 1997) 272-73, no. 352, for a single figure playing a stringed instrument seated atop a censer.

2. See J. Strzygowski, Hellenistische und koptische Kunst in Alexandria (Vienna, 1902) 51, figs. 37-41.

3. L. Török, Coptic Antiquities 1 (Rome, 1993) 18, no. C 8, pl. 5.

4. See the figure on a handle of a pan in J. Strzygowski, Catalogue général du Musée du Caire des antiquités égyptiennes: Koptische Kunst (Vienna, 1904) 278, no. 9101, pl. 31.

5. D. Fotopoulos and A. Delivorrias, Greece at the Benaki Museum, transl. J. Leatham (Athens, 1997) 204, fig. 342.

Anne L. McClanan