On view
Ancient Mediterranean Art
Statuette of Two Seated Goddesses,
ca. 500–490 BCE
Greek, Attic
2005-108
In the ancient Mediterranean, divine bodies could be shown using many representational strategies: the gods could be painted on vases or fashioned from bronze, marble, or wood; they might be rendered so small that they could sit in one’s hand, or so large that they towered over worshippers; and many gods could be depicted in multiple shapes and forms or with different iconographic attributes. These choices dramatically affected how a god’s image was perceived and, as a consequence, how the god’s presence could be experienced by their worshippers. Surviving ancient literary accounts describe how particularly striking images of the gods could elicit powerful responses in their viewers, provoking epiphanies, or sacred visions of the divine.
Information
Title
Statuette of Two Seated Goddesses
Dates
ca. 500–490 BCE
Medium
Terracotta
Dimensions
10.5 x 10.5 x 5.6 cm (4 1/8 × 4 1/8 × 2 3/16 in.)
Credit Line
Museum purchase, Classical Purchase Fund and partial gift of Walter Banko
Object Number
2005-108
Culture
Type
Materials
With Victor and Leontine Goldschmidt ca. 1919; in the 1930s it passed to Hermann Hampe; through inheritance with Roland Hampe until about 1980; purchased from Gordian Weber, Cologne, in 2005.
- "Acquisitions of the Princeton University Art Museum 2005," Record of the Princeton University Art Museum 65 (2006): p. 49-81., pp. 79–80 (illus.)
- J. Michael Padgett, et. al,The Berlin Painter and his world: Athenian vase-painting in the early fifth century B.C., (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2017), cat. no. 57
